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

  “We’re investigating the Zodiac murders in San Francisco and Vallejo,” said Armstrong, “and we have some questions for you.” The detective pulled out a chair for the chemist. Toschi noticed barely perceptible droplets beaded on Starr’s wide forehead. “An informant has notified us that you made certain statements approximately eleven months prior to the first Zodiac murder,” continued Armstrong. “If these are true, then they are of an incriminating nature.” Armstrong, though referring to Cheney’s recollected dialogue with the suspect, did not mention his name. “Do you recall having such a conversation with anyone?”

  “I don’t recall such a conversation,” Starr said mildly. Oddly, he failed to ask with whom he had reportedly conversed. He seemed already to know. “Others are quick to react to what you say and do,” his horoscope had read in that morning’s Chronicle. “Choose your words carefully.”

  “Have you ever read or heard of Zodiac?”

  “I read about the Zodiac when it first appeared in the newspapers,” said Starr. “I didn’t follow up on it after those first reports.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was too morbid.”

  But Starr, later in the interview, made other statements that were in direct conflict with this remark. First, though, he volunteered this: “A Vallejo police sergeant questioned me after the Zodiac murders at Lake Berryessa.”

  All three investigators were stunned.

  “We weren’t aware you had ever been questioned by the police before,” said Armstrong.

  “I told him,” said Starr, “that on that particular weekend [Saturday, September 27, 1969] I had gone to Salt Point Ranch near Fort Ross to skin-dive. [Salt Point Ranch lay in the opposite direction from Lake Berryessa.] I went alone, but I met a serviceman and his wife who were stationed on Treasure Island. I don’t recall his name, but I have it written down somewhere at home. I got back to Vallejo about 4:00 P.M.”

  Armstrong, Toschi, and Mulanax listened intently. Outside, a steam whistle blew and a foreman barked orders. Inside, Starr’s voice droned in the heat. They could almost hear wheels turning in his head. A palpable tension choked the little office. “I recall speaking to a neighbor shortly after I drove into my driveway,” Starr went on. “I guess I neglected to tell the Vallejo officer when he questioned me about being seen by this neighbor.”

  “And what was the neighbor’s name?” asked Armstrong.

  “[William] White. But he died a week after I was questioned so I never bothered to contact the police.” That was very convenient. Suddenly, Starr made a bizarre leap in subject matter—one so strange that Toschi caught Armstrong’s attention with a quizzical raising of his eyebrow. Without any questioning about a knife such as Zodiac had used in the Berryessa stabbings, the suspect made an astonishing statement:

  “The two knives I had in my car had blood on them,” he said. “The blood came from a chicken I had killed.”

  The day Zodiac stabbed two college students at Lake Berryessa, Starr was to have been there shooting ground squirrels and had told his sister-in-law so. His new story was that he had gone scuba diving instead—elsewhere. Starr both skin dived and scuba dived. To explain why Zodiac chose sites near lakes, a theory had circulated that Zodiac was a diver who hid his weapons and souvenirs in watertight containers underwater. And that’s why the killer had a paunch—a weighted diving belt around his waist. To Toschi, that hypothesis now looked considerably less far-fetched. Starr was not only a boater, but an avid skin diver and spear fisherman.

  “Starr thinks we have some information regarding a knife,” thought Armstrong. “He thinks we know more than we do, but knowledge of that bloody knife is information we don’t possess.” All the detectives could fathom was that someone had glimpsed the stained knives or knife on his car seat and Starr knew they had. Did he think that his neighbor, William White, had observed a bloody blade when he returned home that day and mentioned it to someone? More than likely, thought Toschi, Starr’s brother, Ron, or sister-in-law, Karen, were the ones who had spied the bloody blade. Starr was hedging his bets and explaining away in advance any information that the police may have received.

  “Were you in Southern California in 1966?” asked Armstrong.

  Once again, Starr volunteered startling specifics without prompting.

  “You mean about the Riverside killing?” he said. “Yes, I was in Southern California at the approximate time as the Riverside murder in which Zodiac is a suspect.”

  The information about a Zodiac stabbing in Riverside had been made public only ten months earlier. Phil Sins, a southern resident, had seen parallels between a local murder and Zodiac’s Northern California activities. The break ran in the Chronicle. But hadn’t Starr just stated he had long before ceased reading articles about Zodiac? The headline story suggested Zodiac had killed a Riverside College coed, Cheri Jo Bates, just before Halloween Night 1966. The writer of the handprinted Riverside notes had also been fond of writing taunting letters to the press (“BATES HAD TO DIE THERE WILL BE MORE”) and using too much postage. A squiggled signature on three letters was either a “2” or a “Z.” Most importantly, Morrill had identified Zodiac as the author of the Southern California notes.

  “I admit I’m interested in guns,” Starr continued, “but the only handguns I own are .22-caliber. I don’t have and have never owned an automatic weapon.”

  “Have you ever owned a 1965-66 brown Corvair?” asked Armstrong. Zodiac was driving such a vehicle the night of his Fourth of July murder.

  “No.” Starr folded his arms. He was dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt, his forearms as massive as “Popeye’s.”

  Toschi noticed a big watch on Starr’s wrist. “It was a rugged man’s watch,” he told me later. “It’s the kind of watch a man would buy to be seen—‘Look at what I’ve got on my wrist.’ And I spotted it instantly—the word ‘Zodiac.’ I asked him specifically to show it to me. ‘That’s a nice watch you’ve got there,’ I said. ‘Oh, I’ve had it awhile,’ he said. ‘Do you like it?’ I said. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. And you can see the letters Z-o-d-i-a-c. I still remember seeing that watch. And he wanted people to see what he had on his arm. He wore it in defiance. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. When we saw the watch we were amazed—and the brother and sister-in-law afterward mentioned to Armstrong and I that, ‘He even wears a Zodiac watch.’”

  “May I see that?” said Armstrong. He gestured toward Starr’s wrist. He had also noticed their suspect was wearing an unusual-looking watch. A ray of light through the blinds made the crystal face sparkle. Above the watchmaker’s name, in the center of the face, was emblazoned a bold emblem. It froze the officers in spite of the heat. There, glowing stark white on black, was a circle and crosshairs—Zodiac’s symbol.

  The expensive watch on Starr’s wrist had been manufactured by Zodiac Astrographic Automatic, LeLocle, Switzerland/New York, a company whose roots stretched back to the nineteenth century. Now Mulanax saw it too. Neatly printed across the bottom, in upper and lower case, was the word “Zodiac.” The name and symbol were exactly like those used as a signature on Zodiac’s letters.

  “Only in Zodiac’s letters had the name ‘Zodiac’ and the killer’s crossed-circle symbol ever appeared together in the same place,” Toschi thought. He knew because he had searched everywhere for that crossed circle. To this moment, he had assumed it represented a gun sight. Starr turned the watch on his wrist as if admiring it. “It was a birthday gift,” he said to Armstrong. “This watch was given to me by my mother two years ago.”

  Mulanax counted back in his mind. “Let’s see—exactly two years back from today is August 4, 1969. On August 4, 1969, the killer had used the name ‘Zodiac’ for the first time in a three-page letter to the Examiner. The paper had buried his note in the late edition at the top of page 4. Only five days before, Zodiac had introduced his crossed circle symbol to the papers.” Though a later CI&I report stated Starr had gotten the watch in August 1969, his brother, Ron, contradicted
that. He said that Starr “received the watch from his mother as a Christmas gift in December 1968.” Starr’s thirty-fifth birthday had been December 18, 1968, just two days before Zodiac’s first known Northern California murders.

  Starr would own a second Zodiac watch later. The manufacturers of the “World Famous Zodiac Watches” manufactured a Zodiac Clebar Skin-diver Underwater Chronograph in 1969: “It’s a stop watch! Aviator and skin-diver’s watch. Tested for 20 atmospheres (comparable to 660 feet underwater).” Starr was, by then, both an aviator and skin diver. Like its brother, a logo in the lower right-hand corner of the watch was a crossed circle on a dark background above the word “Zodiac.” It was quiet in the office. The Zodiac watch, mention of a bloody knife, Starr’s volunteered information had dazed them all. What was coming next?

  “I’m willing to help you in the investigation in any way possible,” the suspect said, licking his lips. He coughed and cleared his throat. Starr apparently wanted to interpose a high note, one with some humor, reconciliation, and good fellowship all round. “I can’t wait until the time comes when police officers are not referred to as ‘pigs,’” he said with a sad shake of his head. Some antiwar protesters and students of the period commonly called police “pigs.” Zodiac used the same epithet. “I enjoy needling the blue pigs,” he had taunted. “Hey blue pig I was in the park.”

  “Can you recall anyone whom you might have had a conversation with regarding Zodiac?” interjected Mulanax.

  “I might have had a conversation with Ted Kidder and Phil Tucker of the Vallejo Recreation Department when I was working there, but I’m not positive.” Starr continued answering questions before they were asked. In this way he might defuse any damaging evidence against him in their minds. What had they heard? He had no way of knowing which of many acquaintances had turned him in as a killer. He said some very strange things in private. He liked to talk and he talked loud and his remarks made him the center of attention. Suddenly, Starr paused—he realized who had sent the police!

  “‘The Most Dangerous Game,’” he said.

  “What?” said Toschi.

  Out of nowhere, Starr had mentioned the title of a short story he had read in the eleventh grade, a tale that, by his own admission, had made a deep and lasting impression on him. Toschi recalled Langstaff’s Manhattan Beach report and recognized “The Most Dangerous Game” as the same story Starr had rhapsodized over a full year before the murders began. Toschi smiled inwardly—Starr had finally figured out who had ratted him out.

  “It was called ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’” Starr elaborated. “It was the best thing I read in high school.” Zodiac had given “The Most Dangerous Game” as his motive in a cunning, almost unbreakable three-part cipher. But Salinas schoolteacher Don Harden had cracked it on August 4, 1969, exactly two years ago today, though Harden’s solution was not made public until August 12. Encrypting mistakes and all, the bizarre solution read:

  “I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUE ANAMAL OF ALL TO KILL SOMETHING GIVES ME THE MOST THRILLING EXPERENCE IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN GETTING YOUR ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAE WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN IN PARADICE AND THEI HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES I WILL NOT GIVE YOU MY NAME BECAUSE YOU WILL TRY TO SLOI DOWN OR ATOP MY COLLECTIOG OF SLAVES FOR AFTERLIFE . . .”

  Roughly, the short story by Richard Connell dealt with the son of a military officer hunting humans with a rifle and bow and arrow for sport in the forest. Aptly, Starr, the son of a military man, hunted in the woods with a bow and arrow. Mulanax summarized the story in this manner: “This book was made into a movie and concerns a man shipwrecked on an island and being hunted by another man ‘like an animal.’” It might be important to study that brief story in depth for clues, thought Mulanax, learn if it had been a movie or dramatized on television, learn where Zodiac might have stumbled across it and when.

  “Starr mentioned ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ during that questioning,” Toschi told me later, “and his brother afterward confirmed that he felt that man was ‘the most dangerous game, not shooting game.’” The precise words Starr had used, verified by another witness than Cheney, were: “I think of man as game.” The adventure story might have been the flash point, no less a catalyst than the re-forming process Starr performed daily as an assistant chemist.

  The informal cross-examination ended.

  Less than an hour had passed since those elevator doors had opened, but it seemed longer. As an interview it had been mild. Though Starr had been isolated, a true interrogation would have been more focused, the setting bleaker, the intimidation more intense. Pointedly, the trio escorted Starr back to his lab, then left. Inwardly, the chemist boiled at being taken out, humiliated, and “questioned like a thief.” Toschi admitted that he found Starr “a dangerous animal,” and though armed, had some fear of him in close quarters. Starr’s ears were crimson; his face flushed. He could barely control his anger and he had never been a patient man. Men all around him, in their lab coats, paper booties over engineering boots, were staring and whispering. He sat at his work station. “You don’t know what it’s like,” mumbled Starr to a coworker, his eyes fixed on his desk. “Everything is fine—going good. Then somebody calls you to the office. And they suggest terrible things about you. You just can’t know—terrible things. And all the time I’m racking my brain to figure out who sent them. They make you sweat, then take you through the halls—in front of everyone—like a child! I can’t forgive that.” The next time Starr met Toschi and Armstrong, he would claim not to remember them.

  Ignoring the buzz of his coworkers, Starr began scanning test results. He might be in a predicament—he was Zodiac’s weight, height, age. He had the same color and length of hair. He crossed his legs and removed the paper booties over his shoes. Absently, he surveyed the unusual-looking chucker-type Wing Walker boots he was wearing. Like Zodiac, Starr wore a size 10½ Regular. Two women he knew had seen him in those shoes and could testify to that. But in the end, perhaps he was only a man who liked people to think he was Zodiac.

  Outside, the investigators climbed back into their car. Their unanimous consensus was that the investigation of Starr should continue and in greater depth. “Absolutely,” said Toschi with feeling. “But what I really want to know is who the hell questioned him just after the murders?”

  Mulanax had absolutely no idea. “God, that was over two years ago,” he said. He made a mental note to fine-comb the Vallejo files regarding any questioning of Starr as a Zodiac suspect and any previous reports about a bloody knife or knives on a car seat.

  3

  arthur leigh allen

  Wednesday, August 4, 1971

  Someone had desperately wanted us to know such a thing as a Zodiac watch existed. I studied the neatly penciled letter in my hand. At the San Francisco Chronicle, where I worked as an editorial cartoonist, everyone wondered about Zodiac. His terrifying letters had irrevocably linked him to the newspaper. Gradually, a determination grew within me to disentangle the killer’s clues and unmask his true identity. Failing that, I intended to present every scrap of evidence available to ensure that someone might recognize Zodiac and resolve the missing pieces of the puzzle.

  At the window I contemplated the long shadows stretching across wide Mission Street. On Fifth Street, strangers milled about the Pickwick Hotel (Hammett’s “Pickwick Stage terminal” where the Maltese Falcon had been stashed). Transients huddled in front of the Chronicle Hotel, and well-dressed men with briefcases stood on the marble steps of the indestructible Old Mint. Zodiac could be any of them. He was a watcher. The first letter in which he christened himself “Zodiac” carried a different watermark than three earlier letters (Monarch-cut bond, imprinted with an “Eaton” watermark). The new watermark was “FIFTH AVENUE,” an imprint of Frank Winfield Woolworth’s national chain. A huge Woolworth’s stood just a block away from the Chronicle, at the cable c
ar turntable at Fifth and Market and Powell. In the basement, next to the goldfish, Woolworth’s sold blue felt-tip pens and paper exactly like Zodiac used. What if he bought his paper and blue felt-tip pens there? What if he spied from the shadows as his letters were delivered?

  Last March Zodiac had been writing industriously, casting his net wide; spreading his word southward. After the oil refinery interview with Starr, the flow of words halted abruptly. Nonetheless, Chronicle reporter Paul Stuart Avery optimistically left standing orders with the city desk. “We can probably expect to receive a new Zodiac communication any day now,” he said brightly. “As usual, every effort should be made to prevent any Chronicle employee’s fingerprints from getting on the letter.” The letters had been handled by a lot of the staff—Carol Fisher, Brant Parker . . . Toschi had already fingerprinted all the copy people.

  Sometimes Zodiac attempted to sneak letters into print. Since Letters Editor Carol Fisher retained all reader submissions as hedges against libel, this anonymous letter from November 1970 had been on file.

  “Dear Sir,” the note read. “In reading a recent issue of ‘Playboy’ magazine I noticed an advertisement for ‘Zodiac’ watches. The trademark on the face of the watch is identical to that used by the notorious killer. Since I’ve always read in the press that the crimes have been interpreted as some sort of astrological thing. The fact that such a singular hyrogrific [sic] effect is in fact a watch brand emblem seems somehow interesting.”