Zodiac Unmasked (60 page)

books from floor to ceiling. He was very wel read and could converse on any topic you could think of.”

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

“Absolutely,” said Conway. “We confirmed his interest in Gilbert and Sul ivan through his brother and other relatives. They also confirmed that he

purposely misspel ed words. It wasn’t by accident. He’d write recipes for example and he’d spel ‘eggs,’ instead of ‘e-g-g-s,’ he’d spel 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 al kinds of things.” I recal ed that Al en in

al his interviews referred to Zodiac as “The” Zodiac, just as the kil er 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. Al 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 kil ing, and that’s the kil er scratched some

writing onto a desktop. The actual letter he sent that describes al the things that he said he did in this homicide is al 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 Morril said, that matches the Zodiac letters. Since then George and I

have gone to every expert there is and they unequivocal y 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-cal ed genius that wrote

this other book with al the mathematical equations, his whole premise—everything is built on the mathematics starting with the Riverside Case.

When I tel him the Riverside case didn’t have anything to do with it, his theory goes out the window. It didn’t shake him. He stil believes otherwise.”

We al had our blind spots. Captain Conway was convinced that Al en had never been in the Navy in spite of his claims of having been “a paint-

scraper.” Various women and their daughters Al en 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 col ege on the G.I. Bil . 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 Wil iams, “I’d like to ask a few questions of the other panelists that I’ve wanted the answers to. If indeed Arthur Leigh Al en 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 Al en, can you tel me why you think he didn’t and why the kil ings 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. Wel , 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 kil ings stopped—this is from discussions with the FBI experts. There’s a very famous FBI group back in

Quantico, Virginia, that studies serial kil ers. 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 real y simplistic,

but that’s probably the explanation for Al en if he was Zodiac.

“The other thing is that he was a very il man—he was fifty-eight when he died. He was extremely il and knew he was dying and he’d had that

il ness for some time. Even though he could stil get around he was not very mobile and there was a lot of focus on him as a suspect. Being a

suspect, being il , and losing interest—al adds up to the explanation as to why.”

“Did you find fingerprints?” Wil iams asked Conway. “Al en says in the interview that police told him during the interview process with the Val ejo

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 al 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 real y 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 kil er?” said Wil iams.

“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 Al en that I feel he is a viable suspect and in al probability the Zodiac.”

“Robert?” said Wil iams.

“That’s my opinion too,” I answered cautiously. Al en had died al too recently. “Al I can say is that of al the people who were ever brought to me—

I conferred with Dave Toschi, he showed me files and files and files—Al en 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 tel , Al en is the best suspect they’ve come up with.”

“First of al 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, circumstantial y we prove that you did do the crime because of the fingerprints at

the crime scene.”

Rita Wil iams took out a letter Al en 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 Wil iams, “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 real y

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 kil ed

seemingly at random . . . perhaps as many as fifty. Who was the Zodiac?” Rita Wil iams asked. “This is the Val ejo man many investigators

consider to be the notorious Zodiac kil er, and is the first time his picture has been revealed. His name is Arthur Leigh Al en.” As archival film ran,

Wil iams asked Al en: “Are you the Zodiac kil er?” “There would be nothing farther from my mind,” he said. “I am certainly, most certainly, not the

Zodiac kil er.”

“But at San Francisco State University this afternoon,” continued Wil iams, “I was on a panel with people considered authorities on the Zodiac

case and for the first time publicly they said this. Al en 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 Al en that he is a viable suspect and in al probability the Zodiac.”

“But investigators never charged Al en with any of the kil ings connected with the Zodiac,” said Wil iams, “and last August Al en 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 kil er known as Zodiac

terrorized California, Al en 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 kil er taunted authorities and the media, sending complex letters and ciphers,” Wil iams summed up. “Today Val ejo police

investigators said they never charged Al en because they couldn’t explain discrepancies in the Zodiac handwriting. Al en sent me this handwritten

and typed letter after our interview.”

Wil iams’s 1991 interview, rerun that night, showed Al en col apsing and sobbing. What Rita Wil iams had observed stuck in my mind. “However,”

she said, “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.” “There are so many lies I caught him in, his denying things didn’t have any relevance anymore,” said Conway. Al en lied

even when there was no reason to.

Friday, February 14, 1997

Six years had
rushed by since the Valentine’s Day search of Al en’s home. Toschi rang me, sounding buoyant. “I’ve gotten cal s 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 real y 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 Bil 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 stil a mystery—that the case is stil active and that so many people

are aware of it. So many other people have kil ed more people than Zodiac. Adkins asked why was there so much interest al 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 Al en died, he was quoted al over the place. Now they tel 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 Val ejo 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 wil ing 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 al 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 Al en’s brother cal ed and going to Val ejo and talking to Al en’s sister-in-law and brother . . . you guys made the case and did