The Most Dangerous Animal of All

by Gary L. Stewart

  Just being in the same room with this man who had been a friend to my father was somewhat disconcerting for me as well, but as William talked about his life as a criminologist, I could tell he was nothing like Van. And when he started sharing his stories, he seemed to enjoy bringing his memories to life.

  “We weren’t like the other boys in school,” he said. “While they were out playing sports, we were in Van’s bedroom reciting The Mikado. We knew every word of that opera. He also enjoyed Tosca.”

  I had read on the Internet that Zodiac quoted The Mikado. “Van knew The Mikado?” I asked William.

  “Knew it?” he said, and laughed. “Your father was obsessed with it. Said your grandfather met him. I never believed him, though. Van was always full of tall tales. He once told me that he met the queen of England, too. Said he attended her coronation. That was when he went to Hinchingbrooke. He came back all messed up for a while.”

  William went on to relate the story about the bloody mace and Van’s obsession with weaponry.

  “Van had very superstitious ideas,” William remembered. “His dad had bought him a car after graduation, and we were driving around, I don’t remember where, but we decided to spend the night on the road. After a while, we saw a construction site with what looked to be unfinished white buildings. I should mention that we were both nearsighted and had left our glasses at home. We parked and went to sleep in the car. The next morning, we awoke to a bright, sunny day. After clearing our vision and focusing on our surroundings, we discovered that we had spent the night in a cemetery. The white buildings we saw the night before were white mausoleums and gravestones. I thought it was funny, but Van considered it an ill omen.”

  When I asked about my father’s business ventures, William said that in the beginning, sometimes Van’s trips to Mexico had been very lucrative. “Whatever Van brought back from Mexico did not last very long. In weeks, everything would be sold. I used to watch him sorting his documents, and I remember one particular paper signed by King Philip II. I know that document went for a considerable profit.”

  He also told me about LaVey. He said they hung out at the Lost Weekend cocktail lounge, in the Sunset District, with Van and LaVey occasionally taking turns on the pipe organ there. “LaVey and Van had much in common—music and a love of philosophy and books. Van was always fascinated with anything that had to do with ‘other’ ways of thinking, and he could not get enough of LaVey’s unusual thought processes,” William explained.

  “We were at San Francisco City College studying forensics when your father met Mary Player,” William remembered.

  “Who is she?” I interrupted.

  “His first wife. She looked like Audrey Hepburn, but that marriage only lasted a matter of months, I believe.”

  “What happened?” I asked, surprised. Judy had not mentioned another wife.

  William didn’t want to elaborate on it, but he said that Van could be “whacked out” at times.

  “I knew your father, too,” Tania said, walking into the room with a plate of pastries she had made for us. “We all went to Lowell High School together. I have to be honest: I didn’t like him at all. He was a braggadocio, always talking about his accomplishments, but he never had anything to show for it.”

  William smiled at her, stroking his full gray beard. “Tania is very direct,” he said.

  Listening to William, I noticed that he used a very formal way of speaking. He had told me that Van had impeccable grammar, and I could see why they would have enjoyed talking with each other. William was a great conversationalist. One would never know he was foreign by listening to him speak, in his crackly, soft voice.

  “Let me show you something in my office,” he said, slowly getting up and maneuvering his way across the living room. I followed him down the corridor and up some more stairs before he showed me into a room lined with even more built-in bookcases. These shelves held books about criminology, forensics, murder.

  “That’s where I work,” he said, pointing to a computer on his desk. “Your father studied forensics, too, you know. I tried to talk him into working with me a few times, but he was determined he was going to find treasure in Mexico.”

  He removed a book from one of the shelves. “I want you to see this. It was a gift from your father. It’s extremely rare, one of my prized possessions. He brought it back from Mexico.”

  Realizing I was about to touch something my father had once touched, I reached for it almost reverently.

  “Be careful,” William said. “It’s from the sixteenth century.”

  As I cautiously flipped through the pages, I noticed it was written in Spanish.

  “Do you know what it’s about?” I asked.

  “Of course,” William said. “This book was written as a guide to teach the Aztecs how to administer the sacraments. The Spanish were trying to spread Catholicism during that period, and they needed to ensure that the Aztecs fully understood the rituals of the religion.”

  Noticing the unusual pink coloring of the cover, I said, “This is strange.”

  “I’m not so sure it isn’t human skin,” William said. “It certainly isn’t cow or goat, which is what they used to use. I’ve often wondered about that.”

  I studied the book for a while, wishing I had the nerve to ask him if I could buy it, but I could tell by the way he handled it so carefully that it really meant something to him.

  “Van always brought us presents from Mexico. Tania has a beautiful bracelet around here somewhere that he gave her.”

  “Can I see it?” I asked.

  “I’ll ask if she knows where it is.”

  When I left that day, I had a clear understanding of why my father had liked William. He was one of the most dignified and intelligent men I had ever met.

  Over the next five years, William and I kept up a constant correspondence, and I would visit him three more times. After my second visit, he asked me to call him Uncle Bill and began signing his e-mails “UB.” As our relationship progressed, he opened up even further, sharing tidbits about my father along the way. Sometimes his memories were good—drinking ale at Schroeder’s, hanging out at the Tonga Room. Other times, his memories haunted me.

  Like the time he showed me a small wooden cube decorated with carvings of anguished faces trying to escape the depths of hell.

  52

  Throughout 2006, I visited San Francisco often, hoping to uncover more information about my father’s life. Because of William, Judy, and the Best family, I had starting points, places to look.

  I began to retrace my father’s steps again through the Bay Area. This time I had a different perspective. This time I knew how cruel Van could be.

  I visited Grace Cathedral and, as my father had once been, was awed by the beautiful music that flowed through the pipes on the walls. My eyes were drawn to the floor next to the organ, which was decorated with a circle that had a cross in the middle, and I shuddered. It looked like the symbol the Zodiac used to sign his letters.

  I gazed at the magnificent paintings that depicted scenes from the Bible. Judy had told me that Van had once said he was in one of those paintings. I examined them carefully and noticed a man dressed in robes whose face did bear a slight resemblance to Van, but I realized this had been just another of the stories he told to impress people.

  At city hall, I asked for a copy of Earl Van Best Jr.’s marriage license to Mary Annette Player. The receptionist informed me that two licenses appeared on the screen.

  “Which one do you want?” she said.

  Two? There should only be one, I thought.

  “Both of them,” I said.

  I noticed that he had married Mary Annette Player on August 19, 1957. I also discovered that Van had remarried after Judy—to a woman named Edith Kos. And then I saw the date of that wedding: 6/6/66.

  I visited the Avenue Theatre, where my father had played the organ. The old theater now housed the Channels of Blessing Church, but the original avenue sign still ju
tted out from the front of the building, reminding visitors of its historical significance.

  While I was there, I called Lieutenant Hennessey on his cell phone to see if he would like to meet me for lunch. During our occasional calls, we had discussed getting together sometime soon.

  “I’d love to, Gare, but I’m building a wheelchair ramp for my father’s home. He doesn’t get around very well anymore,” Hennessey said.

  “I’d be happy to come over and help,” I volunteered. “I’m pretty handy with a hammer.”

  “That’s real nice of you, but I couldn’t let you do that. That would be asking too much. I appreciate it, though. I hope you enjoy your day.”

  After I hung up the phone, I decided to take a walk along the Bay to clear my head. Seeing some of the places my father had frequented had given me an uneasy feeling, and I wanted to do as Hennessey had suggested and enjoy my day. As I watched the planes take off and land on the airstrips across the water, I thought about my father’s love of music and how Zach and I had both inherited some of his musical talent. I played guitar and sang in a band at local venues around Baton Rouge, and Zach had been playing the guitar since he was very young. It was the one good thing my father had given us.

  At some point during that walk, I had a strange thought. Throughout the sixties, the underworld of San Francisco was joined in a brotherhood of music; Charles Manson himself had attempted to score a record deal with Terry Melcher, the previous owner of the Polanski-Tate house. I wondered if my father had known Manson or any of his “family” members. I knew investigators had wondered whether there might be a connection between Zodiac and the Manson clan.

  When I returned home, I decided I would try to contact some of the members who were still alive. This was a surreal undertaking. Before Judy came into my life, I would have never thought to search for murderers and try to contact them, and now here I was. When I told Loyd and Leona what I was doing, they were appalled.

  I didn’t even consider contacting Charles Manson, because he just plain scared me. But I had stumbled across the fact that Bobby Beausoleil was residing at the Oregon State Penitentiary. I read about how he had killed Gary Hinman. After discovering a website through which I could send an e-mail to an inmate, I thought it might be worth a shot.

  On September 10, 2006, I sent Beausoleil an e-mail asking if he had ever run into Earl Van Best Jr. in the Haight in the sixties. I was shocked when I received his response on October 14.

  Beausoleil informed me that Van had jammed with his band, the Orkustra, in a warehouse on a few occasions. “Quite a few musicians drifted in and out of our little circle, and he was one of them. I can’t tell you where he went after that—or for that matter where he came from. What I can tell you is that he played a mean Hammond organ.”

  He signed the letter “Bobby.”

  In just a few lines, my suspicions had been confirmed.

  A few months later, I returned to the Bay Area and called Hennessey from my office in Benicia, this time to ask if the DNA comparison had yielded any results. “We’re years behind on backlog, Gare. Who knows when it will be,” he said.

  Discouraged, I hung up the phone. Being patient was harder than I had thought it would be. Had he not sent me the request form, I might have wondered if he’d even submitted my DNA sample. The following year, I learned that Hennessey had been moved from his position as head of homicide into the special investigations division.

  One afternoon in late 2007, as I browsed through the Zodiackiller.com website, reading police reports about the murders, I stumbled across an open letter a retired San Francisco homicide detective had submitted in 2006.

  The detective, Michael Maloney, star number 2014, had served with the SFPD for more than thirty years. He had always had a special interest in the Zodiac case and had been assigned, along with his partner, Kelly Carroll, to the cold case in 2000. Maloney was not your run-of-the-mill police officer and had a reputation as a rebel. While Maloney once said that he “did not want the Zodiac to follow him into retirement,” the bitterness he felt about not being able to pursue the case obviously had.

  When the Zodiac case was closed in 2004, the Los Angeles Times had quoted Hennessey as saying, “The case is being placed inactive. Given the pressure of our existing caseload and the amount of cases that remain open at this time, we need to be most efficient at using our resources.” Hennessey had added that the case would be reopened if a promising lead emerged.

  Maloney, in his letter, did not seem to agree with Hennessey’s position. He wrote, “The Zodiac case will not be solved until the current San Francisco Police Dept.’s manager in the homicide section is transferred. He [Hennessey] closed it [the Zodiac case] and ordered one of the most informed and capable police inspectors in the SFPD, Kelly Carroll, to return the case to the file and never respond to questions about it in the future from anyone, forever. And, rather than re-assign the case to another team, Hennessey put the case to bed after the first significant lead advancement in 30 years.”

  Maloney went on to explain: “My partner and I were the first team to be able to apply forensic DNA techniques to the Zodiac case. We were the first team to solve a cold case, 25 years old, with DNA. We know what we do, and we did it well. We could have torn that case apart with DNA testing.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was reading.

  Maloney continued, “When Hennessey is removed, the case will be opened again. DNA testing will eventually be cheaper. When that happens, the case will become very exciting because enough DNA tests will be made to really draw some conclusions, such as did the same person touch or lick all of the envelopes? If not, how many other DNA traces are we dealing with? Does this mean others were involved? Is there similar DNA in possession of other police jurisdictions connected to the case? What DNA exists on the Paul Stine shirt? I don’t believe there isn’t any on a shirt involved in a bloody murder. Sweat has lots of DNA.”

  As I read, I remembered that I had spoken with Kelly Carroll once. I had called him several years after Butler had quit communicating with me. Carroll had informed me that the case was closed. “I can never speak to anyone about this case ever,” the detective had said. I recalled that Carroll had not seemed too happy about that. The conversation had struck me as odd, even then.

  When I finished reading the letter, doubts about whether Hennessey had submitted my DNA resurfaced. Three years seemed like a long time to wait for a DNA result for a serial killer case, especially this one. Why had Hennessey met with me so many times if he had ordered his detectives not to follow any lead they received about the Zodiac? Why had he sent me the DNA request out of the blue? Had Hennessey wanted to be the one to solve it, or had he simply been toying with me? Or maybe something else had happened. Maybe Harold Butler or Earl Sanders had discovered what he was doing and had ordered him to back off the case.

  I ran through all the possibilities in my mind, and the last one seemed the most believable. My instincts told me Hennessey was sincere. I decided I would ask him.

  The next time I visited Benicia, I called the SFPD from my hotel.

  “Hennessey has retired,” I was informed.

  I sat back in my chair, realizing exactly what that meant. My DNA was possibly sitting somewhere in a lab, where it could remain untested forever.

  I dialed Hennessey’s cell phone and left a message for him to call me.

  He didn’t call.

  I waited a few days and e-mailed him. I had to verify that I knew him by answering a few questions before the e-mail would go through.

  He did not respond.

  I waited awhile and e-mailed him again.

  Nothing.

  I called him one last time before I gave up.

  I knew something had happened. My thoughts circled back to Butler and Sanders. They had been such good friends of Rotea’s. They would not want the world to know that Rotea had been married to the Zodiac’s former wife. But I had no proof. I remembered Hennessey had once said, “Do you
suspect a cover-up?” I had laughed and said, “Of course I do.”

  “Well, we’ll get to the bottom of it then,” Hennessey had responded.

  I remembered that Hennessey had told me Butler had refused to let him see my father’s file. The lieutenant had been forced to go through CLETS for information about my father’s arrests. Why wouldn’t Butler give the head of the homicide division a case file that had been requested? Had my father ever been a suspect in the case? What had been so heinous that we were not allowed to see inside that manila folder?

  Now I would never know.

  I went back to the website, trying to find some contact information for Maloney, only to discover that he had died of a heart attack in early 2007.

  Damn.

  I had finally found someone who might have some answers, who had said publicly that he suspected a cover-up, and I would never be able to talk to him.

  53

  Deciding that I had better start thinking like a detective, I went back to the Zodiac murders. I read every police file I could find on the Internet, noticing that, although the men had been attacked and sometimes killed, it was the women who seemed to be the main target of the killer’s rage. I had read numerous books on serial killers and what drives them, and I knew that many were sexual sadists. I found it interesting that none of the women had been sexually assaulted. These murders had not been about control.

  They had been about rage.

  Revenge.

  Operating under that theory, I printed out photos of the female victims and laid them side by side across my desk, next to a picture of Judy. As I picked up each photo and compared it with a picture I had of my mother when she was sixteen, my hands begin to shake.

  Every one of them resembled Judy in some way.

  I resolved to learn everything I could about the Zodiac victims, hoping that would lead me to another epiphany. As I got to know more personal details, the horror of what my father had done became more and more real.

  One afternoon, I recalled what a detective had once told me about solving any crime: “You always go back to the source.” With that in mind, I printed out all of the Zodiac letters and began studying them. I hoped my answers might be buried somewhere in those letters.