Zodiac Unmasked (21 page)

Ron and Karen Al en had provided them with precise directions on the trailer’s location. Sadly, they had never visited the trailer. Toschi, to be

certain, had Mrs. Reese, the trailer court manager, show them specifical y which stal the professional student used. They walked unsteadily along

the tar, concrete, and gravel sections that made up the stal s. At each, an aquamarine pole sported a miniature white streetlight. A few trees were

struggling to grow. The sky was so crystal blue it made their eyes ache. “That’s it.” Reese gestured. “A-7.” The trailer’s license, AP 6354, jibed with

their information. “But he just drove off before you arrived,” she said.

Leigh had been in such a hurry that he had left his trailer door standing open. Had he somehow known they were coming and fled with

incriminating evidence? His immediate flight was suspicious, but there was nothing they could do about it. The suspect, a police groupie, was

friendly with many officers and might have been warned. “You get friendly with cops and you hear things,” said Toschi. Perhaps his relatives had

had a last-minute change of heart. The detectives just didn’t know. Al they knew for certain was that they were dealing with a highly intel igent and

cunning man.

Toschi and Armstrong spent the time poking around the exterior. Al en had made some alterations to the trailer, an earth-colored affair streaked

with rust in places. “It was a standard trailer,” said Toschi. Tapered concrete blocks supported the off-wheels trailer. A locked shed adjoined it.

What the detectives didn’t know was that Al en had recently repaneled the interior of one of his trailers, possibly this one, maybe the one in Bodega.

Was something hidden within those wal s? “We kind of moseyed around because we had a search warrant,” said Toschi. The investigators invited

themselves in and made a cursory inspection of the trailer. It had an acrid smel like the refinery. Toschi indicated a map of Lake Berryessa taped

to the wal . Zodiac had attacked a couple there.

Bob Dagitz had been excited about Al en as a suspect as soon as he heard Al en was familiar with Berryessa and the outskirts of Val ejo. He

knew Leigh was ambidextrous, good with a bow and arrow, and proficient with various weapons. Toschi thought that Al en fulfil ed everything he

thought Zodiac should be. He moved Al en’s bed away from the wal and discovered the largest jar of Vaseline he had ever seen. Several large,

uncleaned dildos rol ed out at his feet. Sadomasochistic pornography was stacked in a box, and male blow-up dol s were in the trailer. Books on

chemistry and biology were everywhere, many stamped with Al en’s name. Some bloodstained clothing littered a table. But they knew Al en was a

hunter. Toschi pushed the bed back into place and entered the smal unkempt kitchen. He pried open the freezer. Little animal heart, livers, and

mutilated rodent bodies were inside.

Though no real sex was involved in Zodiac’s assaults, technical y he was a sexual psychopath or, more accurately, a sexual sadist. Stanford’s Dr.

Donald T. Lunde told me that sexual sadists commonly acted out sadistic impulses in their early teens—torturing and kil ing cats, dogs, and other

smal animals. “He tortures and kil s substitute victims, smal animals,” he said. “There certainly is the need to kil . . . something at certain intervals.”

Lunde believed that in adulthood, such an individual, if it were made very difficult for him to kil humans, might revert to kil ing animals. “It would be

better than nothing,” he said.

“The sociopathic murderer usual y has a physical y cruel, rejecting father and perhaps a hysterical, seductive mother,” Dr. Manfred Guttmacher

reported in
The Mind of the Murderer.
“The effects of cruelty on the smal child are more than simple neglect. In retaliation, the sociopath inflicts

cruelty on others and feels no guilt in doing so. The earliest objects of his cruelty are often animals.”

Though Al en was working toward a degree in biology, he hadn’t yet requested permission from the state to dissect and experiment on smal

animals. He would file an application for a scientific col ecting permit with the Resources Agency of the California Department of Fish and Game. “I

intend to col ect the fol owing species,” Al en would write, “chipmunks—number indefinite. I expect to col ect in the fol owing localities: Marin County,

Sonoma County and Mendocino County, (Possibly Solano, Napa & Lassen). I desire to col ect by the fol owing methods: Live traps (Havahart &

home-made).” He was under the sponsorship of Dr. John D. Hopkirk, an associate professor of biology of Sonoma State Col ege, where Al en

majored in biological sciences and minored in chemistry.

Forty-five minutes after racing off, Al en returned. They heard his old clunker approaching, and were outside to meet him as he parked. A cloud of

dust arose. “It was nice seeing Al en drive up and real y introducing ourselves,” Toschi said later. “Both of us said, ‘Leigh, how are you—we’re San

Francisco police inspectors.’ His car was dirty. Through the dirty rear window, we could see clothes, papers, and books in the backseat. He was

frightened when he showed up because he had never had two detectives actual y talking to him with a warrant in hand and we took him by surprise

—the first time he had met two cops who meant business, face to face, inches away, and he didn’t know if we were going to arrest him.” Because

Leigh was into a lot of other stuff, he wasn’t sure, at first, what had brought the police to his trailer.

The huge chemist crawled out of his car.

“What’s al this about?” he said cool y.

Al en didn’t recal Toschi and Armstrong from their visit to the refinery a year ago. He should have remembered, or might have been shamming.

“We want to talk to you, Leigh,” said Armstrong. “We have a search warrant for your trailer and for your person. We have information that you are

a very good suspect in the Zodiac murders.”

Al en explained he thought Zodiac had been arrested. “Besides, I live in Val ejo,” he added, “and I’ve already talked to Val ejo P.D.”

“We know,” Toschi said. “Here’s your copy of the warrant.”

“Wel , help yourself,” conceded Al en with a shrug.

Now the investigators began a more exhaustive scrutiny, dragging furniture away from the dingy windows and drawing back the sheets. Toschi

tugged the bed away from the wal as if for the first time. Again dildos rol ed out.

“I just sort of fool around,” Leigh said matter-of-factly.

He did not seem at al embarrassed by that, or the sadistic pornography the detectives ferreted out. In the close quarters of the off-wheels trailer

they were aware of how physical y powerful their suspect was. “Al en was an awesome and frightening man, a beast,” said Toschi. “He was so

upset and angry at our being on his turf at Santa Rosa. Over the next hour, we tore apart his place pretty good. I remember for some reason he took

an immediate dislike to me personal y. And I was always the good guy. The D.A.s would use me to disarm these guys. I remember some of the

guys saying, ‘With Dave it just comes natural. People believe him.’ I would just get them to talk to me, and I mean this without being pompous. But

Armstrong told me afterward, ‘I don’t understand it. He doesn’t like you. Everybody likes you.’ Even Bob Dagitz, who was with us to take his prints,

said, ‘That’s the first time, Dave, I ever saw a suspect not like you.’”

As they questioned Al en, Toschi did most of the talking, stil playing good cop. Al en had an “I’ve seen through your sweet-talking act” look on his

face. Toschi continued to probe. He noticed Al en was wearing a ring with a “Z” on it and the Zodiac watch, a gift for Christmas, 1968. He was

practical y shouting that he was Zodiac. “We have to take your prints,” Toschi told the student. Obviously annoyed, Al en fought against that. Final y,

Dagitz got good fingerprints. He went to a lamp in the corner, and began making comparisons to the prints found on Stine’s cab. They believed

Zodiac had left behind eight points on each of two fingerprints on the taxi. Partial fingerprints usual y contain twelve characteristic points. Al

fingerprints have a delta, which serves as a starting point to tal y the number of friction ridges separating it from the core of the pattern: radial loops,

ulnar loops, arches, tented arches, and whorls. From the symbol numbers assigned to the components, the final classification is evolved. Toschi

knew that less than twelve points of similarity would be subject to an expert’s “opinion” and that fragmentary prints, such as they had, most often

could not be positively matched. He also knew that Dagitz was one of the best print men. Dagitz worked quietly by the lamp in a corner of the trailer.

He wrote down: “0 9 R 001 13/4 18 U 101 13.” Then they went about getting samples of Al en’s handprinting. Toschi had two sheets of paper with

typed sentences supplied by Sherwood Morril . He had been carrying them around for three years. “Sherwood had given us forms when we had the

opportunity, as he put it, ‘to have a strong suspect’ print for us,” recal ed Toschi, “and I had them ready. On the original letters, the ink was quite

dark, as if Zodiac had pressed very, very hard. He was very deliberate in what he was saying. The printing was smal , most of it lower case. Once

you saw one, you would pretty much immediately recognize another as from him.” The detective told Leigh he had to reprint the sentences on the

first page. “We want you to print right- and left-handed and in upper case and lower case,” he said. “We want you to print this list of sentences.”

“You’l notice,” Toschi told me later, “that in the exemplar that Leigh printed for us we had him use a black felt-tipped pen. We thought since we

were going this far, we might as wel do it right. There are only a few companies putting out such inks as he uses. Sherwood had always said that

Zodiac was probably printing right-handed in his letters. I asked another expert [Postal Inspector John Shimoda] later and he felt the same way

—‘the printing was of a right-hand type.’ But Al en was known to be ambidextrous, and I remember him tel ing us that he ‘usual y did things left-

handed, but could use both hands in certain activities.’ Al his family and friends told us positively that Leigh could write, shoot, and shoot bow and

arrow with either hand.”

Toschi showed Al en the phrase “up until now I have kil ed five.” “We want you to just print the way you normal y print,” he said. “I understand you

have some ability with your left hand,” Toschi added. “I don’t do it left-handed,” said Al en. “Who told you that?”

“We know what you can do and what you can’t.”

Al en had been born left-handed and forced to be right-handed in elementary school. Everyone there knew that. He cooperated with the

investigation and wrote handwriting exemplars with both his right and left hands. Al en appeared to have some difficulty writing left-handed. “I can’t,”

he said.

“He is ambidextrous,” thought Toschi. “Do the best you can. Print capital letters, smal letters. Print what we tel you,” said Toschi. Al en didn’t like

that at al . “We had him go from ‘A’ to ‘Z’ and from ‘1 to 10.’”

“Why can’t I print what I want?” he snarled.

Toschi, impatience showing in his voice for the first time, told him, “Because this is what we want you to print.” “The suspect’s right handprinting

and his left handprinting were almost identical,” Toschi told me, “but right-handed his printing was a bit larger. When you see Leigh again you might

pay attention to what hand he uses to write with. Al en appeared to be disturbed as he printed. It was not as neat as samples of his earlier writing.”

Then Toschi asked Al en to print, “This is the Zodiac speaking.”

“What are you making me say? That I’m Zodiac?”

Toschi told him no, and promised if the printing did not match Zodiac’s, they would walk away. “We wil rule you out completely. But we have to be

sure.”

Right-handed, Al en wrote the phrase in large letters. He was obviously altering his printing. But Al en’s printing had that spacey quality found in

the Zodiac letters. Toschi noted, “His printing varied from smal , neat, sloppy, then larger in the Santa Rosa trailer. He printed a bit larger. Zodiac’s

lettering was quite smal .” Toschi laid down Morril ’s second page of quotes. “Print, ‘In answer to your answer for more details about the good times

I had in Val ejo, I shal be very happy to supply even more material.’” he said. Al en copied it faithful y, repeating the word “more.”

Then Al en was ordered to print a phrase from a letter in which Zodiac quoted from memory and paraphrased Gilbert and Sul ivan’s
The Mikado.

“Al people who are shaking hands shake hands like that.” The last lines Al en wrote tilted toward the bottom right side of the page, as was common

in Zodiac letters. He also copied, “I am no longer in control of myself.” On December 20, 1969, Zodiac had written: “I am afraid I wil loose control

again and take my nineth & possibly tenth victom.”

But time was running out and the policemen had found no smoking gun inside the trailer connecting Al en to the Zodiac. “Al en seemed to know

what to say,” said Toschi. “Not a dumb man. A very wily man. I’l never forget being in his presence. He mentioned Berryessa. He shook our hands.

We left our cards.

“And I could feel the hatred as we were leaving. He must have been relieved, thinking that ‘I’m not going to get busted,’ but also thinking, ‘Are they

going to come back?’ As I left I said, ‘I’l be seeing you again, Leigh,’ Anything he was planning went on hold. Al en wasn’t cool when we left. There

was a lot of frustration when we left the trailer court.”