Zodiac Unmasked (64 page)

minutes earlier, Zodiac was seen without his mask by a doctor and his young son.” Dr. Clifton Rayfield, an ophthalmologist, and his son, David, had

parked their car four-fifths of a mile further up the road from Hartnel ’s Karmann Ghia and toward Oak Shores Park and Rancho Monticel o.

“Rayfield reported to me,” continued Narlow, “that at approximately 6:30 P.M. he and his son had parked their vehicle north of Park Headquarters . .

. in the general area of the crime scene and walked down toward the beach. While en route Rayfield observed a WMA described as five feet ten

inches, heavy build, wearing dark trousers and a long-sleeved dark shirt with red coloring.”

David Rayfield had seen Zodiac unmasked. Thirty-two years had passed since anyone had asked him about the man he had seen. I tracked him

down.

“How many people would you say were up at the lake that day?” I began.

“There were like zero,” Rayfield said. “There was no one up there—it was real y desolate. I walked al around and was shooting my gun, a .22 with

a scope. That’s why my dad and I went to the lake, because I could shoot my gun and not be bothered, wouldn’t be scaring or hurting anyone. My

dad never saw him. He was fishing down at the lake. I saw Zodiac at a distance of about one hundred yards, so I wouldn’t be able to comment on

his face. He was walking along the hil side about halfway between the road and the lake. But I remember him as being a stockier person. He wasn’t

nimble when he was walking. And when he turned to walk away he wasn’t like a smooth, athletic person. To me he seemed a little overweight and

on the clumsier side. Not having fol owed the story or ever having been re-interviewed by the police, I didn’t realize Zodiac came upon us just before

he stabbed the young couple. I sort of assumed I saw him making his getaway. I’l tel you one thing, he didn’t like the fact I was carrying a gun. He

turns and looks at me and my gun (which with its scope was pretty intimidating) for probably five, six seconds, and then turned and went up the hil

up in a southerly direction. I said to myself, ‘That was funny. This guy wasn’t carrying a fishing pole. There’s no camping equipment. There’s no gun.

What’s he doing out here?’”

“What you’re tel ing me fits the prime suspect. Everybody remarked how he lumbered, how clumsy he was. The reason his friends thought this

was so interesting is that Arthur Leigh Al en was gorgeous in the water. When he’d go up to the diving board and waddle out, people would say,

‘Oh, my God, he’s so ungainly.’ The minute he was in the air or in the water he was fine. But on land everyone commented on how awkward he

was.”

“That’s what jumped out at me about the picture you sent of him walking. . . . He has the same body language of the guy I was watching from a

distance. While I’m not sure I was close enough to say that much about his face, this is the same-size guy that I saw. I remember thinking that guy is

not a smal guy. His body type matches what police said at that time—two hundred pounds or more. He was pretty big and built, but he didn’t move

like he was a real coordinated, smooth-walking guy. He didn’t move up the side of the hil easily.”

“I can’t understand with the limited number of witnesses who had seen Zodiac, the police didn’t come back and speak with you at every

opportunity,” I said.

“I can’t either,” said Rayfield. “It continues to shock me. I came to think what I saw at the lake wasn’t related or they would have been al over me.

They never came back or cal ed me. I said, ‘Jesus. What’s going on that they would never want to talk to me again? It must not have been the guy. It

must not have fit the scenario for them that he would have been there.’

“It’s funny you should mention the composite sketches. ’Cause I saw the sketches with the hair on them and I didn’t remember black hair, neatly

trimmed hair, on the man I saw.”

“What did you see?”

“I didn’t remember him having a ful head of hair. The suspect in the driver’s license you sent would have been only thirty-six at the time, so of

course he wouldn’t be bald.” Rayfield was tel ing me Zodiac was almost bald. Since he was wearing the same clothes as the man Lorna had seen,

it meant he had taken off his wig. “Leigh Al en was almost bald at that age,” I told him. “He shaved the sides of his head close.”

“Wow,” said Rayfield. “In retrospect, how could the man I saw not be Zodiac? I can’t believe the case was never solved and police had al those

leads.”

Zodiac had written, “I shal not tel you what my descise consists of when I kil .” Zodiac’s disguise consisted of hairpieces:

October 30, 1966—a false beard on a stocky man at Riverside Library.

February, 1969—“curly, wavy dark brown hair.”

July 4, 1969—“combed hair up in a kind of pompadour, short curly, light brown hair.” Second description: “light brown hair in a military crew

cut.”

September 27, 1969—three girls see stocky man wearing an obvious wig, “dark straight hair parted neatly.” Rayfield sees him soon after,

remarks he’s so young to be bald. Hartnel saw “dark brown sweaty hair” through the eyelets of Zodiac’s hood. “. . . it’s not impossible the guy

was wearing a wig.”

October 11, 1969—“reddish or blond crew cut” and “short, curly light brown hair in Military-type crew cut.” In the 1960s, crew-cut wigs were

available for military men with long hair who did not want to cut their hair short. Long hair was then fashionable.

“The kid had a .22 rifle,” Narlow summed up, “and Zodiac came down within one hundred yards of them across an inlet. The kid saw the guy over

there and he was wearing the blue windbreaker jacket. But evidently this wasn’t what he was looking for because it was a father-and-son deal. So

the kil er went a quarter mile up this road, went back up to the road, and evidently came down the road this way and saw this single car parked

here, and then pul ed in behind it. Rayfield and his son both stated that they had not observed a vehicle parked in the area of their car, and had only

noticed the subject at a distance of approximately one hundred yards. Rayfield did report that there was a man with two young boys in the area

shooting BB guns, but didn’t know whether or not they saw the subject.

“I think their time was off a little bit ’cause I think Rayfield actual y saw the Zodiac kil er just prior to him going south four-fifths of a mile to where

Shephard and Hartnel had their car parked. It sure looks like he stumbled on them and had not fol owed them. I’m convinced that Zodiac was just

stalking any singular parked cars along the route. And that’s why he stopped when he saw Rayfield’s car there. When he saw the father and son

and they saw him, he decided to go back up to his car. Then he drove down the road a little ways and saw the white Karmann Ghia. Then he came

down here and saw a boy and a girl laying on this blanket under this oak tree, and this is what his game was, to kil the boy and the girl. This is why

he struck here and not further up the road.”

When I talked with Bryan Hartnel in the 1970s he had already gone through considerable anguish trying to recal al he could about Zodiac.

“When Zodiac left he must have thought we were dead,” said Hartnel . “I was extremely fortunate to survive. I quit breathing! I just froze! What I

heard was him walk away in a non-hurried fashion. And then after that there’s a little dead spot I don’t remember. In fact I don’t think I went out, but

there is a slight haze in my memory. There was no way I could hear his car starting. It’s real y some distance to the road up there. You’re going to

get some white noise that may blur that out. But I remember starting to get untied and moving around. I had a ways to walk. It’s not impossible that

first time I blacked out or something. Al I had made it up to was the jeep trail when I saw a [pickup] coming. The toughest part was yet to go, but the

way I was going, I would have made it [to Knoxvil e Road].

“Now while I was in the hospital a couple of weeks,” he said, “it was basical y to confirm I was al right, and in fact was. The stab wounds I

received missed al the organs. Obviously they hit my lungs, and I needed some time for the lungs to heal up, and I had some scarring. But that’s

nothing. A surgeon deciding he was going to make seven or eight holes in my back couldn’t have done it better. The guy I probably liked least in the

whole mess was that psychiatrist Narlow got. He had an idea that I should do some hypnotism. That was such an abortion. I told him, ‘I don’t know if

I’m going to be able to do this. My church [Seventh-day Adventist] has kind of a taboo on those kind of things. I’m wil ing to give it a try, but I think it’s

going to take more than a slam-bam, thank you, ma’am, to get me to go under. I think I’m fairly suggestible, but I don’t think this is going to work.’ He

does his thing and I said, ‘I’m not under.’ ‘Don’t argue,’ he says, ‘just answer these questions,’ and had me run through it.

“One question he asked me answer was describe the arm. ‘Do you want to experience it or see it on a television screen?’ I’m looking and I’m

seeing a man with bare arms, but there was no question that guy was wearing a jacket. OK, I’m looking and I’m seeing bare arms. . . . ‘Tel me

about the bare arms.’ ‘Wel , they are fairly heavily haired.’ [Al en was not.] He thinks this is great shit. But the guy had a jacket on. I could be way out

of line and I was hypnotized and real y seeing it, but you know one of the early things I screwed them up on is that I had this guy as being real y fat. I

said either the guy was moderately heavy and wearing a windbreaker, or he was skinny and wearing a lined jacket . . . kind of a cotton poplin, crew

col ar, and gathered around the sleeves, ordinary garden-variety short jacket. How much he weighed depended on whether that was lined or

unlined. If I went through al that kind of cerebration over a jacket, I know he didn’t have bare arms.”

That evening I spoke to Toschi. After the stabbings, Zodiac had come down from the 440-foot elevation fast. A Val ejo police officer told me that

another policeman had ticketed Al en speeding down from Lake Berryessa the day of the stabbing. On the seat of his car lay a bloody knife. Leigh

caught the officer’s gaze and said, “I used that to kil a couple of chickens.”

“Remember that on September 27, 1969, Al en was supposed to be going to Lake Berryessa,” I said, “and had a bloody knife in his

possession?” I read Toschi part of an FBI report:

“Conway indicated to the FBI that ‘a surviving victim of the ZODIAC series of murders had positively identified ALLEN as the ZODIAC kil er.’

Lake Berryessa victim Bryan Hartnel thought Al en’s voice and build were compatible with Zodiac’s.”

“I was never told that,” said Toschi. “To this day I’ve never heard any detective tel me that.”

“First Hartnel went into Sonoma Auto Parts, to hear Al en’s voice,” George Bawart explained. “DOJ was working on it. This guy Jim Silver, the

investigator for the DOJ, had him go in, make a purchase, and have him listen to Al en’s voice.” Hartnel looked at him and told Silver, ‘He could

have been. There is nothing about what I saw or heard that would rule him out as the kil er. His physical size, mannerisms, and voice are the same

as the person who stabbed Cecelia and wounded me.’”

Zodiac’s voice to Hartnel was “some type of drawl, but not a Southern drawl . . . [it] sounded uneducated, moderate in sound, not high or low

pitched.” Others had heard Zodiac’s voice. Napa Officer David Slaight thought the “barely audible” cal er sounded in his “early twenties.” Val ejo

switchboard operator Nancy Slover heard an “even but consistent, soft but forceful” voice with no trace of accent. It sounded “mature, deepened

and became taunting toward the end.” Al these voices were Zodiac—were there several Zodiacs or did he have multiple personalities?

Friday, June 23, 2000

I continued to
wait for Lorna, who was undergoing considerable anguish over the photos I had given her. Could Arthur Leigh Al en be placed on

the day of the murder at Lake Berryessa within yards of the crime scene at a destination he had announced to friends? Final y, at 10:00 A.M., Lorna

cal ed to give me her answer.

“When I looked at the older man,” she said, “my instant sort of response was fear by looking at his eyes, but I couldn’t say I recognized the face.

“When I look at the young version, in the picture in the 1950s, that is exactly the way I remember the man looking that we saw at Berryessa. Even

to the point that I never saw him ful y face on, but a little in profile, and that’s how the photo was taken. So if I had seen this photo back then I would

have said—absolutely!”

Thus, Leigh Al en, wearing a wig, could be placed at the crime scene the day of the stabbings. “I do not always look the same,” Zodiac had said.

He had spoken the truth.

“Leigh told me he was at Lake Berryessa the day of the murder, hanging around hunting for squirrels,” Leigh’s friend, Jim, told me. “He told me

he was there flat out. No question about it. And he had gone to an area of Berryessa with trees, but kind of open and remote. It wasn’t a high-

visibility area, so that nobody would have seen him up there in that area of Berryessa. He would have been al alone. He did say it was the same

day the kids were attacked. And he said that if anyone had seen him they would have seen he was off in a different area of the lake and had left

before before it happened.” He later wrote Jim that he recognized Hartnel when he came into the parts store and “disappeared in the back of the

store where cops were waiting. Hel , if I once got tired of al this crap and said I was the one, there’d be no way I could prove I
wasn’t
.”