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

by Robert Graysmith

  “We interviewed everyone in this case,” said Conway. “We interviewed Kathleen Johns. I’m at kind of at a loss as how to explain it, but I don’t believe what she described even happened, let alone that the Zodiac did it.” “Johns is the only one I thought was a little iffy,” I said. “As years go by, I’ve come to believe more and more that the man who kidnapped her wasn’t Zodiac.”

  “The only thing I put any stock in is a thing that I know for a fact,” said Conway. “All this business about the phases of the moons and all these cryptograms in reality didn’t have to do with anything. It was a way for the Zodiac to play with people’s minds for his own perverse satisfaction. Those cryptograms, as it turned out, had no meaning.” The ciphers did, however, explain his motive and revealed the clue of The Most Dangerous Game, which led to his family and friends turning Allen in.”

  We discussed my conversations with Allen. “It may have been because of the child molesting,” I said, “but when you work in the arts you get a kind of intuitive sense about things, and literally my spine got chills when I was around him. There was something about him very wrong. I often used to go in and buy things—he worked in a hardware store—just a very scary guy, but highly intelligent. He had a degree in botany and biology.”

  “Biology,” said Williams. “He said he didn’t quite get his master’s degree—he didn’t finish his thesis; he had finished the course work for a master’s. His bachelor’s degree was in elementary education. And he said his I.Q. was—I wrote it down—in the 130s. ‘Certainly no genius,’ he said, ‘but I am intelligent.’”

  “He called himself gifted,” said Conway. “That’s the terminology he used.”

  “Really,” said Williams. “‘My mind,’ he said ‘I believe is 136.’ I asked him about the cryptograms. ‘I was in the Navy,’ he said, ‘and what I did there was chipping paint and then I was a third-class radioman. That certainly doesn’t make me an expert on cryptograms.”

  We began naming his skills. “Scuba diver, marksman . . . airplane pilot,” said Williams. “He knew explosive devices, cryptography, meteorology,” I said, “charts (naval and pilot) and compass, writing, drafting, and graphics [his father was not only a Navy officer but a draughtsman]. Chemistry [he was a chemist], guns [he collected them], disguise and sewing [he was a Navy sailmaker]. He not only typed, but had the same kind of portable typewriter the Riverside letters were written on.” “Phil Tucker,” said Bawart, “had given us the information that as a child Allen had been forced to write with his right hand though he was naturally left-handed.”

  “Sailor, pilot,” continued Conway. “In fact, he had some trophies for Hobie Cat. He was also a swimmer. The other thing he did, he was quite an avid cook. His living quarters were, as Rita could tell you, in the basement of his parents’ house. And every part of this little room was covered with books from floor to ceiling. He was very well read and could converse on any topic you could think of.”

  “I heard Zodiac could quote Gilbert and Sullivan by heart,” said the judge. “Could any of this be applied to Allen?”

  “Absolutely,” said Conway. “We confirmed his interest in Gilbert and Sullivan through his brother and other relatives. They also confirmed that he purposely misspelled words. It wasn’t by accident. He’d write recipes for example and he’d spell ‘eggs,’ instead of ‘e-g-g-s,’ he’d spell it ‘a-i-g-s.’ And that was intentional just to get a chuckle out of people who would read it. He did that consistently with all kinds of things.” I recalled that Allen in all his interviews referred to Zodiac as “The” Zodiac, just as the killer did in his letters.

  “The most difficult part of this case is the handwriting issue,” continued Conway. “There are at least two or three people in the area of handwriting analysis, and the one thing they say about the Zodiac letters is that they are consistent from the very first letter to the very last letter. All the letters and words, handwriting is an absolute match. It’s one person who did those letters. That’s not an issue. The interesting thing, to go back to the Riverside case, there’s only one piece of evidence that Zodiac had any thing to do with the Riverside killing, and that’s the killer scratched some writing onto a desktop. The actual letter he sent that describes all the things that he said he did in this homicide is all typed. There was no handwriting or printing of any kind. The name signed on the bottom of the letter was ‘Enterprise.’” Conway was in error here: The letter had been addressed to the Riverside Press-Enterprise. And Zodiac had also handprinted three Riverside letters.

  “But the scratching on the desk of which a photo was taken, as Sherwood Morrill said, that matches the Zodiac letters. Since then George and I have gone to every expert there is and they unequivocally without hesitation say, he was wrong, these are not a match to the Zodiac handwriting. That, plus the fact that the Riverside police already have a suspect. From their point of view their case was solved. This so-called genius that wrote this other book with all the mathematical equations, his whole premise—everything is built on the mathematics starting with the Riverside Case. When I tell him the Riverside case didn’t have anything to do with it, his theory goes out the window. It didn’t shake him. He still believes otherwise.”

  We all had our blind spots. Captain Conway was convinced that Allen had never been in the Navy in spite of his claims of having been “a paint-scraper.” Various women and their daughters Allen had known over the years spoke of his time in the U.S. Navy. Reports showed the same. Leigh admitted to being “less than honorably discharged” and he had gone to college on the G.I. Bill. The Navy connection was unshakable. His father’s twenty-five years in the Navy alone would enable Leigh to make periodic visits to Treasure Island, work at Travis AFB, and buy Wing Walkers at a base exchange.

  “Judge,” said Williams, “I’d like to ask a few questions of the other panelists that I’ve wanted the answers to. If indeed Arthur Leigh Allen were the Zodiac, I think both of you have indicated in the past that whoever was the Zodiac would someday prior to his death leave some message behind to let everyone know he was the Zodiac. If he was Allen, can you tell me why you think he didn’t and why the killings stopped when they did?” I thought to myself, he might not have left any message because he died suddenly of a heart attack, one so sudden he bumped his head. “From my point of view,” said Conway, “he did leave that message. One of Zodiac’s letters talked about finding bombs in his basement. Well, in fact there were bombs in the basement of that house when we did the search warrant—there were pipe bombs. The other half of it is that he does leave that message by things that are in his basement and at the same time denying everything. There’s so many lies I caught him in, his denying things that didn’t have any relevance anymore. There was no letters whatsoever during the time he was in Atascadero state hospital. The last letter he ever wrote says, ‘I am back.’

  “There’s several reasons why the killings stopped—this is from discussions with the FBI experts. There’s a very famous FBI group back in Quantico, Virginia, that studies serial killers. My father used to be an avid deer hunter when he was a young man in his twenties and thirties. About twenty years ago he quit deer hunting and I asked him why he quit. It’s not interesting to me anymore[, he said]. That explanation is really simplistic, but that’s probably the explanation for Allen if he was Zodiac.

  “The other thing is that he was a very ill man—he was fifty-eight when he died. He was extremely ill and knew he was dying and he’d had that illness for some time. Even though he could still get around he was not very mobile and there was a lot of focus on him as a suspect. Being a suspect, being ill, and losing interest—all adds up to the explanation as to why.”

  “Did you find fingerprints?” Williams asked Conway. “Allen says in the interview that police told him during the interview process with the Vallejo police that you have fingerprints on the pipe bombs under his house. He of course says it was some ex-con that had left them there before. He didn’t even know they were there. Did
in fact you find fingerprints?”

  “Let me answer that this way—he 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.”

  George Bawart spoke from the audience. “You have to understand that back in the sixties law enforcement was doing a pretty good job. They weren’t really communicating with each other—they didn’t have computers.”

  “Getting back to the fingerprints [on the cab], every single [Zodiac] suspect that ever existed,” said Conway, “has been checked against those fingerprints and no one has matched. The other problem is that the Zodiac bragged in his letter how he wouldn’t leave fingerprints anyway.”

  “Can I ask the captain and Robert, in your mind, who is the Zodiac killer?” said Williams.

  “George, how do we answer that?” said Conway.

  “Who is?” said Rita.

  “I find,” said Bawart, “so many coincidences that point one direction, I feel it is no longer a coincidence, and I feel there are so many areas that point directly at Arthur Leigh Allen that I feel he is a viable suspect and in all probability the Zodiac.”

  “Robert?” said Williams.

  “That’s my opinion too,” I answered cautiously. Allen had died all too recently. “All I can say is that of all the people who were ever brought to me—I conferred with Dave Toschi, he showed me files and files and files—Allen is the best I’ve seen. Zodiac could be some anonymous person who lives in the woods and has never been printed, but as far as I can tell, Allen is the best suspect they’ve come up with.”

  “First of all there’s nothing wrong with circumstantial evidence,” said Conway, “if you understand what circumstantial evidence is—leaving a fingerprint at the scene of a crime and denying you did the crime, circumstantially we prove that you did do the crime because of the fingerprints at the crime scene.”

  Rita Williams took out a letter Allen had mailed her. He’d scrawled a “Z” in the lower left-hand corner of the envelope. A similar “Z” had been written at the bottom of the 1967 Riverside letter. The postmark: “July 30, 1991 Oakland.” He had dated the letter inside August 1. The typed letter began: “Dear Rita: Please pardon the informality, but I consider you a friend.”

  “So I guess I’m a friend of the Zodiac,” said Williams, “if indeed he is the Zodiac. He just goes on to say that he appreciated the interview and he had a knot in his stomach and goes on and on with compliments. He says ‘professionality’—interesting that he made up a word. ‘I wonder if that word’s in the dictionary,’ he says. Certainly, he’s the kind of person who would have a dictionary there and wouldn’t use that word unless he really checked. I’m afraid I never answered the man.”

  That night some of the conference was briefly reported on KTVU: “Everything about the Zodiac is serious, giving the number of people he killed seemingly at random . . . perhaps as many as fifty. Who was the Zodiac?” Rita Williams asked. “This is the Vallejo man many investigators consider to be the notorious Zodiac killer, and is the first time his picture has been revealed. His name is Arthur Leigh Allen.” As archival film ran, Williams asked Allen: “Are you the Zodiac killer?” “There would be nothing farther from my mind,” he said. “I am certainly, most certainly, not the Zodiac killer.”

  “But at San Francisco State University this afternoon,” continued Williams, “I was on a panel with people considered authorities on the Zodiac case and for the first time publicly they said this. Allen seems to be the best suspect they’ve come up with,” she reported, quoting me. “There are so many areas,” Bawart was seen saying, “that point directly at Arthur Leigh Allen that he is a viable suspect and in all probability the Zodiac.”

  “But investigators never charged Allen with any of the killings connected with the Zodiac,” said Williams, “and last August Allen died. I interviewed him a year earlier. He was fifty-eight then, a diabetic and on kidney dialysis. But back in the later sixties, when the clever killer known as Zodiac terrorized California, Allen was in his late thirties, sixty pounds heavier, strong, and a biology graduate student. Police considered him a suspect almost from the beginning.

  “The Zodiac killer taunted authorities and the media, sending complex letters and ciphers,” Williams summed up. “Today Vallejo police investigators said they never charged Allen because they couldn’t explain discrepancies in the Zodiac handwriting. Allen sent me this handwritten and typed letter after our interview.”

  Williams’s 1991 interview, rerun that night, showed Allen collapsing and sobbing. What Rita Williams had observed stuck in my mind. “However,” she said, “he didn’t really cry. In looking at the tape, he kind of turned it on and turned it off. When Allen lifted his head his eyes were dry. I definitely felt he was pretending.” “There are so many lies I caught him in, his denying things didn’t have any relevance anymore,” said Conway. Allen lied even when there was no reason to.

  Friday, February 14, 1997

  Six years had rushed by since the Valentine’s Day search of Allen’s home. Toschi rang me, sounding buoyant. “I’ve gotten calls throughout yesterday evening and today,” he said. “Something is up. One of the inspectors, Rich Adkins, just inherited the Zodiac case. When a friend of mine was captain of investigations, he said that Rich really wanted to talk to me because he had gone through the files and just was a little curious about some things. He and his partner, a guy named Vince Repetto, paid me a visit Tuesday. I had some time, about a half hour, to talk to them about Zodiac.

  “Vince told me he’s never gone through everything that had been sent to Sacramento. He said, ‘For some reason everything wasn’t brought back.’ They only had two boxes. That disappointed me. Sacramento should have returned everything that Armstrong and I accumulated. Remember, when they decided to bring everything up to Sacramento years ago, I felt that they had made a very, very serious mistake. I was extremely upset. A case of this caliber, known worldwide, and the work that Bill and I did on it (I have poor handwriting, but as I got older and more experienced I took better notes)—to do this, to shuffle it around in a cardboard box—you’re going to lose something. Someone is going to put something in his pocket. You have to want to solve the darn thing! You have to!

  “I hope they know where the rest of the files are in Sacramento and who’s got them. Repetto and Adkins said this morning they were going to go up to Sacramento and have a look. What fascinated this Rich Adkins is that it is still a mystery—that the case is still active and that so many people are aware of it. So many other people have killed more people than Zodiac. Adkins asked why was there so much interest all these years later. I told him, ‘It’s a mystery—because of the letters, the ciphers, the codes. It’s taunting, it’s “Catch me if you can,” and “I’m crack-proof.”

  “Rich asked me if I had ever spoken to Conway. When Allen died, he was quoted all over the place. Now they tell me he told Adkins he was going to retire in December.”

  “Conway’s just very enthusiastic,” I said. “Some of his ideas are very good—such as paring the case down to its essentials.”

  “San Francisco was puzzled why Vallejo didn’t simply close the case and this is what Inspectors Adkins and Repetto want to do,” said Toschi. “What Rich Adkins asked of me is that if you—who are extremely knowledgeable—would be willing to talk with them. They’re two pretty good guys. I said, ‘Graysmith is one of the most honorable men I’ve ever met in my life. I think he would want to talk to you.’ Adkins said, ‘After all this time, we want to close it and we think we can.’ They want to give Armstrong and I credit. ‘What we want to prove,’ Adkins told me, ‘if it wasn’t for you taking the initiative when Allen’s brother called and going to Vallejo and talking to Allen’s sister-in-law and brother . . . you guys made the case and d
id more work on Allen than any of the other jurisdictions who were closer to him.’”

  “The one thing Vallejo can’t understand is why John Lynch and Les Lundblad were on this guy so early in the case,” I said. “Why? And this was long before the informants, Cheney and Panzarella.”

  “We never got that,” said Toschi sadly.

  “What brought them to Allen? Two guys in independent police agencies both go right to Allen’s front door. There’s a little tiny piece missing. Lynch went out and talked to Allen after Blue Rock Springs and Lake Berryessa. And of course they have that knife story—‘I’ve been killing two chickens.... ’”

  “Yes. Adkins and Repetto even asked me if we could put Allen in Southern California. My memory was weak at that point, but I know you found some leads. The brother went and searched the basement of Allen’s house himself, and he found cryptography books. I told this to Adkins on Tuesday and it blew him away.”

  That night I opened more mail from Zodiac buffs. “Look under the stamps and the envelope flaps for saliva and attempt a DNA test on it,” Michael Hennessy suggested. “Also check the letter that had a bloody cross drawn on it for DNA. Check the skin and hair fragments that victim Cheri Jo Bates had under her fingernails when found.” DNA, obtained from a variety of biological sources—blood, hair, semen, and saliva—had finally entered the Zodiac case, as I was about to find out.

  Saturday, February 15, 1997

  I called Repetto at 9:00 A.M. and he wanted to meet right away. “I’m going to be getting on the road here and heading toward the city,” he told me. “I’ll call my partner on the cell phone and I’ll call you back with a time we could meet, say around ten-twenty, ten-thirty this morning.” We set the place for the Mirabelle Cafe on Ninth Avenue, the site of the former Owl and Monkey Cafe, where I did all my writing.