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

  “Now where was that description of Zodiac?” he thought. The two-year-old circular, No. 90-69, case No. 696134, buried under more recent wants, was still pinned to the bulletin board. The wanted poster showed not one, but two composite drawings of Zodiac. That in itself was unusual, thought Mulanax. Some new information had caused the police to alter the description. The three teenagers who had witnessed the murder of Yellow Cab driver and student Paul Lee Stine near San Francisco’s Presidio had at first estimated Zodiac to be “a white male with reddish or blond crew-cut hair, around twenty-five or thirty years of age and wearing glasses.”

  “Supplementing our Bulletin 87-69 of October 13, 1969,” read the second flier. “Additional information has developed the above amended drawing of the murder suspect known as ‘Zodiac.’” An adjusted written description now placed Zodiac’s age at thirty-five to forty-five years old. He was of “heavy build, approximately five-foot, eight-inches tall. Short brown hair, possibly with a red tint.” Mulanax checked Starr’s physical statistics. He was a White Male Adult, with light brown hair and clear brown eyes, thirty-seven years old, and weighing between 230 and 240 pounds. Mulanax noted Starr was five-eleven and three-quarter inches tall—almost six feet—and four inches taller than the circular’s estimate. Mulanax took into account that the kids were peering down from a second-floor window. The children had observed Zodiac waste precious time ripping off a portion of the cabbie’s shirt and squander more time walking around the cab, coolly rubbing the vehicle down and apparently drenching the fabric in blood.

  Zodiac must have been covered in blood himself. “In a head wound,” Toschi explained, “the person may or may not bleed profusely. When a person does not, it’s because the swelling brain has plugged the bullet hole. In the case of Paul Stine, the path of the bullet tore the vessels badly and destroyed one main blood vessel along the top of his head. He was killed with a contact wound [barrel against the skin] in front of his right ear. This type of wound usually destroys many blood vessels in the head and brain, causing extensive bleeding. From witnesses’ observations, Stine’s head was laying on Zodiac’s lap as he searched him, so when Zodiac made his escape he had to have extensive blood on his person.”

  Two Richmond District patrolmen, Donald A. Fouke and Eric Zelms of Richmond Station, got a better look that wild night, Columbus Day, October 11, 1969. Zodiac always earmarked holidays for his most vicious actions.

  Fouke and Zelms chanced upon Zodiac in the shadows as he “lumbered” north toward the heavily wooded Presidio. He later claimed he glibly sent the officers roaring off in the wrong direction, then sprinted through Julius Kahn Playground, vanishing near Letterman Hospital. Zodiac’s narrow escape permanently enraged him toward the SFPD—a fury approaching that of a rebuffed suitor. Days later the two officers realized they had passed Zodiac. “I felt so bad for Officer Fouke,” Toschi said. “He was afraid he was going to be reprimanded and that’s why he waited so long. ‘Why would they reprimand you?’ I reassured him. ‘No, you did the right thing in reporting it.’ This would have come out eventually because we heard the transmission tape and we were trying to find out which Richmond Station unit was circling the area. We wanted to talk to them and find out if they had touched the cab. We had to know who was in the area. And finally, they came forward quite some time after. It was kind of frustrating.

  “Transmission to radio cars that night was halting. Lots of pauses. Units circling the area kept saying, ‘How many suspects? How many suspects?’ Communications wasn’t responding. They were telling officers, ‘Stand by—we’re dealing with youngsters—stand by!’ These kids were scared stiff and they were all trying to talk on the phone at once, and Communications were trying to get a true picture of a suspect or how many suspects. They were relaying the location . . . ‘Victim appears to be DOA . . . ambulance responding . . . we’re trying to get a description of suspect . . . ’ And they said that several times. ‘We’re dealing with youngsters.’ And the officers in the radio car, trying to make an arrest, asked, ‘What’s the description . . . we’re responding . . . we’re close . . . we’re on Arguello [Avenue] . . . what’s the description?’

  “And finally, the misidentification of an African American by someone over the airwaves threw Fouke and his partner off. There was so much chatter going on because everyone figured it was a sloppy cab stickup gone wrong. The killer was supposedly seen on foot, and unfortunately a couple of words came over unintelligible and BMA blurted out when it should have been WMA. They are now assuming it’s a black suspect. Then—‘Correction . . . we now have further information . . . a Caucasian . . . short hair, glasses, husky, potbelly, black or blue windbreaker jacket . . . baggy pants . . . armed with a handgun . . . use caution, very dangerous, use caution if approaching.’ But in the meantime we were losing seconds and minutes. It was very exciting. I remember it as if it were last weekend.

  “Afterward, I decided to go talk to the fellow who took the call. He says, ‘Damn it, Dave. I got two or three kids who sound like teenagers and they’re screaming in the background. First I thought they were being hurt. I was trying to talk quietly. They kept saying, ‘Our parents are coming home . . . the driver looks like he’s dead in the cab and there’s a light on in the cab and they were fighting. Oh, please come, please come!’ I kept telling them, ‘Stay in the house.’ Which they did. You know how fast those black and whites need the radio information. We do our best, but when you’re dealing with children . . . I’ve got my own and I know . . . they’re scared to death and they know something’s wrong and they can see this body of the cabbie laying over on the side with the door open.’

  “There were Richmond units and Park Station units all responding. They all knew that Julius Kahn Playground is there and that’s part of the Presidio. If he goes in there, we’re probably going to lose him. From Arguello, Fouke and Zelms would have to make a right going north, then onto Washington. They were probably the only unit there and I’m convinced that they actually saw the Zodiac. Fouke was more of a veteran officer than Zelms. As senior officer, he was driving and got the better view of the stranger. Apparently Zelms didn’t think it was anything. And Fouke would have had the radio conversation. Things happened so quickly. And then you have no idea that three days later you realize you’re dealing with the most dangerous serial killer in the country.

  “That cab was out of there long before the Fire Department arrived. All we wanted from them was a special smoke-eater unit for searchlight only. Coming up the hill from Arguello was an Army unit with large searchlight trucks. We had gone over everything and I told [Bill] Kirkindal and [Bob] Dagitz, ‘Get the cab out of here. The body’s gone.’ Neighbors were kind of leaning in. I had to ask two or three uniform guys, ‘Don’t let anybody near the taxi, guys, please.’ I had Dagitz follow the tow to the Hall of Justice. They put the cab in the impound room and started work on it in the morning.”

  The officers’ modified second sketch made Zodiac fuller-faced, older. But an amended written description, including details in an important interdepartmental memorandum submitted by Fouke a month after the shooting, November 12, 1969, was never added to the wanted circular. Fouke’s more accurate depiction languished within SFPD’s eight drawers of files on Zodiac. It is crucial enough to quote in full:

  “Sir: I respectfully wish to report the following, that while responding to the area of Cherry and Washington Streets a suspect fitting the description of the Zodiac killer was observed by officer Fouke,” he wrote, “walking in an easterly direction on Jackson street and then turn north on Maple street. This subject was not stopped as the description received from communications was that of a Negro male. When the right description was broadcast reporting officer informed communications that a possible suspect had been seen going north on Maple Street into the Presidio, the area of Julius Kahn playground and a search was started which had negative results. The suspect that was observed by officer Fouke was a WMA 35-45 Yrs about five-foot, ten inches, 180-200
pounds. Medium heavy build—Barrel chested—Medium complexion—Light-colored hair possibly greying in rear (May have been lighting that caused this effect.) Crew cut—wearing glasses—Dressed in dark blue waist length zipper type jacket (Navy or royal blue) Elastic cuffs and waist band zipped part way up. Brown wool pants pleeted [sic] type baggy in rear (Rust brown) May have been wearing low cut shoes. Subject at no time appeared to be in a hurry walking with a shuffling lope, Slightly bent forward. The subjects general appearance—Welsh ancestry. My partner that night was officer E. Zelms #1348 of Richmond station. I do not know if he observed this subject or not. Respectfully submitted. Donald A. Fouke, Patrolman, Star 847.”

  “I remember Officer Fouke telling us the composite drawing was not nearly as accurate as we originally thought with the children,” Toschi told me. Within the homicide division the wanted poster was changed to read “five feet eleven inches” tall. “That Zodiac was rounder-faced, bigger. When you think back to Fouke’s verbal description the word ‘lumbering’ sounds like a gorilla, for God’s sake.” As years passed, Fouke altered his estimate of Zodiac’s weight upward to 230-240 pounds and calculated his height at six feet or six feet one. He eventually recalled the low-cut shoes as engineering boots and the jacket as “dirty.” “Zodiac,” he said to a television producer, was “walking toward us at an average pace, turned when he saw us, and walked into a private residence [on Jackson Street].”

  Toschi disagreed. “Zodiac disappeared,” he said. “‘Into the brush, somewhere in the park,’ is what Fouke said, not into a residence, not whatsoever. Fouke clocked the encounter at no more than five to ten seconds. We felt that Zelms and Fouke had stopped Zodiac, and did everything we could to keep it quiet so they wouldn’t be hurt by the police commission or embarrassed. I remember I talked to Don [Fouke] on the side. He was all teary-eyed. ‘Jesus Christ, Dave, my God, it was the guy,’ he said. I said, ‘Yeah, it was, Don, but he could’ve killed you so easy. If you had gotten out of your vehicle, unassuming, he could have blown you and Eric [Zelms] away. You gotta consider that.’ We had them do a sketch, sent our sketch artist out there, and got the composite.”

  “I interviewed the one surviving member of that duo there in the 1990s,” George Bawart told me later. “One guy was dead and the other was still working for SFPD. He was working Juvenile or something and he wasn’t real happy about being interviewed. It was not the high point of his career and he didn’t want to talk about it. Who could blame him.”

  Vallejo Detective Sergeant John Lynch too was obsessed with how close Zodiac had come to being captured. “The way I heard the thing,” he told me, “is that when they were talking to him a call came on the radio that they were looking for a black man, and [they] let this guy go and he disappeared into the Presidio. I don’t believe he was covered with blood. You know, in the murder of a cabdriver you can almost bet your boots the cops came out of that squad car with their guns in their hands. You’d have to. They waited so long to tell their chief because they were probably shook up over that.”

  Twelve days before, there may have been a dry run for the Stine shooting. At 11:00 P.M., September 30, 1969, Yellow Cab driver Paul Hom snagged a fare at the Mark Hopkin’s Hotel. The passenger asked to be driven to Washington and Locust Streets, three blocks before Washington and Cherry Streets. At the destination, he asked Hom to continue along Washington to Arguello Boulevard, then proceed north into the Presidio for several hundred yards. Abruptly, he pulled a long-barreled revolver and robbed Hom of $35 in cash. The cabbie, forced into the trunk, pleaded with the robber to spare his life. Later he was released, unharmed, by M.P’s. After Stine’s murder, Captain Marty Lee, basing his conclusion on an “amazing similarity of M.O. between criminals in two cabby cases,” said he believed the robber to have been Zodiac. The Chronicle thought so too. “One of the luckiest men alive,” it reported, “taken for a ride by Zodiac, but lived to tell about it.” One discrepancy could not be explained. Hom’s robber was only twenty-four, “135 pounds with black hair and eyes,” and dressed in “blue denim jacket and dark slacks.” But Zodiac was undeniably a stocky, older man. Did he have a young accomplice who had scouted out the scene for him, rehearsing the Stine killing? Was that where the answer lay?

  Mulanax would never see Fouke’s internal SFPD communication and upward estimate of Zodiac’s height and weight. Virtually no one did. He replaced the wanted poster with a mistaken conception of the killer’s appearance and an uncomfortable sense it did not entirely fit their new suspect. The Vallejo detective also never knew that Starr had an odd way of striding. “When walking he was terribly lumbering,” Starr’s friend told me later. “He had a funny hip [his leg was lacerated so badly in August of 1965 that plastic surgery had been required].” One common link was the description of Zodiac as an unusually round-faced man. “Could Zodiac’s round, bloated face be indicative of fluid retention from a developing health problem?” I asked a nurse. “Such as failing kidneys?” she answered. “Yes, very definitely.”

  Mulanax next learned that the suspect had been arrested June 15, 1958, for a violation of 415 P.C., disturbing the peace. It was a minor blip in his record, but one that had disastrous ramifications later on. As Mulanax put away the file folder, he saw that Starr had been a victim or a witness to several other incidents. Additionally, suspicions existed about his improper relationships with children.

  “Not a nice boy,” Mulanax thought.

  The detective wanted to be prepared before the arrival of the “Zodiac Twins”—as the papers had dubbed Armstrong and Toschi. He phoned CI&I for a more detailed rap sheet, then buzzed the Department of Motor Vehicles for a photo. “Susan, that’s California Driver’s License #B672352,” he repeated for Susan Raspino. While she processed his request, Mulanax left the office to check out the residence Starr shared with his widowed mother. It was cooler that day. Prevailing winds through the Golden Gate kept the town’s climate a little warmer in winter and a little cooler in summer than other Bay Area cities. Mulanax turned off Tennessee Street and swung by Fresno Street.

  Starr’s home, hunched on the east side of the street, was sun-bleached brown and shone pinkish-gray where diagonal slashes of light cut across it. The numerals “32,” affixed in a metal frame on the facade, stood out stark black against white. A 1957 blue and white Ford sedan, parked in front and hooked to a boat trailer, caught Mulanax’s eye. He slowed and jotted down the license number—LDH 974. DMV verified it was registered to Starr, who also owned a two-seat Austin Healey, a VW, and a white Buick. A driveway led back to a detached two-door garage where a white 1965 Mercedes 220SB was parked. Mulanax had already learned that the suspect had formerly been employed as an attendant at Harry Wogan’s Service Station. An auto repair job such as that would have made many cars left overnight for repair available to Starr.

  The sergeant reached the end of the block, made a U-turn at Illinois Street, and cruised back by the house. He took one last critical look, then spoke with Wogan. The service station owner told Mulanax that Starr had left his employment in 1970. “He said he was thinking of returning to school at Sonoma State College in Cotati,” replied Wogan. This was true. Starr had begun working toward a degree in biology in the fall of 1970. Though Starr, according to his former boss, had been an efficient worker, he had shown too much interest in small children. Wogan had three small children himself and they sometimes came around the station. “That worried me,” he said. “I wasn’t sorry to see him go.” That seemed to be the way with Starr’s many employers. “They had him working at a school as some sort of custodian,” Mulanax told me later. “I was infuriated because I felt he should have been arrested.”

  At the start of summer, Starr had dropped by Wogan’s home and picked up his thirteen-year-old daughter. “How would you like to go for a ride with me on my boat?” he had asked. The youngster had accepted without her parents’ consent. The girl returned to relate that Starr had made “improper advances” toward her. After this, Wogan had not seen
his employee again or wanted to.

  Sergeant Mulanax believed much of the interest pedophiles had in small children came from having absolute power over another individual, reducing them to objects—a trait Zodiac and almost every serial killer shared. “When Zodiac had hog-tied his victims at Lake Berryessa,” he told me, “he had had complete power, had reduced them in his mind to mere objects, and especially wore his homemade executioner’s costume for the occasion.” Perhaps Zodiac had hoped someone might glimpse his frightening outfit and incite more terror in an already terrified community. But he could hardly have hoped his victims would survive to tell the tale. Had he shown himself to someone else, as yet unknown?

  Zodiac’s threats to blow up school buses and shoot children inspired as much fear as his costume. Mulanax recalled armed sentinels—off-duty teachers, drivers, and firemen, riding shotgun on school buses. Napa P.D., the jurisdiction of the Berryessa stabbings, assigned more than seventy police units to follow the buses, and fixed-wing guard planes trailed hawklike behind them. People peeked behind their doors and gave second, even third glances to cars gliding along the freeways and back roads at night. Zodiac was the twentieth-century version of the Bogeyman.

  To obtain more samples of Starr’s handprinting, Mulanax drove to 1660 Tennessee Street, where Starr maintained a checking account at Crocker-Citizens Bank. He arranged to get photostats of recent canceled checks connected to account #546-1685-48. He had considered borrowing the originals (since Starr had ordered the bank not to return them), but decided against it. He saw one draft was to a man named Phil Tucker. Another, dated July 20, 1971, was a $9.00 check to R. G. Black-wood for a 44-gallon cooler. A third showed a June 4 payment made out to Tall Trees Trailer Court. The notation said: “Storage Rental.” Mulanax dispatched all three samples to Morrill for analysis without giving much consideration to what Starr might be storing in a trailer court. He had many trailers.