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

by Robert Graysmith

  “I’ve been questioned at least five times over the last twenty years. I thought it would stop after a ten-hour lie-detector test I took and passed in 1975. I once got a letter from the Department of Justice certifying that I am not Zodiac. The letter said I was no longer considered by the state to be a suspect in the Zodiac murders. I can’t show it to you now. The Vallejo police seized it when they raided my house in their latest attempt to prove I am the Zodiac killer. The only way I can clear myself is for the real Zodiac to confess—if he’s still alive. All I can do is suppose on that. The other way I can get peace for myself is when they find me dead and gone. I admit a large number of coincidences point to me.”

  Allen later told Harold Huffman, “They missed a few things—like the silencer I had hidden in my socks in the dresser.”

  Examiner reporter Lance Jackson rang me: “I heard about Ralph Spinelli, a career criminal, picked up somewhere around San Jose,” he told me. “He got picked up and he’s been charged with nine robberies. And so he starts singing—Arthur Allen’s the Zodiac. He’s looking at a long term, so maybe he was singing to try and get himself out of jail. Of course, the cops said now he’s backing off and he’s not sure he going to talk. Did the cops call you? They told me [last week] they were trying to get in touch with you.”

  “What do they want?”

  “The Vallejo cops told me they were going to be getting in touch with you. They brought this guy back who used to be there . . . Barlow? [He meant George Bawart.] He’s going to be coming in a few days a week and working with Conway. They want to see you because they’re trying to dig into it a little seriously again.”

  “That’s good. If they come up with suspects none of us have ever heard of, that’s all right too. It doesn’t matter to me as long as they do it.”

  “Right. Let’s get it done.”

  For Zodiac’s favorite paper, the Chronicle, Lance Williams interviewed the perennial suspect. “I’m a disabled former schoolteacher,” said Allen. “I was a teacher in the San Luis Obispo School District for a total of ten years, and spent seventeen years as a student. I once served three years in a state mental hospital for molesting a child. And I used to wear a ‘Zodiac’-brand skin diver’s watch. I’ve passed every evidentiary test the cops have thrown at me. I passed a polygraph. One policeman said, ‘You’re a sociopath—you can cheat a lie-detector test.’ Another said I’m a genius. . . . I feel like I’m being messed over. The Justice Department wrote me a letter absolving me of guilt.

  “As for the bombs and guns, they’re the property of a friend I met in the mental hospital years ago. This damned thing has been haunting me for twenty-two years. If I was prone to suicide, I’d have already done it. . . . The only thing in my favor is, I’ve never killed anyone. Since I was targeted as a Zodiac suspect in 1971, I’ve been fingerprinted, interrogated, made to give handwriting samples, and subjected to a ten-hour-long Justice Department lie-detector test. No way in hell could I go out and kill innocent teenyboppers—no way. But with them, I’m guilty until I’m proven innocent, and I figure the case will be around until I die. I did commit one crime, that was child molesting,” he concluded. “I deluded myself into thinking that I wasn’t hurting anyone, but I realize now that isn’t true . . . and I’ve paid for it.”

  Allen told his friends and neighbors the police were hounding him unjustly. Some of them stuck with him. But onlookers would come into the neighborhood and yell obscenities at him in the house.

  Thursday, August 1, 1991

  Allen told the Fairfield Daily Republic that he had consulted with Mel Belli about retaining him as defense council. Belli had not spoken with Allen. That afternoon, Judge Dacy, after five months of secrecy, unsealed a search warrant that contained only partial information. The return affidavit offered precious little details about what police confiscated from Allen’s house. Court Administrator Nancy Piano later blamed the lack of information on a clerical error. She said clerks did not know that the search warrant findings also were required to be made public.

  Wednesday, August 7, 1991

  “Over a Dozen Weapons Seized at Home of Local Zodiac Suspect,” headlined the Times-Herald.

  “VALLEJO: Police seized more than a dozen weapons ranging from pipe bombs to a 20-gauge automatic shotgun from the Fresno Street home of Arthur Leigh Allen, a retired Vallejo man who is once again being investigated in connection with the still unsolved 1969-70 Zodiac killings.”

  “I was amazed at how brazen Allen was,” Bawart told me after watching Allen on television. “It’s like he loved the attention all around him.”

  “And in his mind, he became the victim,” I said.

  “Oh, he did. He craved sympathy. He wanted to get some kind of stay-away order from the Vallejo P.D. and other departments, a restraining order. And yet he was giving interviews.”

  Why had no further action been taken against Allen? Police turned up a cache of pipe bombs and guns, pornography, and tapes of children being spanked. They had been looking for a manual typewriter linked to Zodiac correspondence and a 12-inch knife with rivets used in the Lake Berryessa stabbings. They uncovered a Royal portable typewriter, clips of news articles about the Zodiac, and “a hunting knife with sheath and rivets.” No one could explain the department’s reticence. “It’s unlikely charges will be pressed against [Leigh Allen] in connection with the mysterious killings,” said District Attorney Mike Nail. “I really suspect that nothing’s going to come of it.”

  Why wasn’t Allen arrested? “The reason they didn’t take further action after the 1991 search,” Toschi said, “is that they knew he was terminal. That was the excuse. He was close to death when they found these items. Some officer said, ‘He’s terminal. It wouldn’t have meant anything.’ You can believe that or not believe it.”

  “District attorneys want to be fairly sure of a successful prosecution when they charge anyone with anything,” Conway said, “and the most difficult and controversial part of our suspect or any other suspect that’s ever existed, we’ve never been able to reconcile the handwriting. It’s a very specific, unique handwriting. George and I have a theory about how to reconcile it, but getting a district attorney to buy that theory is—if we get past the handwriting, then everything else is fairly simple.”

  Zodiac might be perverse enough to want to be captured; he left clues in his letters. However, experts thought differently. “No serial killer wants to get caught,” said Vernon Geberth, author of Practical Homicide Investigation, “because then he loses the control and power that he has.”

  Friction developed between the old-guard Zodiac detectives and new investigators. “Have I ever spoken to Conway?” said Toschi. “I never heard of the man. I first saw his name when Allen’s place was searched and he was quoted all over the place. And this really annoyed some at SFPD. ‘You never heard of him,’ a detective told me. ‘Armstrong never heard of him. And he talks too much. He keeps calling us every other week.’ They’re a little disenchanted, a little hesitant to trust Vallejo at this point because when Vallejo searched Allen’s home they found enough evidence in the basement and where he lived that they should have charged him.”

  “I find it kind of amazing,” said Bawart, “that the guys in San Francisco would in any way be upset with Conway. Conway has a raspy personality. I got along good enough because I knew him. I was his boss at one point. Sometimes it was difficult for me to tolerate the way he said things, but I knew it was Conway’s way of doing things and so I discounted it. He easily grates on people. But! But he was the only guy that was authorizing any kind of investigation. He was the only guy getting any kind of money coming out of the city coffers to handle anything on the Zodiac case. Now that something comes up that may turn the tables one way or the other, all of a sudden for a few to bad-mouth Conway in any way is a big mistake.”

  Now an event, unintentionally humorous and tragic at the same time, relegated departmental feuding to the back burner. At the end of June, longtime criminal d
efense attorney William Steadman Beeman had presented a theory to retired Judge Bill Jensen. “I know who Zodiac is,” he told the judge and, without giving a name, laid out his reasons why. Jensen was unconvinced. All the judge could learn was that the suspect was deceased and may have been a former client of Beeman’s. Beeman also refused to share his suspect’s name with D.A. Nail. The D.A’s office called Jensen shortly after his meeting to learn the specifics of their conversation. They spoke with Darlene Ferrin’s sister, Pam, to see if she had any ideas about who it could be. She said she suspected Beeman had discovered new evidence in confidential files obtained from an ex-client through probate.

  Beemen didn’t share his knowledge with Captain Conway and the Vallejo police either. “He didn’t present any information,” said Conway. “He wants to save it for the news conference.” Within months Beeman would call a press conference to reveal what he knew. The press, including Paul Avery, and police officials had been invited. The announcement would be made in Vallejo on Halloween.

  “Before he had that Halloween Day press conference,” recalled Bawart, “Beeman got hold of me and said, ‘I’m going to do this exposé. I know all this stuff. I want you to investigate this.’ So I went down and met him at his office. ‘Do you have any documentation?’ I asked. ‘Well, no I haven’t done any of that,’ he said.” Handprinting samples provided by Beeman had not matched those of Zodiac. But so far nobody’s handprinting had, and probably nobody’s ever would. I still believed that Zodiac might have been a different personality when he wrote his letters. No matter, we all had to wait until Halloween to hear what Beeman had to say.

  31

  jack zodiac

  Thursday, October 31, 1991

  Tears welled up in Vallejo lawyer William Steadman Beeman’s eyes. One tear coursed down a broad cheek, dampening his starched white collar. Shyly, the seventy-one-year-old man brushed a lock of straight dark hair from his glasses and peered over a podium crowded with microphones. Beeman, succeeding beyond his dreams, had attracted a multitude. Television cameras glinted in the light and cables snaked at his feet. He saw Chronicle reporter Paul Avery entering the Solano County Fairgrounds, and consulted his watch. They were a little late getting started. He had scheduled the press conference for 10:30 A.M. and spent almost $600 to stage the meeting, not including the cost of mailing invitations to reporters and investigators. He had a lot riding on this event. He let them stew a bit longer. After all, he was ready to reveal who Zodiac was—just about the biggest story there was.

  “There is no apparent motive behind the timing of the announcement,” said reporter Jackie Ginley, “but it dovetails with a Vallejo police investigation of Arthur Leigh Allen, a Vallejo man who was once a prime suspect in the still unsolved 1969-70 killings.” Since Tuesday Ginley had worn out her dialing finger trying to reach Allen for comment on what Beeman might say. Was Beeman, like Spinelli, about to name Allen as the Zodiac?

  For almost an hour Beeman presented the verification that led to his conjecture. “There are at least 101 points of circumstantial evidence,” he said. “I have a real problem with revealing the identity of this person. I had to do a lot of soul-searching.” Beeman began to build to his revelation, describing his suspect variously as “a recluse,” and “a woman-hater.” He was “so disordered that he could not hold down a job,” said the attorney. “He could not even face a woman in the unemployment office without flying into a rage. ‘Women are subhumans,’ he told me. ‘They cannot think logically and they act on emotions,’ he said. He had done occasional work for me and sometimes repaired television sets. He particularly hated Yellow Cab drivers,”

  Just before noon the big moment arrived. Beeman held up Jack the Zodiac, a two-part paperback book he had published under the pen name “Doctor O. Henry Jiggelance.” Volume One of the set opened with the warning: “This story is entirely fictional.” Light began to dawn in the eyes of the assembled throng.

  “‘Jack the Zodiac,’ was my own brother.”

  Jack Beeman, a long-haired, dignified sixty-six-year-old, had died in Phoenix seven years earlier. “Jack the Zodiac,” Beeman said, “came close to killing me. If he hadn’t been drunk, and I hadn’t moved like a mongoose, he would have.” In spite of the acrimony between them, Beeman had represented Jack in minor run-ins with the law. He also believed that his brother had been responsible for the 1983 death of a Vallejo prostitute. Beeman pointed out that Jack misspelled the same words as Zodiac. “He used the same phrasing as that in the letters,” he said.

  The audience was not persuaded.

  “I feel you’re sincere in this,” said Avery. “It’s a pretty heavy trip to be laying on your brother, but you’ve offered nothing more than circumstantial evidence.”

  “I wouldn’t be wrong in saying there are one hundred people who have called with the same kind of generalities,” Bawart later said. “We look into everything, but I’m not going to pay $58 for his book [the cost for the privately printed two-volume set].” Besides, Bawart had no time for reading unless he did it on a plane—he had just gotten a lead connecting Arthur Leigh Allen with Zodiac. That lead would take him to the other side of the world.

  32

  the german hippie

  “When I retired they kept me on the case—you know that,” Bawart told me, “and anytime anybody would call, ‘My brother or brother-in-law’s the Zodiac,’ they called me in. However, the department was totally satisfied that Arthur Leigh Allen is the Zodiac. I used to use Zodiac like a Bible, because I could never keep all the dates straight. I’d use your book to figure out when stuff really happened.”

  “I always thought that would be the best value that such a book could have,” I said.

  “There was a guy that was a friend of Allen’s from high school and college. His name was Robert Emmett Rodifer.”

  “Robert Emmett?” I said. That was the name anagramists had deduced from the garbled last symbols of Zodiac’s three-part 1969 cipher—ROBET EMET THE HIPIE or “Robert Emmett the Hippie.” Emmet was an Irish patriot who had been hanged. A statue of him stood in Golden Gate Park in front of Morrison Planetarium—a room full of stars and the hall of biology—Allen’s passions. Allen’s father, Ethan, was named after Ethan Allen, an American patriot who had been hanged. Robert Emmett had been born in 1803, Allen’s father in 1903. “And was Robert Emmett a hippie?” I asked.

  “He was a hippie-type. Rodifer was a guy Allen knew at Poly where he went to college in Southern California and stretching back to the time of the earliest murder. Robert Emmett had also been manager of the Vallejo High swim team. Later he became a hippie attending the University of California at Berkeley and at U.S.F. Apparently there was some really bad blood between the two. I found Rodifer, but it wasn’t any great sleuth work on my part. Because of the search of Allen’s house, Leigh’s name came out in the press. A woman in Vallejo saw it. She had gone to school with Arthur Leigh Allen, bought your book, and read the portion where it says [in the last line of the deciphered 340-symbol code of November 8, 1969], ‘My name is Robert Emmett the Hippie.’ And she said, ‘My goodness, I know Robert Emmett. Emmy Lou—Robert Emmett Rodifer. She got a hold of me.”

  “They called him Emmy Lou?”

  “I don’t know why. Talented. Rodifer was a real outgoing guy. In fact he was a mime and he played on The Ed Sullivan Show and all that kind of stuff. Arthur Leigh Allen actually hated the guy. Maybe it was because Allen was an introvert and this guy was an extrovert, although they were friends—let’s say, had been friends.

  “We tracked the guy down. We found out about Rodifer through his classmate. We thought he might be working in concert with Arthur Leigh Allen. He was now living in Germany. Rodifer was around children all the time at the base where he worked. Jim Lang went with me. He was the chief deputy of the district attorney. Ironically, Jim Lang spent twenty years with the LAPD, the last portion of which was working homicide. He retired, but he was still a young enough man that he went to law school an
d got a law degree. He was the district attorney of a county up north. He came down here and worked initially in the public defender’s office, then transferred over to the D.A.’s office for a number of years. Youthful-appearing, a real smart mind, and he knows the homicide business too because he worked in it. In any event he wrote all these letters of rogatory, and it started in August of 1991.”

  “This seems to be a very important time,” I said. “Everything coming together.”

  “Right. It took a hell of a long time. We ended up in Germany in the dead of winter in February 1992. It was kind of a fun trip. We actually spent two weeks over there. One week we were actually working. One week we were touring. We made some very good friends. The captain in charge of the homicide division in Heilbraun, Germany, and his wife turned out to be good friends. They’ve been out here visiting us and we’ve got a big motor yacht and we took them out on the Delta. We had a great time with them.

  “Basically, what happened in Germany was this—in order to speak with Rodifer, we had to go through letters of rogatory, which is requests of the German government to come over and interview a person within their country. Even though this guy was an American citizen living on an American base, we still had to go through the German laws. I brought my own copy of your book, Zodiac, and a second copy. My German aide read English and asked for one of the copies. The magistrate, who under German law determines whether it is permissible for U.S. officers to speak with Rodifer, allowed it after some deliberation. Then he looked over my copy of your book and asked if he could have it. Of course I gave it to him. We met with the police in Heilbraun and explained the whole situation, and they felt they had enough to write a search warrant for Rodifer’s place, which they ultimately did. We went there with about half a dozen German policemen, all of which were in plain clothes. They did a real thorough search of his place. We didn’t find anything connected with the Zodiac. I found a bunch of kid stuff. They kinda thought it might be important, but I wasn’t sure of that either.”