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

by Robert Graysmith

  “It’s all because they got a false tip from a man who is facing thirty years in prison on an armed robbery charge. He phoned down from Tahoe and said we had a conversation in 1969, and I’d told him that I’d go down to San Francisco and shoot a cabbie. He’s a punk and a hood. I’ve never talked to him in my life.”

  “It should be mentioned,” said Bawart, “that Ralph Spinelli owned a restaurant in the Lake Tahoe area in the early 1980s. It is apparent that Allen must have kept track of Spinelli as we never told him Spinelli had any connection with Lake Tahoe.” A probable Zodiac victim had vanished from Lake Tahoe in 1970.

  “This crap has haunted me for the last twenty-two years,” raged Allen. “The police asked me to take a lie-detector test despite the fact that I passed one in the 1970s. I took a ten-hour lie-detector test and I passed the goddamn thing. So they tell me, ‘Well, you’re a sociopath, and you can cheat on lie-detector tests.’ The Zodiac killer is thought to be a sociopath, someone who has no conscience and takes sexual delight in killing people, especially women. I’m considering getting in touch with Melvin Belli, the San Francisco attorney. I’ve been thinking about it, but then again, this has always blown over when they don’t find anything.”

  Of all the attorneys in the world, Allen mentioned the one that Zodiac had phoned, written, and offered to surrender to—Melvin Belli. Belli and Zodiac went way back. On October 23, 1969, Belli checked with his answering service. His maid had left a message with them that Zodiac had called the previous night while the attorney had been at the International Film Festival. Belli had gotten in too late to hear of the two calls Zodiac made directly to his housekeeper. The gist was that Zodiac wanted to meet with Belli at his home. “Belli knows where he can meet if it’s prearranged,” the caller said. While Belli had been away in Africa, he had gotten three calls, two of them long distance. He waited all day in vain for the opportunity to set up a secret meeting. Worst of all, Belli feared Zodiac might be someone who knew him. An invisible man, obsessed with the high-profile and flamboyant attorney, had in a moment of crisis given him a clue of the first order to his true identity. To learn of that we have to step back in time, to October 22, 1969, and turbulent, terrifying days.

  29

  belli

  Wednesday, October 22, 1969

  “Being a celebrity,” said Belli, “brought me more than my share of crazy cases (that didn’t pay me a dime). Take, for example, the long-distance TV romance between me and the notorious Zodiac killer (who may still be at large or, more likely, on ice in a prison where his psychopathology lies mainly dormant).”

  At 2:00 A.M., eleven days after Zodiac shot cabdriver Paul Stine, a man phoned the Oakland P.D. “This is the Zodiac speaking....” he said, demanding that either Belli or F. Lee Bailey appear on Jim Dunbar’s KGO-TV talk show, A.M. He had tried to call the show a few weeks earlier, when both lawyers had appeared that morning, but couldn’t get through. It was telling that both men were criminal defense attorneys. “I’ll contact them,” the cop said. The San Francisco police rang producer Bill Heral and he called Belli and Dunbar immediately, arranging to start the show a half hour earlier than usual. A KGO news bulletin was drafted: “Alleged ‘Zodiac Killer’ pleads for help in telephone calls to ‘A.M.’ Program with Jim Dunbar.” At home we all watched, waiting for Zodiac to call, waiting to hear the sound of his voice.

  “When I emerged from my penthouse on Telegraph Hill,” Belli recalled, “I found the place surrounded by cops, even the garage was full of cops. They escorted me down to KGO. There, I also found police everywhere, even in the high, dark aeries of the TV studio, where I could see the glint of rifles at the ready.” Belli carried on thirteen conversations that morning. One did not go over the air, a hesitant, drifting voice on the line at 7:10 that was abruptly disconnected. That first caller was frozen out by another, calling himself Zodiac, who kept the line tied up over the next two hours. Belli, though, requested a less ominous sounding name than Zodiac. “Sam,” offered the caller. After exchanging a few words, the boyish sounding Sam, complaining of blackouts and headaches, hung up, then called back. Belli thought this one of “those rare cases where one man is acutely aware of two persons living inside his skin, one of them an outlaw who can’t help killing.” Sam said he wanted to talk to Belli because he didn’t want to be hurt. “My head aches,” he cried. “I’m so sick. I’m having one of my headaches.” Then he gave a little scream and said, “I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill all those kids!” He hung up and called back, suggesting they meet at 10:30 A.M. at the top of the Fairmont Hotel. Sam threatened to jump if anyone but Belli showed up. Belli suggested Old St. Mary’s in Chinatown. They finally agreed on St. Vincent de Paul’s Thrift Shop at 6726 Mission Street in Daly City. A rummage sale was being held there later that morning. Belli set off, crouched on the floor of a police car all the way.

  Dunbar recalled the scene at the Thrift Shop. During that frightening experience he saw sharpshooters on the roof and submachine guns hidden under priests’ habits. Dunbar admitted he was scared. “I had a young family and car payments to make,” he said. He envisioned being caught in a hail of lead. Later, he came to think the entire event may have been a publicity stunt. Meanwhile, the cop who had taken Zodiac’s 2:00 A.M. call had been watching the show. He was certain he had spoken to the real Zodiac and that Sam’s voice was not the same. Belli waited forty-five minutes, but Zodiac didn’t show up. “I don’t wonder why,” remembered Belli. “An army of police from San Francisco and Daly City was there. The cops had been monitoring Dunbar’s line, and certainly weren’t going to let this opportunity to catch the Zodiac and vindicate themselves before the public ... I had already made a deal in advance with the S.F. District Attorney, John Jay Ferdon, not to press for the death penalty if the Zodiac turned himself in. I figured that wouldn’t be the end of it, however. The Zodiac, judging from his taunting notes to the police and the press, wanted public attention. I was sure he’d call again. He did.”

  Thursday, December 18, 1969

  Zodiac called the attorney’s home, but got his housekeeper nstead.16 She explained that the white-maned attorney was in Munich, Germany, for a conference of military trial lawyers. “I can’t wait,” said the caller, who had identified himself as Zodiac. “Today’s my birthday. I’ve got to kill!” He hung up abruptly.

  “On December 18, 1969,” Belli recalled, “the Zodiac mailed me a brief note wishing me a happy Christmas. I went off on safari to Africa. But while I was there, the Zodiac, according to my housekeeper, phoned me several [more] times.”

  Saturday, December 20, 1969

  Two days after the call, exactly a year after the first Northern California murders, Zodiac’s letter containing a square of Stine’s bloody shirt arrived at Belli’s home. Unopened, it was forwarded down to his business office to be opened by his secretary. It was addressed “Mr. Melvin M. Belli 1228 Mtgy San Fran Calif.” Neatly folded inside of the four-by-seven-inch white envelope was a portion of Stine’s blood-blackened shirt and a message in felt-tip pen. A photocopy of the message was hand-carried by a legal associate to Belli, Room #293, the Bayershoff Hotel. Belli opened it with unsteady fingers and read:“Dear Melvin This is the Zodiac speaking I wish you a happy Christmass. The one thing I ask of you is this, please help me. I cannot reach out for help because of this thing in me won’t let me. I am finding it extreamly dificult to hold it in check I am afraid I will loose control again and take my nineth & posibly tenth victom. Please help me I am drownding. At the moment the children are safe from the bomb because it is so massive to dig in & the triger mech requires much work to get it adjusted just right. But if I hold back too long from no nine I will loose complet all controol of my self & set the bomb up.”

  “Please help me I can not remain in control for much longer,” Zodiac concluded, paraphrasing William Heirens, the 1940s “Lipstick Killer of Chicago.” Heirens, a sexual sadist, in a heartrending cry for help, had scrawled on a mirror in lipstick: “Fo
r heavens Sake catch me Before I kill more I cannot control myself.”

  It appeared Zodiac was being sarcastic in quoting Heirens, but Belli thought otherwise. He considered the letter heartfelt. “I believe he wants to stop killing,” he said. “I have carefully studied his letter . . . and I feel it was written at a time when he calmly and rationally was considering the future. He knows eventually he will be apprehended and that unless he gets proper legal representation, he will most probably be sentenced to die in the gas chamber. That is why he is crying out for help. . . . Why has he come to me? He wants to be saved from the gas chamber. . . . I think we can do something for him. . . . We might get this guy and save some lives—including his. Maybe we could convince him he would get some treatment and that he would not be executed.” Belli offered to bring along a “priest, a doctor, or a psychiatrist” and meet with Zodiac in “the San Marine area or in Nevada.”

  Belli fully anticipated Zodiac, who had gotten along famously with his housekeeper on the phone, “to be sitting in the front room with the housekeeper, waiting for him, getting on very well.” He went on to Naples to defend a Navy doctor charged with misappropriation of military property. “I’d like to finish this case in Naples,” said Belli, “but if I get an urgent call about Zodiac I will go back to California at once. I’ll catch the first plane back if that is what he wants. I think we will have another communication from Zodiac soon.” After finishing a delicious dinner of green ravioli, Belli phoned Avery in a transatlantic call. “It’s mighty cold in Naples,” he said. “I have the nagging feeling that Zodiac might be someone who knows me.” Belli returned to California, saying, “My maid said she was very agitated to see me. She knows his voice.”

  Toschi and Armstrong rushed to Belli’s to discuss the new letter. Belli, silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, French cuffs, silver watch chain on his vest, beamed expansively. “Belli was expecting us, naturally,” Toschi recalled, “and he said, ‘I’m going to have company, but don’t worry about it. They know I’m assisting the police department.’ So we asked him, ‘Would you mind stepping away from your guests?’ We told the man and woman at the table, ‘We’d like to talk with Mr. Belli for about ten or fifteen minutes and he told us it’s OK. It’s about the Zodiac case.’ She says, ‘Oh, yes, yes. Melvin’s told us all about it.’ Not only were his dinner guests rapt with attention, but I could tell Belli was loving every moment. He was always on stage and always the star, even in court. I recalled how the jury and even the judge would turn their heads whenever he entered.”

  “The police stayed on the case,” said Belli. “They felt the Zodiac may indeed have killed more persons than they’d originally believed, including one young woman in Riverside, California, in 1966 and another woman in the San Bernardino area in 1967. And then, in 1971, they had a lead that took them right to Riverside University’s law school.”

  Sunday, June 8, 1971

  Belli’s next real-life brush with Zodiac occurred in Riverside, where he attempted to strengthen Zodiac’s connection between the Bay Area and Southern California. “Dean Charles Ashman phoned me,” said Belli, “to say the cops were coming into the school, undercover, to check out one of his law students, a kid who had once threatened a girl he knew and told her he was the Zodiac.”

  Belli knew handwriting comparisons had been inconclusive. Under the guise of delivering a lecture, Belli hoped the boy, sitting in the second row, might ask a question. In that way, he could tell if his voice matched Zodiac’s. Every person crowded around the student was an undercover cop. After the speech the student leaped up and rushed to shake “The Great One’s” hand. “You don’t know how much I admire you, Mr. Belli,” he said. Belli knew immediately it wasn’t the same voice he had heard and decided to settle the matter. “Hey, kid, are you the Zodiac killer?” he snapped.

  The kid seemed stunned. “What do you mean, sir?” “Are you the Zodiac killer?” said Belli. “I hear you used to call yourself Zodiac.” The cops moved in, anxious to hear the kid’s answer. “No,” he said. “I didn’t kill anybody.” “I believed him,” Belli said later. “So did the cops.” As for Sam, I later found him. He was not Zodiac, simply a troubled young man calling from a mental hospital.

  A valuable clue lay in Zodiac’s long-distance relationship with Belli. At one point, though, the killer seemed to have soured on him.

  “If you don’t want me to have this blast,” Zodiac wrote April 29, 1970, “you must do two things. 1 Tell every one about the bus bomb with all the details. 2 I would like to see some nice Zodiac butons [sic] wandering about town. Every one else has these buttons like . . . melvin eats blubber, etc. Well it would cheer me up considerbly if I saw a lot of people wearing my buton. Please no nasty ones like melvin’s Thank you.”

  Zodiac seemed irritated at Melvin Belli. But why? Recall that on Thursday, December 18, 1969, Zodiac rang the attorney’s housekeeper and remarked that today was his birthday. Two days later, December 20, a letter from Zodiac arrived at Belli’s office. The FBI quoted that conversation in report 9-49911-88:VIA TELETYPE ENCIPHERED JAN 14 1970 2:14 PM URGENT “ZODIAC.” EXTORTION. RE: SAN FRANCISCO AIRTEL. DECEMBER TWENTY-NINE LAST. ON INSTANT DATE, INSPECTOR ARMSTRONG HOMICIDE DETAIL . . . CONFIDENTIALLY ADVISED THAT UNSUB, WHO IDENTIFIED HIMSELF AS “ZODIAC,” TELEPHONICALLY CONTACTED BELLI’S RESIDENCE IN EFFORT TO CONTACT BELLI. UNSUB WAS ADVISED BELLI IN EUROPE AND STATED, “I CAN’T WAIT. TODAY’S MY BIRTHDAY.” SUTEL. ARMED AND DANGEROUS. END NSM FBI WASH DC.

  Keep in mind that Allen had been questioned by Lynch two months before this call and been let go. Not until his interrogation at the refinery twenty months later would he be a viable suspect. Zodiac had felt comfortable in giving his actual birthday—December 18.

  December 18 was Arthur Leigh Allen’s birthday.

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  media starr

  Wednesday, May 22, 1991

  The Vallejo Times-Herald headlined: “Signs Point to Vallejo Man; Investigation into Bizarre Zodiac Murders Goes On.”

  “VALLEJO—Vallejo police seized pipe bombs, an underwater Zodiac watch and other items earlier this year from the house of a Vallejo man who was a prime suspect in the still-unsolved 1969-70 Zodiac killings. No charges have been filed against Allen for possession of the explosives, which he said belonged to an ex-convict who is now dead. And the police investigation remains a mystery. In 1971 San Francisco police targeted Allen as the prime suspect in at least six unsolved California murders and two attempted killings in the 1960s. The killer was called Zodiac because of the cryptic messages he loaded with astrological symbols and sent to the news media and police investigators during the killing spree.

  “A series of cryptic letters from the Zodiac came to a three-year halt after Allen’s Santa Rosa trailer was searched, Robert Graysmith notes in his 1986 book ‘Zodiac.’ Similarly, in 1975, when Allen was committed to an institution on a child molesting conviction, Zodiac’s correspondence ceased for two years until his release. The linked murders of hitchhikers around Santa Rosa also came to a halt, Graysmith notes. Vallejo police have refused to confirm or deny any motive for reopening the investigation.”

  “Do I expect an imminent arrest in regards to Zodiac?” said Vallejo Police Chief Gerald Galvin. “No, I do not. It’s an ongoing and sensitive investigation.”

  “Allen looked very good,” Toschi told the press. “We searched a Santa Rosa trailer where he lived part-time in 1972. But an analysis of his fingerprints did not match partial prints found on a Zodiac victim’s cab in 1969. We could not find enough evidence on which to convict Allen. I can’t discuss why Allen was dismissed as a suspect.”

  Wednesday, May 29, 1991

  “Let me tell you what’s happened here,” Pete Noyes told me. “Apparently this suspect [Allen] had a series of meetings with a psychologist in Vallejo. The psychologist was afraid this guy might kill him. And relayed this information on to a friend and that’s where it all stands now. The psychologist feared for his life. He works for some insti
tute up there and he gave all this information. The information is out there right now. These people are trying to sell me the information down here in L.A.”

  “Don’t pay a penny,” I cautioned.

  “They’ve got a series of tapes and all that,” he concluded.

  “Tapes?”

  Saturday, June 1, 1991

  The same individuals tried to sell the tapes to Unsolved Mysteries and were turned down. But Noyes told me, “The cops are very interested. The story is there. There was some concern that an analyst should not reveal statements made during private sessions.”

  “I think that under the law,” I said, “if a person is a danger to society, an analyst can turn session tapes over.”

  “The psychiatrist’s brother is a San Francisco cop and they decided to solve the murder on their own,” said Noyes. “They went and staked out Allen’s home about eight or nine months ago. A woman went in posing as a real-estate agent. He got wise to her and started screaming and yelling at her and chased her out of the house. He got the license number of her car. It was registered to her mother. Two days later, there was a death threat made on her mother.

  “The psychiatrist treated Allen in the late 1970s as a condition of his release. They have all this information. What they said to me is that this guy told them more than anyone knows who’s not well versed in the case. The guys who have been staking out his house got all this information from the shrink. I just did a check to see if the informant is not a criminal or anything. He’s a fifty-three-year-old man with no criminal record.”