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

by Robert Graysmith

  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 misspelling words on on these recipe cards. “We confirmed this through his brother and other relatives, that he did these misspellings on purpose,” Conway told me later. “It wasn’t by accident. He’d write recipes, for example, and he’d spell ‘eggs’—instead of ‘eggs,’ he’d spell 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 all kinds of things.”

  As they discussed his high intelligence, Allen 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 Allen’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 Allen. Screams of pain filled 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 sexually 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. “Well, 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 tell if all were kids, though that in itself was criminal enough. So infatuated with children was Allen 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 emotionally, “I’d want to get it off my chest. Zodiac would be judged crazy. . . . Zodiac doesn’t like to kill. 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 yellowed 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 Allen 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 miscellaneous 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 really 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 miscellaneous 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 Allen was an ex-felon, possession of firearms was illegal.

  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, partially full, and some Euroarms .44-caliber black powder, #13357 variety. They retrieved the following: two safety fuses (green, two rolls each, 98½ feet) and two rolls 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 miscellaneous fireworks. Years later, I would find myself one day on the chilly slopes of Lincoln, Montana, at the Unabomber’s tiny cabin. Shortly after Kaczynski’s arrest, police recovered items from the cabin identical with Allen’s basement chemicals and firing devices. They even unearthed a box containing fireworks.

  “I never left bombs in my basement,” Leigh maintained.

  “Well, 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. “Allen 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 all the time.” Allen 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 cellar. Investigators rooted out a Zippo lighter with “D. E. Brandon” engraved on it. Brandon apparently was the name of the ex-convict who had allegedly 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 Allen a piece of yellow, 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

  & will positivly ventalate any

  thing that should be in the way

  of the blast.

  The death machine is all ready

  made. I would have sent you

  pictures but you would nasty

  enough to trace them back to

  developer & then to me, so I

  shall describe my masterpiece

  to you. Tke nice part of it is

  all the parts can be bought on

  the open market with no quest

  ions asked.

  1 bat. pow clock—will 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,” Allen said. “I’ve never seen these documents before.” Conway added the yellow 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 yellow paper. They took away one cardboard box wrapped in a brown plastic bag with “Mrs. E. W. Allen” 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 killer.

  Bawart and Conway knew Allen had forged this letter. “Jim Silver told me how Allen 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 Allen had passed the poly exam and should not be considered as a suspect in the Zodiac case. Allen 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 Allen’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 Morrill 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 small 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 grill, a stainless-steel rotisserie, power tools, spray equipment, Porta-Power (which Leigh called the jaws of life). Allen remained cool and collected. 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 cellar wall, 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 recall specifics. Like Vacher the Ripper, once they apprehended him for one killing, he confessed to all 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, Allen had built a kitchenette in the basement that could have concealed items. If he built that, he could have just as easily built compartments. Allen 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 Allen to Zodiac. They went over to 1545 Broadway and searched the boat on its trailer. Again, they discovered nothing. “I found all 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 all that. I expected to find more, quite frankly, but I didn’t. There really 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 killing tools were bought through mail order. Naturally, Allen 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, especially 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 following 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 called 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 Allen 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 Allen dreaded prison more than the police.

  Thursday, February 28, 1991

  Police prepared with the FBI for a second interview with Allen. 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 “Allen’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 conta
in 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 called 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, Allen’s name and face would appear in the papers and on television.

  Wednesday, April 17, 1991

  An FBI memo noted that Vallejo had resurrected the Zodiac homicide investigation: “Advised that they are currently conducting a background on a possible suspect ARTHUR LEIGH ALLEN. Vallejo 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.”

  Allen gave his first newspaper interview to the Times-Herald’s Jackie Ginley.

  “On Valentine’s Day,” the fifty-eight-year-old suspect said, “Vallejo 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.