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

  On Monday, August 8, 1994, my phone rang. “There’s a third Zodiac,” Pete Noyes, a Los Angeles television newsman, told me. “A story out of New York is that another person claiming to be the Zodiac Killer has written to the Post describing a series of new shootings.”

  “Another or the old one back again?” I said. “A third Zodiac—a copycat of a copycat? What do they think?”

  “They say they don’t want to say.” He read me the AP report:

  “‘This is the Zodiac.’ Those words, in a childlike scrawl, became the trademark greeting of a killer who filled the New York summer of 1990 with dread. Now after years of silence, the Zodiac killer may be back. In 1990, the Zodiac vowed to kill one person for each of the twelve astrological signs . . . then abruptly quit. This week [August 1, 1994], the New York Post got a similar note from someone claiming to be the Zodiac, and detectives are trying to determine whether the letter writer is the killer or a copycat. The letter writer claims responsibility for five shootings that police said left at least two people dead between August 10, 1992 and June 11 of this year. All of the attacks took place in the general area of the 1990 shooting. . . .”

  Kieran Crowley phoned right after Noyes. “It’s four o’clock in New York right now and it’s happening again,” he said, “another Zodiac. He’s shot five people. Remember four years ago? This Zodiac claims to be the original guy who killed all four. Obviously there are these points of agreement between the letters and the original Zodiac. . . . Do you think it’s possible he’s taken on the persona, might think he’s the real Zodiac?”

  “When this imitator came out for the first time,” I said, “my mother suggested I say in the press that this guy is not Zodiac. When I did he stopped. Who knows, maybe he really believed he was the San Francisco Zodiac. Or maybe he didn’t mean to kill his victims, only wound them. When Proce died, he ceased killing.”

  “It’s obvious to me that he’s read your book. He does a box score. He claims four victims four years ago, five now—a total of nine. The police confirmed that the guy in this shooting—they got one ballistics match—a .22-caliber—which was like Zodiac.”

  “Zodiac used a .22 in his first Northern California murder.”

  “Do you think he’s using your book as a Bible? As far as I can tell he is.”

  “I feel awful. My purpose in writing the book was to catch Zodiac or get so close that he was stalemated. I think we succeeded. San Francisco’s Zodiac was effectively checkmated. With publication of his story and all the clues, with enhanced police scrutiny, we had no more murders, no more letters.”

  Few killers had copied a novel, duplicating fictional crimes or M.O. in real life. A few instances of fact following fiction: Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse inspired a crime. A mass murderer who escaped from an asylum used her book as a guide to commit aconite poisonings. J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye has shown up in the hands of a number of madmen—Hinckley, Bardo (who shot actress Rebecca Shafer). Former Berkeley mathematics professor Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, copied the plot and philosophy laid out in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, about a professor who is a bomber. I knew of no non-fiction books inspiring real-life crimes. I mentioned an article on the subject, “A Writer’s Nightmare,” to Crowley.

  “And it’s a writer’s nightmare for you,” said Crowley. “That somebody studied your book—that’s horrible. For you, this is like twice—what the police don’t know is if it’s the same guy or not. Which is scarier—that it is the same guy who came back or if it’s two different ones?”

  “Two people that unbalanced and suggestible?”

  “Confidentially,” said Crowley, “we believe it still may be the guy from four years ago. The descriptions sort of match—I’ll get back to you on that.”

  Next day, he told me about a new Zodiac cipher in the Post. “If you put a hand mirror on the left side of the symbols you can see how he created his new alphabet. They look like normal naval flags, but they’re not. I and a former Army cryptographer decoded his message. I’ll read it to you . . . let me give you the exact wording. One of the reasons I was able to crack it open—turns out they’re mirror image naval signal flags [based on a maritime system of International Flags and Pennants]—almost all of them. We didn’t know that. We did the standard code-breaking stuff. The symbols were doubled in the horizontal plane, in something known as a ‘looking glass’ alphabet code. It was likely created by placing a small mirror on the left side of each naval flag symbol. He says, ‘This is the Zodiac Speaking, I am in control through mastery. Be ready for more. Your’s truly.’ Obviously, there are different points of agreement between the letters of the original Zodiac. . . . The police have confirmed they’ve got one ballistic match—.22-caliber, which was what Zodiac used. The description is not a black guy but that of a dark-skinned Latino.”

  “That’s very different than the original description,” I said. “The new one could still be Zodiac III.” Retired NYPD Detectives Al Sheppard and James Tedaldi suspected this was Zodiac III—he did not stalk his victims as he had done in 1990, but chose them at random. The 1990 Zodiac had a pattern of attacking on Thursdays and in increments of twenty-one and when certain star clusters were visible in the sky. The latest Zodiac did not follow any pattern. The old Zodiac aimed for his victims’ torsos, the new aimed for the head. But both admitted there were enough similarities that it could be the same man.

  “August the fifth,” Mike Ciravolo told me, “I get a call saying, ‘Zodiac shot people. He’s writing notes. It checks out. He’s out there again. What was incredible about 1990 was [Zodiac] has all four victims’ astrological signs on paper. To this day it is unknown how that happened. What we did was we developed profiles on the four victims that we had back then. What did they have in common? Did they go to the same drugstore to get their prescriptions filled? Do they go to the same barbershop? Do they have a library card for the same branch? Any common thread that we could develop. And do you know what? No. There was just nothing in common with the four of them. Are they all on welfare? No, they weren’t. The only thing they did have in common is that there was something wrong with all of them. The first guy walked with a terrible limp. He had some sort of birth defect. The second guy was drunk—he was unconscious—passed out on the sidewalk in front of his house. The third guy was a seventy-eight-year-old man who used to go wandering around in the middle of the night. He had his days and nights mixed up. He was a little senile. The fourth one was asleep in Central Park on a park bench.”

  “He picked the helpless to shoot,” I said.

  “But this guy here in 1994 is hitting women as well as men. This guy’s stabbing. Which is a lot more indicative of your guy out there than our guy. That’s what gives me the creeps about this. I think the 1990 guy and the 1994 guy is one and the same. Now it’s starting to lean that way . . . they called me at seven o’clock in the morning and asked me all these questions on television. I had about fifteen minutes to read about it in three newspapers and go on the air. At that time my gut feeling tells me it’s not the same guy I investigated in 1990. But now I’ve had a little time to see that note and go over it. The handwriting isn’t the same, but when you’re dealing with someone who’s so psychotic—his medication could be changed. He could have just thrown the pen in his other hand. We have two matching thumbprints on those 1990 letters, and you know the New York City police department has the FACES System—a computerized fingerprint matchup system. The latent-print examiners used to have to do it by hand. Now if you’ve ever been arrested, your print is in the system. If you get a latent print off a letter you can match it. There’s one detective assigned to just that—he has the prints from the Zodiac in 1990 and he continuously puts it into the computer. There were over 3600 reports prepared on the case. Everything went onto computer. If your name came up early on in the investigation, and now here it is four months later, another detective is interviewing someone and that name comes up. Boom! It would match and you’d be ab
le to cross-reference and report, ‘Hey, this guy looks interesting. An independent person told us two months ago about a certain person in the Bronx. Now someone in Brooklyn is mentioning the same name as a possibility. Some bells would go off.”

  “Exactly what they should have done with Zodiac,” I said, thinking of Lynch and Mulanax’s individual reports on Leigh Allen. Neither knew of the other’s questioning. We still didn’t know who had been the original tipster who suspected Allen, the man or woman who directed the police to his door. Once more I flew to New York, wondering if there was something in the original case that might identify Zodiac II. Retired Detective Sergeant Mike Race, Kieran Crowley, and I were on the Rolanda show. The mix of the cerebral—cops and authors—and the passionate—victims’ mothers and families—never really jells. What can you say after a mother has talked about losing her child? “In his coded message,” Crowley said, “Zodiac said, ‘I am in control.’ I’d like him to prove it by sending another message, before he hurts anyone else, because I think it’s time for this to move on to the next phase.” Crowley’s story headlined “MANIAC GOES BY THE BOOK,” appeared in the Post August 9. Under a reproduction of the cover was the caption: “How-to manual, the real-life crime story that may have inspired Zodiac II.” Crowley wrote:“The Zodiac killer may be using a 1986 book about the original San Francisco Zodiac killer as his guide. Robert Graysmith wrote the best-seller “Zodiac” about the hooded killer who terrorized the Bay Area for years beginning in 1968. . . . Four years ago, Graysmith went through a similar experience when a New York gunman calling himself Zodiac began his shooting spree.”

  On August 12, 1994, police concluded that the new communication was from Zodiac II. He had demonstrated “intimate knowledge” of the assaults—time, place, ages, and genders of the five victims, location of wounds, and caliber of guns (a .22 in four instances and a .380 in a fifth). Some details matched; not all. One victim had been stabbed, not shot. Patricia Fonte was knifed over a hundred times. “We’re puzzled,” said Borrelli, “but we’re fairly sure it’s not a hoax.” Psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers said of Zodiac’s return: “This is somebody who is totally powerless and who is finding power through publicity. His fantasy is to master the world because he can’t control his own life. He wants to be in control. That is his fantasy. He probably does not have a family or anyone who loves him.” A Bellevue Hospital forensic psychiatrist, Michael Welner, said, “There is this sense of being a hunter. He is trying to create intrigue with codes. He wants to be glamorous because he’s a loser . . . there is an element of sadism about him. I think he’s very interested in getting attention . . . it’s very cowardly.”

  Two years would pass. On Tuesday, June 18, 1996, a few minutes past noon, “The Vampire,” distraught his teenage sister was running with a bad crowd, shotgunned her. A 911 call—“a female shot in the leg, Pitkin Avenue”—summoned New York paramedics. Moments later, an ambulance squealed to a stop at the U-shaped front of 2730 Pitkin. Medics piled out, leaving the engine racing. They started for the third-floor apartment. “The shooter is still up there,” cautioned a neighbor—a shot whizzed over their heads. “We kissed the concrete just as we heard that first shot,” said paramedic Chris DeLuca. Lead ripped jagged holes into the ambulance; other shots ricocheted off the sidewalk. Chunks of brick flew. “Get down! Down flat!” More bullets, punctuated by brilliant muzzle flashes, hammered from the upper window. At P.S. 159 across the street, students cried and ducked for cover. Cops, guns drawn, converged on Pitkin Avenue and cordoned off a nine-block area. For the next three and one-half hours, their bullets, with machine gun-like rapidity, answered “The Vampire’s.” Bullets cut from above in a murderous arc, chipping masonry and pinning down four officers. Cops in helmets and flak jackets wheeled a metal shield toward the building as the Emergency Service Unit vehicle, armored with bullet-proof gear, moved in to rescue the four men.

  Sergeant Joseph Herbert, a fifteen-year police veteran, soft-spoken and neat, negotiated with the shooter from the street below. “I think I will surrender,” the shooter shouted, weary of prolonged battle. From the roof police lowered a yellow flower bucket to the apartment. “Turn over any weapons,” they ordered. He filled the bucket three times—thirteen homemade guns, Saturday night specials, dozens of rounds of ammo, seven hunting and military-type knives, and a machete. The siege ended shortly after 4:00 P.M. and “The Vampire,” Heriberto “Eddie” Seda, was arrested. Inside Seda’s room were two fully constructed pipe bombs and a third under construction. An unexploded bomb matched three recently left in a Brooklyn parking lot. His library was what they had been told to look for.15 Serial killers often read about others to avoid the same pitfalls that got them caught.

  Seda admitted to shooting his half sister in a written confession. At the bottom of the page he drew an inverted cross crowned by three sevens. “It just jumped out of the page,” Herbert said. “I nearly fell off my chair. It was the handwriting! The t’s the s’s the m’s, the way he underlined certain letters. That, coupled with the symbol of the inverted cross, made me realize this was Zodiac. I immediately recognized it. . . . I had studied it for two years.” The symbols linked Seda with drawings made six years earlier by Zodiac II, who had left a thumbprint on the lower right corner of his first letter. Herbert summoned Detective Ronald Alongis, from the NYPD latent-print unit, and asked him to bring a set of prints to headquarters for comparison. Alongis had memorized the ridges and swirls Zodiac left on two notes.

  About 8:30 P.M., he scanned the prints through a magnifying glass. His eyes got bright, then excited. At 1:20 A.M., after six hours of interrogation, Seda signed a confession to all nine Zodiac attacks, claiming to have been overcome by “urges” to strike randomly. Only by chance had Zodiac II appeared to know some of his victim’s astrological signs. “I just wanted to increase the fear in the city,” he said.

  Zodiac detectives were surprised. “We thought that he lived alone because if he lived with someone, we figured they would have eventually given him up.” Ballistics and saliva tests further linked Seda to the Zodiac shootings. He had licked an envelope flap and “Love” postage stamps. Seda had stopped shooting people after 1994 because he “lost the urge.” On Wednesday, June 24, 1998, a jury deliberated less than a day before convicting the thirty-year-old high school dropout of three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. A month later, the New York Zodiac was sentenced to eighty-three years in prison. “You’re going to die in jail,” said Judge Robert J. Hanophy. “The Zodiac never lied to us,” Ciravolo concluded. “That’s the saddest thing.” Back in fog-shrouded San Francisco no one suspected a third copycat was yet to come. Zodiac III’s murders would be terrifying.

  The hunt for the original Zodiac went on. Besides Belli the attorney, he had mentioned two other people in his letters. One in code, “Robert Emmett the Hippie,” the other Count Marco Spinelli. Was Zodiac’s letter a hidden message to someone named “Spinelli” and could we find a “Spinelli” who had a connection to Leigh Allen?

  27

  the big tip

  Friday, December 14, 1990

  Ralph Spinelli, lying in a cell on his fiftieth birthday, sweated into the thin mattress. Jim Overstreet, San Jose P.D., had arrested him as a suspect in at least nine armed robberies of restaurants. Spinelli knew he could be prosecuted as a career criminal. He had been arrested in Oregon in 1972 for a series of armed robberies of restaurants and served two years of a ten-year sentence in a prison there. Facing a thirty-year sentence, he suggested to Overstreet that he had something to trade. In jail, cigarettes, sex, and secrets were three prized commodities. “The best kind of informant is a two-time loser forty-five to fifty who knows if he goes up one more time he’s gong to die in the can,” said a detective. “When he turns to us, he has nowhere else to go—he becomes as zealous as a cop.” The cops had a “twist,” a hammer, on Spinelli and he was “working his beef.”

  “I know the real name of Zodiac,” Spinelli said finally.
It was his ace.

  Spinelli began to talk in hushed tones and rapid cadence. But for all he said, it was just enough to get Overstreet on the hook. Overstreet realized Spinelli might be inventing a story—a very good chance of that. However, he could not ignore what might be a valid tip. Zodiac was the biggest case there was. He left a message for retired Detective Bawart and Bawart rang him right back. “Spinelli is currently incarcerated in the Santa Clara County jail,” advised Overstreet. “He won’t divulge what information he has regarding Zodiac unless some kind of deal is made regarding the present charges against him.” Bawart sighed. He had heard such claims about Zodiac before. “I’ll get back to you,” he replied, and called Conway.

  “There was this guy Spinelli living in San Jose,” Bawart told me later, “pulled a bunch of stickups and they caught him and he said, ‘Get ahold of Vallejo P.D. I’ll tell you all about a case they’re real interested in.’ They called us, and Conway and I went down and interviewed him on his birthday.” Vallejo Police Captain Roy Conway already knew Spinelli. His name had been prominent in the Vallejo area during the forties, fifties, and sixties. Connections with organized crime were suspected.

  Conway, a Vallejo police officer since 1965, had worked with Mulanax, since retired. He was presently commander of the Investigation Division, but the night Ferrin was murdered and Mageau terribly wounded, he had been a sergeant and he and Richard Hoffman had been the first policemen at the scene. Conway personally verified the authenticity of descriptions Zodiac mailed to the press back in 1969. He believed Zodiac had committed those shootings. An anonymous phone call to the Vallejo P.D. had been made from a phone booth near Arthur Leigh Allen’s home and near where Tucker kept his car.