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

  I sat at my regular table in the front window and watched a light-rail car glide by. I recognized the two inspectors immediately as they crawled from their car and entered the cafe. Adkins, tall, broad-shouldered, and energetic, had a bruise on his left cheek from a fight he had just had with a suspect. Vince Repetto, older and more world-weary than his partner, squeezed into a chair. I soon wished they had canceled the meeting. Something had changed in the last hour.

  The previous day Adkins and Repetto had gotten DNA results. Genetic markers on a Zodiac letter (they wouldn’t say which one) had matched Allen’s DNA! However, a call to Repetto after our conversation revealed a second run had showed no match. “I heard this bit of news just before I picked up Rich,” he said.

  Zodiac, with his knowledge of chemistry, even in the late sixties and early seventies, would hardly have been so foolish as to lick an envelope or stamp. While no such thing as DQ-Alpha DNA18 testing existed back then, blood and saliva typing procedures did. In 1976, Dr. Richard Waller drew up the testing procedures and serology guidelines for secretor samples for the state crime lab in Santa Rosa. Genetic markers, a series of complex, energy-releasing molecules and enzymes present within the fluids of each individual’s body, could be lifted from stains. They could be analyzed by various high-tech serological tests. ABO testing involved long-lasting, stable molecules, and PGM testing dealt with more perishable enzymes. Secretor samples found in ABO existed in saliva, semen, and blood.

  Could the DNA false positive have come from a close relation? Had Allen had his mother lick the envelope for him? If so, under what pretext? Or had we been wrong all along? Toschi, Mulanax, Lundblad, Adkins, and Repetto and all the rest had believed that Zodiac was Arthur Allen. So did I. But Allen did not match the handwriting, did not lick the letter they had tested, and had passed a lie-detector test, albeit in a drugged state. What could be the answer? I thought back to the possibility of two Zodiacs working as partners, an idea that Bawart had considered. Now I had the unpleasant task of telling Toschi about the meeting. He was crestfallen.

  “Tuesday,” said Toschi, “they told me they were about a month away from hearing anything positive. I feel sorry for them. They were obviously positive in what was going on. Now one phone call that says no, it deflates you. It’s a step backward.”

  “I remember Allen lamenting in 1975,” I said, “that he hoped Zodiac would write a letter while he was at Atascadero to prove he wasn’t Zodiac. If a confederate was writing the letters for him, why wouldn’t he do so? The results of that DNA test is something I didn’t see coming.” I looked at my phone. From 1986 through 1991 I had gotten a steady stream of breathing and hang-up calls. They had stopped with Allen’s death. I almost missed them.

  Sunday, February 16, 1997

  “I spoke with Inspector Repetto,” I told Bawart.

  “I know him,” Bawart said. “Vince runs his own private security outfit. They had him assigned to this thing after Deasy. Deasy was handling it for the longest time out of the Pawn Detail. Then they turned it over to this Vince. Of course, he had his other cases to work within SFPD.”

  “SFPD got DNA results two days ago.” I said. “And it came up it could be Allen. But by the time they got back to me—less than an hour, they had gotten a second report that said the sample didn’t match Zodiac. Can you think of anyone who might have written the letters for Allen?”

  “You know, we even compared Cheney’s handwriting,” said Bawart. “And Sandy Panzarella and Ron Allen, a pretty straitlaced guy.”

  “Robert Emmett was teaching school in Germany when the letters stopped. I’m thinking they might want to test his DNA.”

  “This is something that Conway had pressed for before he retired,” said Bawart. “As for the samples on Allen, I don’t know where San Francisco would have gotten them. I have the Vallejo coroner holding that stuff and he’s supposed to notify me if and when they get a request from San Francisco. I haven’t heard anything. Maybe Allen had his dog licking his stamps. . . .”

  “No, it was human DNA,” I said. I mentioned Andrew Todd Walker,19 the third important suspect in the case.

  “I don’t dislike Walker,” said Bawart. “I just don’t think there’s enough definitive information on him to make it really viable. These guys [a Naval Intelligence officer and two CHP officers] pursue it as a hobby and that’s wonderful. They apparently have gone to the expense of stealing some of his silverware. They paid for a DNA check, at least they told me they did. They have Walker’s DNA. You know, I’ll bet you Walker and I bet you this guy that Harvey Hines likes—I bet you both of them, just to get everything off their backs, would submit to a DNA test.”

  “Well, sure. I sat down with Morrill in the seventies. He studied some of Leigh’s printing I got from Ace Hardware. It’s looks fine—the three-stroke k, all the rest. If they’re going to run a genetic test, then they should at least do all of the suspects.”

  “I just wish that back in ’71-’72 Toschi and Armstrong would have followed up further. I wish they’d searched the home. I talked to Prouty, who was a handwriting analyst who worked at DOJ that worked under Morrill. And Prouty said he was losing it toward the end. I looked at that [desktop printing] stuff and I couldn’t make it [as Zodiac writing]. He died shortly after his retirement. I’m not sure Repetto or Adkins have ever viewed any of my reports . . . but nobody’s pounding on their door. Stine’s family isn’t there every day saying what are you doing about the death of my husband, son, or whatever. And the same thing happens in Vallejo. The Ferrin family’s not pounding on the door. It’s the old adage—the squeaky wheel gets the oil. I don’t blame Vince at all. He’s probably got a half-dozen cases where people are pounding on his door.”

  All in all it had been a stunning development. Lieutenant Tom Bruton, SFPD homicide investigator, called me. He had inherited the Zodiac case, an heirloom passed down from generation to generation. Bruton wondered if I could provide some originals of the missing letters.

  “Well, what do you have missing?” I asked.

  “The three-part-cipher letter,” he replied. That would have been the first Zodiac letter San Francisco had received.

  “I have FBI reproductions of that. Would that do?”

  “No. We thought maybe the original had been passed on to you. Kathleen Johns said that she received a second Zodiac Halloween card and mailed it on to you. Do you have that?”

  “No. She means Paul Avery. However, you’re welcome to anything I have. I want to see this thing solved.” We spoke for a while longer, and then I thought to ask a favor of my own. “I’ve been thinking about that DNA test done on Allen and I have two questions.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “First, where did they get a sample of Allen’s genetic material? He was buried in 1992.”

  “We got it from the Vallejo coroner. They kept a sample of brain fluid or a brain fragment that they’d kept refrigerated.”

  “That clears that up.”

  “And the second point?”

  “Which letter did they test?” I had in mind one of the early letters that contained squares of Paul Stine’s shirt. That bloodstained swatch would authenticate the sender as Zodiac.

  “We used the 1978 letter,” he said.

  “The forgery?”

  Once, I had believed in that letter. But in 1978 one thing had troubled me. “Excluding Zodiac’s greeting cards, desktop, and car door, his handprinted communications have all been written on 7½-inch-by-10-inch bond in letter-sized envelopes. The 1978 letter was on 8½-inch-by- 11-inch bond in a legal-sized envelope.” I knew now that not only was the 1978 letter a fake, but the SFPD knew it.

  “What are the chances of a second test using one of the older letters?” I asked.

  Bruton said nothing.

  I called Toschi. He asked incredulously why they didn’t test a letter that contained a swatch of Stine’s shirt. “Since they wanted to know if I had any original letters,” I said, “I suspect they’ve either misp
laced some or they’ve been stolen. The truth is, there’s not enough DNA on the remaining letters for them to evaluate. They had tested for saliva in 1969-71 and found none. Only the 1978 fake had enough cells for a test.” The SFPD later prepared a chart of available Zodiac DNA:“Zodiac letters and envelopes for 10/13/69, ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—FEW CELLS. 11/8/69 Card: ‘Sorry I haven’t written’ Pen dripping, ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—FEW CELLS. 12/20/69, Contained piece of cloth from Stine’s shirt (per keel), ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—FEW CELLS. 4/20/70 ‘My name is . . . ’ (Cipher), ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—FEW CELLS. 4/28/70, Card: (Sorry to hear . . . ) ‘Blast . . . Buttons . . . ’ ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—FEW CELLS. 6/26/70 Handwritten note & map: ‘I shot a man with a .38 . . . ’ ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—FEW CELLS.”

  The lab found some cells in these communications:“Handwritten note: 7/24/70 ‘Woman & baby in car . . . ’ ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—CELLS FOUND. 7/26/70 ’I will torture my 13 slaves waiting in paradice,’ ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—CELLS FOUND. 1/29/74 ‘saw the Exorcist,’ ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—CELLS FOUND.”

  Among the lost and unprocessed by the lab were these:The 11/9/69 handwritten note: “This is the Zodiac Speaking,—LOCATION OF ENVELOPE UNK.” Also apparently missing were the original three letters and ciphers of 7/31/69, the letter of 8/7/69, the 10/27/70 Halloween Card, the 3/13/71 “Blue Meanies” letter to Times, the 3/22/71 postcard, “Sought Victim 12,” the 5/8/74 note signed “a citizen” and the 7/8/74 “Red Phantom” letter.

  The report concluded with the tested letter: “4/24/78 Handwritten note ‘that city pig Toschi . . . ’ DNA SAMPLE OBTAINED/NOT AUTHENTIC ZODIAC LETTER.”

  Arthur Leigh Allen had not been ruled out as the Zodiac after all. Soon after Zodiac returned from the grave.

  36

  zodiac III

  Sunday, March 16, 1997

  After Zodiac II, no one ever expected Zodiac’s murders to be emulated again. A Zodiac copycat had been horrific—a third Zodiac, inconceivable. But for a third time the killer’s undying persona reached out to bring death, this time some three thousand miles away. Kobe, a well-to-do suburb 270 miles west of Tokyo. Kobe lay complacent in its relative safety, almost as murder-free as the rest of Japan. Hammer attacks against two girls in the neighborhood on February 10 had rocked the community from its slumber. Today, Ayaka Yamashita, a ten-year-old, was bludgeoned and killed by stab wounds to the head. Less than an hour later, a nine-year-old was stabbed and nearly bled to death.

  Saturday, May 24, 1997

  On a stormy morning, rain beaded on a plastic bag left at the green iron front gate of Kobe’s Tomogaoka Junior High. Though a light fog had formed on the underside of the bag nearest the pavement, a human head was visible inside. A pitiful lock of black hair splayed and fanned out against the plastic. A schoolboy’s clouded face peered out. Only moments before, neighbors had glimpsed a stout man staggering under the weight of two black garbage bags as he rushed down a narrow street. “He was about forty years old,” they told police summoned to the junior high. The victim’s head had been severed at the jawline with a hacksaw and sharp knife. The killer had gouged his eyes out and stuffed a message in his mouth. Written in red ink, the words ran with rain. Zodiac’s crossed-circle symbol was starkly legible. The killer was strong and had used only his right hand to strangle the boy. A search for the rest of the body began. The corpse, discovered in the wooded area of a fenced-in television transmission station, had been undressed, then redressed. The victim was Jun Hase, a mentally challenged eleven-year-old last seen three days ago. Just after lunchtime, he had set out to visit his grandfather. Now neighbors recalled a suspicious vehicle had been parked near the boy’s home.

  “JAPAN KILLER MAY IMITATE ‘ZODIAC’” read the Associated Press headline. “Note on beheaded boy similar to those of infamous Bay Area murderer decades ago . . . a cross-like symbol found on notes left by the Kobe Killer.” The murder and contents of the killer’s message shocked the Japanese people as no crime in memory. Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto pleaded with police to capture the killer as soon as possible. “So this is the beginning of the game,” read the letter. “I desperately want to see people die. Nothing makes me more excited than killing. Stupid police, stop me if you can. It’s great fun for me to kill people.”

  The message was hardly more than a rephrasing of Zodiac’s: “I like killing people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest. . . .” Several English words in the communication had apparently been misspelled on purpose. A black-bound translation of my book on the Zodiac slayings had been published in Japan two years earlier. Perhaps the killer had identified with Zodiac’s obsession with the Mikado.

  I heard banging at my front gate. A team of newsmen from Japan International Network were there to speak with me. Masahiro Kimura offered plane tickets to me. “We want you to come to Japan to look over the crime scene.” Though I had lived in Tokyo for six years, I saw no way I could help. Instead we drove to Julius Kahn Playground, the last place Zodiac had been seen. Kimura showed me copies of the letters. We ended the day riding in a taxi along the same route as Stine had taken, an unsettling trip for the Yellow Cab driver who was eavesdropping. Kimura said neighborhood watches in Kobe had been organized.

  In Japan hundreds of police cordoned off the school site. Teachers stationed stress-guidance counselors at local schools and children left for school with electronic alarms inside their backpacks. The killer had threatened to take revenge on the “compulsory education system.” The tragedy in Japan brought back horrible memories of how armed guards had been stationed on Bay Area school buses when Zodiac had threatened:

  “School children make nice targets, I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning. Just shoot out the front tire & then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.”

  Thursday, June 5, 1997

  The Japanese Zodiac’s rambling, partially incoherent 1,400-word letter was published. In handwriting that matched the message stuffed inside the head, Zodiac III took responsibility for the schoolboy’s murder. He threatened to kill “vegetables,” a word police took to be the writer’s disparaging term for people. “From now on, if you misread my name or spoil my mood I will kill three vegetables a week,” he wrote. The original Zodiac had threatened to kill if he did not see his name in the papers. “If you think I can only kill children you are greatly mistaken.” It was signed Seito Sakakibara [Apostle Sake Devil Rose]. Zodiac III claimed this was his real name.

  Like Zodiac, Devil Rose had presented a name by which he wanted to be known. Like Zodiac, it infuriated him when the press misinterpreted his words. They had taken “oni-bara” (“devil’s rose”) on the note as a coded message. Amateur sleuths also noted a chilling connection between the beheaded child, Zodiac, and The Exorcist. In January 1974, Zodiac had mentioned the wildly popular movie. Nine years later William Petter Blatty, author-producer of The Exorcist, wrote a sequel, Legion. In uncorrected proofs, Blatty named the villain Zodiac. In a film, Exorcist III, he was called the “Gemini Killer.” Gemini decapitated a twelve-year-old boy just as the Tomogaoka Junior High killer had.

  Neighbors in Kobe noticed that a local fifteen-year-old boy had recently turned “a bit gloomy.” The physically small ninth-grade student, eldest of three sons in a middle-class family, was killing and mutilating pigeons and cats in the neighborhood. The boy had beaten a friend for telling on him to schoolmates. The same classmates tipped police he killed two kittens.

  Saturday, June 28, 1997

  Police raided the boy’s home, seizing horror videos, a knife, and “a book about the San Francisco killings” in his room. In his journal the youth wrote of a god, “Bamoidooki,” and called his attacks “sacred experiments.” They dredged a hacksaw from a close-by pond and arrested him for beheading his neighbor and classmate, Jun Hase. He confessed he had also bludgeoned a ten-year-old and attacked three other girls, two with a hammer the previous February and
March. Under Japanese law the boy was not identified because of his age. Convicted on October 18 of attacks on all five children (two of whom died), he was sentenced to a juvenile prison to be treated for mental illness until he turned twenty-six.

  Sunday, October 19, 1997

  They finally located Stine’s lost bloody shirt in the Bryant Street property room. It had been checked out, listed as a miscellaneous item, and abandoned in a cardboard box in the official coroner’s office—a blunder probably indicative of past performance. The SFPD had recently tossed out evidence in the Charles Ng serial killings. They thought the case had been completed, but after decades Ng was just coming to trial. Bawart feared the San Francisco investigation of the Stine murder had been “very sloppy.” “For instance,” he told me, “the names of the fire crew [at Cherry and Washington] were not taken to eliminate them as donors to the bloody print.” Toschi reassured me, “The cab had already been taken away by the time the fire crew arrived.”

  37

  arthur leigh allen

  Sunday, October 11, 1998

  The first words out of Toschi’s mouth were bitter as ashes: “I got up this morning and the first thing I realized was that it’s been thirty years since it all began.” San Francisco celebrated Fleet Week. Jets buzzed downtown skyscrapers. Outside the Golden Gate, a Navy plane, guided by an angled crossed circle—a huge Zodiac symbol—coasted featherlike onto a carrier’s deck. Frustrated detectives from San Francisco, Vallejo, Napa County, and Solano County had gathered, possibly for the final time, to discuss Zodiac. The last of the original Zodiac trackers, Ken Narlow, had retired in 1987. “I have a place on the coast where I attack the salmon and abalone,” he said. “I needed something to occupy my time besides golfing and fishing so I took the job of transportation director for our local Catholic high school.” And Zodiac? “I’d like to think that if we had some of the technology in those days that we have today, we’d be a lot closer to this guy,”