Zodiac Unmasked (54 page)

how I would respond. But certainly throughout the interview, he denied that he was the Zodiac. He said in fact that he was another victim of the

Zodiac because he was a victim of more than twenty years of police harassment for being an innocent man.

“‘They’ve offered me many opportunities,’ he said, ‘the most recent last Valentine’s Day, to confess because then I’d be at peace with myself.

Wel , you don’t get peace with yourself by confessing a lie. And this is what it would have been. . . . The little kid who lives next door, fifth grade,

they’ve they’re studying the Constitution and she got ticked off. “Haven’t they ever heard of innocent until proven guilty?” she told me. Wel , bless her

. . . They haven’t arrested me
because they can’t prove a thing,
’ concluded Al en, his voice quavering dramatical y. ‘I’m not the damn Zodiac.

Excuse . . . excuse me.’ He lowered his head and seemed to weep. ‘Twenty-two years of this . . .’

“Having done this for almost twenty-five years of interviewing al sorts of kil ers, you just kind of get feelings. I can tel you my cameraman, as we

got in the car that night, turned to me and said, ‘Gosh, I think we just interviewed the Zodiac.’ He was so convinced.”

Wil iams’s interview ran that night: “For more than two decades,” said anchor Dennis Richmond on the
Ten O’clock News
, “police have

suspected a Val ejo man of the unsolved Zodiac serial kil ings. Tonight we’l hear from that man. It’s been more than two decades now since the

infamous Zodiac shocked the Bay Area and the nation. Police are stil working to solve those crimes. On Monday, authorities in Val ejo wil unseal

the results of one bit of that investigation. The search of the house of a man who’s been cal ed the number-one Zodiac suspect. Now for the first

time that man has told his side of the story in a television interview. He spoke with us on condition that we not show his face.” Al en’s face was

electronical y concealed and shown in silhouette to mask his true features. It had to make viewers even more curious.

“Is this man the notorious kil er known as the Zodiac?” asked Rita Wil iams. “Or he is a victim of more than two decades of police harassment?

His name is Arthur Al en. He’s fifty-eight now, diabetic, and had just come back from kidney dialysis when talked with him at his Val ejo home last

night. Back in the late 1960s, when Zodiac terrorized California, Al en was in his late thirties, sixty pounds heavier, strong, a biology graduate

student. And in this book, considered the definitive study on the Zodiac [shows the book
Zodiac
], Arthur Al en, known fictional y in the book as Bob

Starr, is considered the investigators’ number-one suspect. . . .

“One widely quoted letter from Zodiac said he likes kil ing people because it’s much more fun than kil ing wild game, because man is the most

dangerous animal of al . And in the early seventies, a friend of Al en’s went to police, tel ing them Al en had told him virtual y the same thing just

before the kil ings began,” said Wil iams. “From then on Al en was a suspect. In 1971, police searched two cars and a trailer he was living in in

Santa Rosa. But for some reason they never searched the Val ejo house he shared with his mother until her death three years ago. ‘Every time, I

thought it was laid to rest, it would come screaming back,’ said Al en on camera. ‘The last time was St. Valentine’s Day. Happy Valentine’s Day!’

“Armed with a search warrant, police spent two days in February going through the house and garage. They dug up part of the yard, took Al en’s

Zodiac diver’s watch, which he says his mother gave him, and pul ed pipe bombs out from under the house. Al en took a lie-detector test back in the

seventies while doing time for molesting a nine-year-old boy. He says he passed it, but authorities told him he was a sociopath and could cheat.

Stil , he’s never been charged with any of the Zodiac crimes and he says he’s lost jobs, friends, even medical care now, because police imply he’s

a kil er.”

The filmed interview ended with Al en col apsing and sobbing. Rita Wil iams told me later, “However, he didn’t real y cry. In looking at the tape, he

kind of turned it on and turned it off. When Al en lifted his head his eyes were dry. I definitely felt he was pretending.”

Allen next showed
up on KPIX, Channel 5, the local CBS affiliate.

“I’m not the Zodiac. I’ve never kil ed anyone,” he said. “They have me questioning myself. I search my memory for blanks—blank spaces—there

are none. I was first questioned by police in late 1969. The cop said that someone thought I might be the Zodiac kil er and reported me. At the end

of the interview he said, ‘Wel , Zodiac had curly hair and you obviously don’t.’ So that was it.

“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 Val ejo police seized it when they raided my house in their latest attempt to prove I

am the Zodiac kil er. The only way I can clear myself is for the real Zodiac to confess—if he’s stil alive. Al 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.”

Al en 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 Spinel i, 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 Al en’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 cal you? They told me [last week] they were trying to get in touch with you.”

“What do they want?”

“The Val ejo 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 al 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 Wil iams interviewed the perennial suspect. “I’m a disabled former schoolteacher,” said Al en.

“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 kil ed 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 hel could I go out and kil innocent teenyboppers—no way. But with them, I’m guilty until I’m proven innocent,

and I figure the case wil 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.”

Al en 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 yel obscenities at him in the house.

Thursday, August 1, 1991

Allen told the
Fairfield Daily Republic
that he had consulted with Mel Bel i about retaining him as defense council. Bel i had not spoken with Al en.

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 Al en’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 Al en, a retired Val ejo man who is once again being investigated in connection with the stil unsolved 1969-70 Zodiac

kil ings.”

“I was amazed at how brazen Al en was,” Bawart told me after watching Al en on television. “It’s like he loved the attention al 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 Val ejo P.D. and other departments, a restraining

order. And yet he was giving interviews.”

Why had no further action been taken against Al en? 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 wil be pressed against [Leigh Al en] in connection with the

mysterious kil ings,” said District Attorney Mike Nail. “I real y suspect that nothing’s going to come of it.”

Why wasn’t Al en 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 kil er 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 Al en’s place was searched and he was quoted al over the place. And this real y 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 cal ing us every other week.’ They’re

a little disenchanted, a little hesitant to trust Val ejo at this point because when Val ejo searched Al en’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, al of a sudden for a few to bad-mouth Conway in any way is a big mistake.”

Now an event, unintentional y humorous and tragic at the same time, relegated departmental feuding to the back burner. At the end of June,

longtime criminal defense attorney Wil iam Steadman Beeman had presented a theory to retired Judge Bil Jensen. “I know who Zodiac is,” he told

the judge and, without giving a name, laid out his reasons why. Jensen was unconvinced. Al 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

cal ed 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