Zodiac Unmasked: The Identity of America's Most Elusive Serial Killer Revealed

by Robert Graysmith

  It was Chief Vollmer who encouraged San Francisco writer Dashiell Hammett to speculate whether or not it was possible to transfer fingerprints from one place to the other. Hammett decided prints could be forged successfully 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?

  Morrill had wanted to be a ballplayer, 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,” Morrill 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 will 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,” Morrill 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 Valley Grammar School in Camarillo, 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 misspellings—“We have suche fun on the way here. We kill 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 unusually ugly so I thought maybe the FBI folk would want to be aware of it.”

  “What I look for when making an analysis varies,” Morrill explained. “If a person has a peculiar style of writing, maybe one or two characteristics will 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 still 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 Morrill, “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 falling 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. Misspelling 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 fallen 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 fall over the ‘i’ dots are still fairly carefully dotted. . . . He is also a very lonely person and is very sensitive to criticism which means he might get upset if you called 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 killers, kidnappings, urban guerrillas, 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 killed five to halt pollution), and Herbert Mullin (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 bullets to slay Oakland School Superintendent Marcus Foster. The New World Liberation Front, the Zebra Killers, Jim Jones’s People’s Temple, Dan White, and Zodiac all called the environs home.

  Avery and Toschi tried to forget Zodiac. So did I, especially at the beginning of a new decade. We knew a little more now. In the 1970s serial killers were still 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 called 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 killers. 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 killers. First, they listed traits they held in common. Zodiac, a combination of hedonistic and control-oriented types, was technically an “organized nonsocial offender.”

  “Organized killers are called nonsocial because they elect to be socially isolated,” wrote expert Greg Fallis. “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 killers are willing 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 killer and told him details of some of the murders. I’d like to put that friend, Jim, under hypnosis. This is the same man Allen met at the Sonoma Auto Parts Store and wrote from Atascadero. Remember? Leigh was hoping that Zodiac would kill again and clear him. While Leigh and Jim were drinking one evening, Allen allegedly confessed he was Zodiac. He offered to testify, but got cold feet. He’s afraid of Allen and his wife has begged him not to speak with us. Eventually, Allen 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 hills—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 killers who tortured and killed 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 still had the Karmann Ghia, gray Corvai
r, 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 fallen 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, initially ordered the correct spelling (“LEIGH”), but the shorter version was cheaper. I needed more samples of Allen’s handwriting, but it was becoming difficult to trick him into printing anything. Allen 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, will you help me?” he said deliberately. He picked up a small basket, filled 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 will help you,” he replied. “I’m not authorized to do that. Have a nice day.”

  I spoke again to Allen’s parole officer. A sensitive young man, Pelle had been disturbed by various mental evaluations of his parolee. Allen’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 occasionally 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,” Allen’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. Basically, Arthur is that interesting.”

  “Do you think he hates his mother?” I asked, recalling Leigh’s comments at Atascadero.

  “Oh, yeah. He absolutely hates her,” said Pelle with feeling. “She’s in her sixties and would say to Leigh about the father, ‘He never takes care of his familial responsibilities. All men are all assholes. . . . You’re just like all 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 all fucked up is because of you. You made me the way I am!’ And she feels really 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 all his hate and revenge is much more likely to be a woman—a mother, sister, or girlfriend who rejected him. Historically such maniacs do disappear. Jack the Ripper was never captured, nor was the more recent San Francisco Zodiac killer.” Zodiac would have a seductive, dominant mother who gives affection and rejection erratically. Serial murderer Ed Kemper, a six-foot nine-inch-tall, 280-pound murderer of women, also fantasized about killing 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 Pelle, “knew that she was revealing things the family wanted to keep secret, but as a good citizen felt obligated to come forward. Allen had always considered her an interloper.” Pelle, to keep from fixating on Allen, considered other Zodiac suspects. “There was this girl, Julie,” he told me, “who had run away from her home in Oregon and fallen in with a Hell’s Angels gang member. One day she tells me that there won’t be any more Zodiac killings 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 Vallejo.’ The girl had divorced (her husband was from Vallejo), 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 Hell’s Angels connection rang a bell. Initially, Sergeant Lynch suspected two Hell’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, Allen 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 all 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 Allen could see it. From that point on, I received hang-up calls 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 killer is keeping his own file and mementos geographically quite a distance from where he lives and works,” one reader suggested. “Zodiac didn’t stop killing during some years. Perhaps he changed employment and that caused him to kill elsewhere occasionally. In the workplace he is mild, discounted and comes across as slightly distracted. I bet his payoff is not in murdering specifically, as much as in his knowledge that he is finally 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 kill, therefore he exists.”

  Allen, dissatisfied with his job at Ace, applied for an adult-education class after work. The class schedule still gave him Friday evenings off— the time Zodiac had done some of his killings. 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, Allen 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 Pelle 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 Pelle. “All 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.” Pelle laughed. “He’s actually 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 Allen. Last year he began telling friends he was considering building a foot-powered plane.” On June 12, 1979, Bryan Allen, a Visalia resident, successfully crossed the English Channel in a bicyclelike aircraft, the “Gossamer Albatross.”

  “And of course,” continued Pelle, “when that young girl was abducted last year we thought of Allen 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 really had me going for a while, but the police found the guy who did it.