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

  At 8:30 A.M. Leigh Allen called in sick. For the first time, he missed a day of work at Valley Springs School. The next day, he filled out an absence form and signed it. No one recalled scratches on his face, but Allen said he was in Pomona when he heard Cheri Jo Bates was killed. He had served as a painter in the Navy. That might explain paint specks on the base exchange Timex, but that was a long time ago.

  “I was at the Riverside City College library the night Cheri Bates was murdered,” an RCC student told me. “I had the same kind of car that she had and I was parked in front of her. I normally left the library when it closed, as she did, but I left earlier that night. The point is that I always felt [the victim] could have been me because of the timing and that I must have been in the library with him that night. Bates was a cheerleader and my best friend.”

  A transient, with a knife in his possession, was discovered sleeping in his nearby car, questioned, then released. A local mother found a kitchen knife missing and told police she suspected her son might be the killer. After questioning Cheri Jo’s friends, police turned to questioning fifteen military men from the nearby air base. Fourteen days after Bates’s murder, Riverside police, under command to “drop everything and work this case until solved!” ordered the sixty-two students, two librarians, and one custodian who had been at the library that fatal night to return for a reconstruction. “Wear the same clothes you did two weeks ago.”

  Sunday, November 13, 1966

  Detective Dick Yonkers and Detective Sergeant LeRoy Gren coordinated the library reenactment. The two stage managers lifted the curtain at 5 P.M. just as six motorcycle officers under traffic sergeant Al Fogarty were stationed at Terracina and Riverside, Fairfax and Riverside, in the alleyway parallel to Magnolia near Terracina, and at the alley exit onto Fairfax.

  Detective Earl Brown and D.A.’s investigator Loren Mitchell, working from a master list, questioned and tape-recorded each student as they entered. “What vehicle did you notice parked in front of you?” asked Brown. “A ’47-’52 tan-gray Studebaker with oxidized paint,” came one answer. After the initial interview, each student was given a card with an assigned letter and checked off personally by Captain Irvin Cross, head of the detective bureau, as they completed the reenactment. Cross fingerprinted and snipped a lock of hair from each student. “Is there anybody you recall seeing here that night who isn’t here tonight?” he asked each. “Give me a name and description.” The curtain fell at 9:00 P.M., the time when the library usually closed on Sunday nights. Only two people hadn’t returned—a woman and a bearded, heavyset young man, five feet eleven and a half inches—Allen’s height.

  Agent Mel Nicolai later placed Allen in Riverside that dreary Sunday. “He wasn’t working or going to school at the college,” he said. “He would just go down every weekend from Calaveras County because he was involved in a car club down there. He was definitely there that weekend.”

  Monday, November 14, 1966

  Headline in the Press-Enterprise: “City police hunt bearded man after staging scene in murder. A heavy-set man with a beard is being sought.” Sergeant Gren said police are “very interested” in talking to this man. The implication was that the killer had worn a beard as a disguise. Did Zodiac disguise himself with various wigs—pompadour, black hair, crew cut? What sort of man relies on a hairpiece to look different? A man without hair.

  Tuesday, November 22, 1966

  A nineteen-year-old University of California at Riverside coed, walking west on Linden, became aware of a car creeping slowly alongside her. Looking around, she observed a man offering her a ride. “No, thanks,” she said. “Well, after all, I’m not Jack the Ripper,” replied the driver. “Don’t you recall? I gave you a ride three weeks ago.” Three weeks ago Cheri Jo had been murdered. The girl smiled, vaguely remembering him, opened the car door, and slid in. The ride went smoothly. He dropped her off at a local pizza parlor. When her boyfriend failed to meet her, she started back toward the UCR library. The same man rolled alongside again and picked her up, but instead of taking her home, drove rapidly up a dark road to Pigeon Pass. “There are a lot of kooks running around,” he said as the car slowed. “You heard about that girl at City College, didn’t you?” Frightened, the girl leaped from the car. Racing along the road’s edge, she fell. “I’m not going to kill you,” he shouted as she scrambled to her feet. “If I wanted to kill you, I could just hit you in the head with this piece of wood.” She returned to the car, but instantly his hands closed around her throat. “Now if I wanted to kill you, I could just snap your neck,” he said. “Shall I kill you now, or are you going to take off your clothes?”

  As he grabbed her sweatshirt, she wriggled free and bolted into the woods. The stranger gave up searching for her and roared off with her purse and books. Sobbing, covered with scratches and burrs, she staggered to the Highgrove area. When police responded, she described the suspect as “thirty-five, five feet nine inches tall with a chunky, protruding stomach.” Later descriptions of Zodiac mentioned “a slight potbelly” and that his “stomach hung over his trousers.”

  Tuesday, November 29, 1966

  Bates’s killer (or someone pretending to be her murderer) mailed two unstamped letters from a rural mailbox to the police and Riverside Press-Enterprise. The typed confession letters, repeating what he and Cheri Jo had spoken to each other in the dark, were blurry fourth- and seventh-generation carbon copies. The original was never mailed, making a match to a specific typewriter difficult. The writer had used a portable Royal typewriter, Elite-type, Canterbury shaded.1 Leigh’s mother had given him just such a portable. The length of the paper was unknown since the author had torn off the bottom and top of a strip of Teletype paper. Oddly, he had folded back both bottom corners. The writer claimed to have phoned the Press-Enterprise, but probably did not. Some of the language was Zodiac-like. “I AM NOT SICK. I AM INSANE. BUT THAT WILL NOT STOP THE GAME.” Zodiac wrote: “why spoil our game!”

  Wednesday, November 30, 1966

  Allen received his first critique at Valley Springs School. “It might be better to refrain from drinking soda pop in the classroom,” his evaluator suggested, “and voice loudness needs to be refined.” Leigh’s personal characteristics were judged “satisfactory,” as were his classroom control and management. “Very excellent in use of Audio-Visual materials . . . needs to react with pupils so they can distinguish between friendliness and familiarity.”

  Friday, March 10, 1967

  The Valley Springs administrator delivered his second appraisal. “Leigh accepts criticism and suggestions easily, is open-minded and adaptable to new ideas,” it read. “I would suggest he take more care in his dress.”

  But Leigh would sometimes, when the black mood was upon him, lower his head to his desk in the classroom and murmur the word “Titwillow” over and over. This and his unwelcome advances against the eleven-andtwelve-year-old girls in his classes caused great fear. He would have the more developed girls bounce for him on his trampoline, then make unwelcome remarks. Two of the girls caught him spying on them at their grandmother’s house across the freeway from Allen’s home.

  It was morning, March or early April 1968, and classes at Valley Springs had already started, when the mother of one of Allen’s pupils stalked into the principal’s office. “Yesterday,” she said, “Mr. Allen had his hands all over my daughter right at his desk.” The principal, already suspicious, believed her immediately. He called and got a substitute teacher. When the substitute arrived, he called Allen out of his class and fired him on the spot. Allen started crying and sobbing. “Yes,” Leigh said, “I did it. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” As far as the principal was concerned, this was a “great big act.” Within days, Ron and Karen Allen drove to the school to apologize for Leigh’s behavior. They had been amazed he had gotten a job there in the first place.

  The official reason for Leigh’s termination was given as “improper conduct” and an “exaggeration o
f his teaching credentials.” Leigh filed his resignation and moved on, continuing to work with children.

  Sunday, April 30, 1967

  Six months later, in response to an article in the Sunday morning Press-Enterprise, Zodiac cruelly wrote the victim’s father, the Enterprise, and the police. His three handprinted letters, on lined, three-holed school paper of poor quality, measured eight inches wide. Standard writing paper was eight and one-half inches wide. His letters, like Zodiac’s letters, carried double postage, and like Leigh Allen’s personal letters to children, were in pencil.

  Friday, August 25, 1967

  “In the summer of 1967 Leigh and I went on a deer hunt north of the Bay Area,” Cheney told me. “I used to be an avid hunter, but I don’t hunt anymore. That was when I was growing up and that was what we did then. I didn’t go hunting with him often because I really didn’t think he was a superior hunting partner. I went a couple of times with him on a major deer hunt where we went and spent two or three days. A few other times we just went out for the day to hunt small game. He was all right to fish with, if you didn’t have to hike. He wasn’t that good on his feet. His feet hurt him. He had flat feet and was overweight; sometimes he had gout. As for weapons, I had a Winchester Model 88, .308 NATO cartridge, but I don’t remember what gun Leigh had. I didn’t have another large rifle to loan him at that time, and so he dug something up on his own. He got it from somewhere.

  “Just a couple blocks away from his house, nestled at the bottom of Fresno Street, was a pancake house. After the hunting trip, we were going someplace for an outing when we saw a girl there, a waitress. Leigh indicated that he was interested in her and asked what did I think of her. He thought he might make some headway with her. In all the time I had known him this was the only female he had ever mentioned, the only time I’d seen him show interest in a particular woman. He liked women, but they just didn’t like him. The waitress was young, pretty, with brown hair. I don’t remember her name and it was the only time Leigh mentioned her, the only time he mentioned a specific woman. That stuck in my mind.”

  Monday, September 4, 1967

  Allen began teaching at Camp La Honda YMCA at La Honda Gulch, never missing a day of work until Monday, February 5, 1968, when he skipped three days in a row. “Personal business,” he scrawled on his absentee slip, then thought better of it and altered it to read “school business” instead.

  Friday, June 7, 1968

  Allen left La Honda and for the next year toiled sporadically at Harry Wogan’s as a mechanic, at the Franklin School as a janitor, and at a host of other jobs in menial positions. He still found room for good times. “Ron and Leigh went to Mexico,” Cheney told me. “I heard this story secondhand from Ron. ‘Nasty Norm’ might have been along. They called him ‘Nasty Norm,’ a school nickname, because he had dark curly hair, a French look, kind of a low forehead, dark hair on his arms, sort of ape-looking guy. He was perfectly civilized, but he had that appearance. He and Leigh were skin-diving buddies, and I did a little skin diving with them when we visited Norm at Morro Bay on one trip and in Monterey, on another. At that time Leigh had a catamaran, a Catalina Cat, and he had a small awkward boat. In Mexico, Ron, Leigh, and possibly Norm caught some lobsters and talked a Mexican couple they met on the beach into cooking a big feast for them on the shore.” By October 6, 1969, Leigh was laboring part-time as a custodian at Elmer Cave School. It was there that Sergeant Lynch, dispatched by some still-unknown informant, questioned him as a suspect in the Zodiac murders.

  Monday, October 20, 1969

  Riverside Police Chief L. T. Kinkead and Detective Sergeant H. L. Homsher contacted Napa Sheriff Earl Randol and Captain Donald A. Townsend: “This letter is in reference to our telephone conversation of 10/17/69 regarding the similar M.O. of your ‘Zodiac’ suspect and the suspect of our homicide File No. 352-481:

  “One month after the homicide, letters were received at the Press and our department written by the suspect of our homicide. The suspect used a black felt pen to address the envelopes and had used upper case print. The confession letter was typed. There are numerous errors in spelling, punctuation, etc., as you will notice. The person who wrote the confession letter is aware of facts about the homicide that only the killer would know. There is no doubt that the person who wrote the confession letter is our homicide suspect. There are numerous similarities in your homicide and our Inv. 352-481. I thought you should be aware that we are working a similar-type investigation.”

  When the murderer disabled Bates’s car, he might have left prints. Unidentified latent prints were lifted off the vehicle and sent to the FBI, which marked the file #32-27195, Latent Case #73096. The SFPD rushed copies of their latents from the cab to the FBI for comparison. However, the partial prints did not match anyone in the case, and there had been innumerable suspects.

  Fear on the RCC campus had escalated. More open space had been cleared and bright lights installed. Joseph Bates secured a loan on his house to finance a reward for the capture of his daughter’s killer.

  Tuesday, October 21, 1969

  San Francisco newsmen still struggled to make sense of the case. “In all three cases,” a Chronicle interoffice Zodiac memo to reporter Mike Grieg read,

  “When there was a boy and a girl—Zodiac tried to kill both, got the girl all three times, but got the guy only the first time. There were 197 days between the first pair of killings and the second attempt; 84 days between the second and third tries; and 14 days between the last tries—they’re getting closer. Zodiac seems to strike exclusively on Fri. and Sat. nites—which makes it questionable how he’s going to get a school bus. Any pattern I have tried to draw is broken at least once. Horoscopes (at least those in the Chron) offer no clue. Capricorn is vaguely applicable except for the first murder. . . . I have been unable to find any statistical or numerological pattern here in about 2-3 hours work. . . . [Lake Berryessa victim] was stabbed more than 20 times with a 12-inch butcher’s knife, in the chest, back and abdomen—with many of the stabs coming in pairs, making Zodiac’s cross-hair mark.—[Marshall] Schwartz.”

  The last was not true.

  Over at the SFPD, professorial, pipe-smoking Bill Hamlet was hunched over a makeshift desk in the hallway. “We put a little partition around him so he wouldn’t be bothered,” said Toschi. “We were getting prints from all over the Bay Area and Northern California. He’s got his magnifying glasses on, he’s working off three-by-five cards. That’s all he was working on. If you get too many guys examining prints, you lose something.” But that cab print never matched anyone.

  Wednesday, December 31, 1969

  Zodiac’s periods of violent activity mirrored school-year vacation time and holidays—summertime, Columbus Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the Fourth of July. Leigh Allen’s revelations to Cheney had been imparted on New Year’s Day. Most of his time-consuming letters and codes were mailed during school vacations. Few occupations outside an elementary schoolteacher’s offered holidays off, plus an additional three months’ vacation. Zodiac’s activities fit the school year and hardly anything else.

  Zodiac had threatened to shoot children as they dashed from a disabled school bus. He promised to plant bombs that targeted the buses by their height and number of windows and detonated along school bus routes. “I feel that the odds are substantial that the killer is a public employee, possibly working for one of the schools,” theorized an expert. “His possible connection with a school or university, even if only as an area maintenance man, is open to speculation.”

  Though Leigh, at this time, was showing those closest to him cryptograms he kept concealed in a gray metal box, he never spoke of codes with Cheney. “No, absolutely not,” said Cheney. “Leigh never talked about codes, didn’t even work crossword puzzles, and at no time evidenced any interest in astrology. He liked to make up rhymes, however.”

  Friday, January 30, 1970

  Four Cal Poly at San Luis Obispo students provided a tip to the loca
l police, who passed it on to the FBI Identification Division. Their information was that a graduate of their university closely resembled the composite of Zodiac. “He owns 9-mm and .22-caliber handguns and frequently travels alone in San Francisco and frequently remote areas of the state,” they said. “He was absent from Cal Poly the weekend of the last murder.” During the time Zodiac was penning letters and committing a string of brutal murders, Allen was well settled in the Bay Area. However, if it was Leigh the four students were pinpointing, then he might still be making frequent southbound trips to his old alma mater. He tended to rove the Golden State, large blocks of his time unaccounted for, and this left his family wondering.