Zodiac Unmasked (11 page)

experienced normal sexual intercourse. In these uncommon individuals, for reasons unknown, aggressive and sexual impulses intertwine early in

childhood. Ultimately, these confused feelings find expression in vicious sexual assaults and sadistic murders. Lacking a conscience, Zodiac had

no remorse for the pain he inflicted on others. Their pain brings him pleasure.

Karen disclosed that, after her marriage to Ron, it became apparent that Leigh viewed her as an intruder. He believed she had come to separate

him from his brother, and actual y made threats against her. “He was spoiled and pampered by his mother,” she said with a trace of bitterness.

“She does his cooking, washes his clothes, cleans up after him, and gives him money. She even paid for his two cars and two boats.” It was odd

that Al en intensely disliked his mother no matter what she did for him, and even stranger that he had expressed such feelings to Karen, whom he

viewed as an interloper.

As for Bernice Al en, she had never forgotten her son’s squandered Olympic potential. Leigh had been a talented diver. “She’s always ragging

me about my weight,” he had snarled to Cheney and Panazarel a. A competition photo of him in a Val ejo paper depicted a slender, almost

handsome young man with blondish hair. Other pictures from the 1960s showed how much he resembled the younger, unamended San Francisco

Zodiac composite drawing. If Leigh had not been steadily gaining weight, he would have been a dead ringer for the sketch. Al en’s altered

appearance reminded Mulanax of a line Zodiac had written:

“I look like the description passed out only when I do my thing, the rest of the time I look entirle different. I shal not tel you what my discise

[disguise] consists of when I kil .”

Mulanax passed copies of Zodiac’s bizarre notes to Karen. She studied them and said she had noticed a paper with similar printing in her

brother-in-law’s hand in November 1969. “What is that?” she had asked. “This is the work of an insane person,” Leigh replied. “I’l show you later.”

As with the Tuckers, he never did. However, while the printing on the Zodiac letters was not familiar to her as being that of her brother-in-law, some

phrases were. Leigh had used the expression “trigger mach” instead of trigger mechanism. Final y, she thumbed to a copy of an authenticated

Christmas card Zodiac had mailed to attorney Melvin Bel i during a period when the master criminal wanted to give himself up.

An FBI report, December 31, 1969, noted the note had “not been written as freely as the other threatening letters in this matter.” However, an

enclosed blood-blackened portion of a victim’s shirt validated it. Zodiac’s handwriting
was
subject to change and in the space of months. At 1:59

P.M. the fol owing day, a man identifying himself as Zodiac cal ed the switchboard operator at FBI headquarters in Sacramento, then hung up after

beginning to name someone he had just kil ed. “‘Happy Christmass,’” Karen read aloud from the photostat. “I definitely recal having received a card

at Christmas from my brother-in-law,” she said. “‘Happy Christmass’ was spel ed exactly the same way.”

Karen, like Tucker, confirmed Al en was left-handed. “His elementary school teachers attempted to make him right-handed,” she said. “He

learned to write that way, but soon reverted to writing with his left hand.” While Morril believed the letters were written right-handed, he suspected

that Zodiac was natural y left-handed. The obscuring effect of a felt-tip pen and a left-handed man printing firmly and unnatural y with his right hand

might explain the difficulty in matching handprinting to any suspect. Sergeant Mulanax was hungry to learn more.

“Could I drop by tonight when your husband wil be home?” he said. “We want to ask him some questions too.” Ronald Gene Al en, a thirty-two-

year-old landscape engineer, was currently attending Berkeley Col ege. He had attended Cal Poly from fal 1960 until fal 1968, when he attained a

bachelor of science degree. “He’l be late,” she said, but agreed that 8:00 P.M. would be convenient. After she left, Mulanax contacted Armstrong

and Toschi and asked them to rendezvous with him at 216 Aragon Street in Val ejo that night. An already long day was growing longer.

Mulanax reached the home first. It was just off Columbus Parkway, which led directly into Blue Rock Springs to the north. He suspected Zodiac

had used the parkway as an escape route after the July Fourth shootings. Mulanax stood in the deep shadows of the pleasant tree-lined cul-de-sac.

Somewhere in his cozy little town, the most cunning criminal he had ever come across was waiting. A cool wind blew in from San Pablo Bay. He

scanned the hedges and fences, unable to shake thoughts of a watcher. Fifteen minutes later, Toschi and Armstrong reached Ron and Karen’s

home and found Mulanax already inside and glad to be in the light.

As Karen had done, Ron offered to help in the investigation if he could. Mulanax believed his offer to be sincere. “But I can’t believe my brother is

a serious suspect in the case,” he said. At first, he offered little on either side of the scale as to his brother’s guilt or innocence. “I am wel

acquainted with your source of information.” So, thought Toschi, the informants, Cheney and Panzarel a, had spoken with Ron before the Manhattan

Beach P.D. He did not know that Cheney and Ron had been roommates in col ege. “They are responsible people,” the brother admitted. “They

wouldn’t have made such statements if they were not true.” He also explained that he had received a complaint from one of the informants that Al en

had made improper advances toward one of his children. “He has a definite problem as far as children are concerned and he does drink to

excess.” Though Ron didn’t say so outright, Mulanax reserved the possibility that a personal motive might be behind some of the accusations

against Al en. That would explain many things and it would mean they were on the wrong track. Few serial kil ers drank to excess. It had something

to do with the lack of control.

Ron confirmed that Al en’s two revolvers were .22-caliber. Zodiac had used a .22-caliber automatic pistol during the Lake Herman Road

homicides, but from then on had used various 9-mm automatics, a .45-caliber weapon, and even a knife. Though Ron had never seen any of the

handprinting Tucker had mentioned, he had observed the gray box. At one point it, he recal ed, had been kept in his old room.

“Ron and his wife were very cooperative,” Toschi said later. “What I heard is that he [Al en] was not close to his mother, that he just lived in the

house, that’s the only place he had. Al en, we learned afterward, had many weapons and, like the brother said, was very familiar with the roads and

side roads al around the area. Later, Karen just felt that her brother-in-law was the one we were looking for and that Val ejo P.D. kind of just kissed

him off, and that disturbed me. We had to work with these other detectives, and it bothered me that they felt we were the big-city detectives when in

fact we never came across that way at al .”

The three policemen left. Ron fol owed them out and promised again to do anything he could to assist. He was as helpful as his big brother had

been at the refinery that morning. Toschi looked back. Ron appeared a lonely and worried figure under the porch light. It was now 10:00 P.M.

Toschi reached his Sunset District home soon after, kissed Carol good night, looked in on his three daughters, Linda, Karen, and Susan, and

crawled into bed. Every bone in his body ached and cried for sleep, but he tossed and turned al night. He could not get that watch out of his mind.

And a neighbor had seen a bloody knife, dying only days after glimpsing the blade.

Wednesday, August 11, 1971

At 11:00 A.M.,
Mulanax got hold of Bob Luce, owner-operator of the Arco station at 640 Broadway in Val ejo. Mulanax told Luce, “I’m conducting an

investigation on a former employee.” He did not tel him why right off.

“Leigh worked for me on a part-time schedule for about half a year,” Luce explained, “but tended to be undependable. And there were those

complaints about him and children . . . he seemed too interested in smal girls. In April [1969] he came to work drunk again—once too often for me. I

fired him.” Mulanax wondered if the job loss had precipitated the July 4, 1969, Blue Rock Springs shootings by Zodiac. Mulanax laid his cards on

the table. This was unusual. “I knew Mulanax pretty wel ,” Bawart told me. “Mulanax was a kind of a close-to-the-vest guy.”

Mulanax brought up the possibility that Al en might have used Phil Tucker’s car to commit a Zodiac murder. “Tucker had his car here al right, but

it wasn’t for as long as two weeks,” Luce said. “No, that’s not right.” Tucker himself hadn’t kept a record of the dates, and Mulanax badly needed

Luce’s repair invoice. In spite of a diligent search, they could not uncover the exact days the Corvair had been left overnight at the station. On the

July 4, 1969, date of the Blue Rock Springs shootings, Al en was no longer working at the Arco station, and so the repair record didn’t matter—

unless Leigh had kept a set of keys to the station or made his own.

At 5:00 that evening, Mulanax contacted Tucker’s wife, Joan, at her home. Joan substantiated her husband’s story about the gray box and the

papers tucked inside. “I had been very interested in the content of the papers,” she said, “since I was preparing for a col ege psychology exam.

Leigh explained he had received these papers from a patient at Atascadero, and I said my interest was directed toward the working of this

person’s mind. I was impressed by the neatness and exactness of the printing and of the arcane symbols.”

The detective showed her Zodiac ciphers clipped from three Bay Area papers. Joan identified numerous symbols as being the same as those

on papers Al en had showed her. Her recol ection was that these were drawn with a felt-tip pen. At 5:30 Tucker returned from work and Mulanax

showed him the same cryptograms. He too thought certain symbols looked the same as those Al en had shown him.

“And we stil haven’t been able to track down the exact date you left your Corvair at the Arco station,” said Mulanax.

“I didn’t have any luck either,” Tucker said, “but I do remember that when my car was not sold, I left it parked in front of my father-in-law’s house for

a considerable period of time. It’s possible that Al en could have driven the car during this period, but I don’t know if he did. My in-laws are in

Europe now, and when they get back I’l ask them if they know.” The in-laws knew Leigh Al en as a friend of their son-in-law, and would not have

thought it strange to see him around the Corvair. Tucker began to speak more freely of his former employee.

“Leigh is a schizophrenic personality,” Tucker said. During Leigh’s therapy five different personalities had been found. “At times he actual y

seems to live the part of whatever literature he’s reading. He can tel a lie and actual y believe what he is tel ing is the truth.” Mulanax’s eyebrows

went up. This was a very interesting talent—one that might stand a lie detector on its head. Once more Mulanax heard that Al en truly hated women

and had said so on many occasions. No one hated women as much as Zodiac. The only victims that had managed to survive had been men.

Thursday, August 12, 1971

In the morning
Mulanax typed up his reports and studied the various stories related to him about the best Zodiac suspect yet. Physical y, Leigh

matched Zodiac—from hair coloring to weight to height to wearing the exact size of the kil er’s unique flight-line Wing Walker boots. Circumstantial

evidence was compel ing: Leigh had predicted he would cal himself “Zodiac” and shoot couples in lovers’ lanes long before there was a Zodiac.

He had spoken of an “electric gun sight” and “picking off kiddies,” used phrases like “Happy Christmass,” and “trigger mach” before Zodiac had.

Al en wore a Zodiac wristwatch and kept Zodiac-like symbols in a gray box. Like Zodiac, he was enamored of “The Most Dangerous Game.” He

had been headed for Lake Berryessa the day of the stabbings and been seen with a bloody knife. Mulanax did not know that Al en and his former

friend, Don Cheney, had often fly-fished at Clear Lake and Grass Val ey, and once at Berryessa. “We fished in a stream below the lake and fifty

yards from where we parked,” he later told me. “It was crowded the one time we went.” Not only did Leigh have friends in those areas, a man and a

woman at Clear Lake, for instance, but there had been a recent murder at al three.

Meanwhile, at the refinery, Al en was in a rage—because of the questioning, he was certain he would be fired from his job at Union Oil. When

McNamara had cal ed him into his office, Leigh had known his days there were numbered.

Friday, August 13, 1971

After the two
authenticated letters in March, al correspondence from Zodiac had ceased. Police in four counties speculated Zodiac might have

been arrested for another crime, institutionalized, or died. Nonetheless, Mulanax continued to plow through the files. For just over a week he had

been seeking a record of any officer questioning Leigh Al en back in 1969. Sergeant Lynch had not yet recal ed questioning Leigh. His meeting at

Cave School with the skin-diving chemist consumed only two paragraphs in the center of a single page. As the towering sheaves of paper became

an avalanche, that page was buried in an ever-increasing snowbank. Manpower stretched to the breaking point, and everyone feared Zodiac might

strike again.

Wednesday, September 1, 1971

The SFPD fared
scarcely better than Val ejo. Armstrong and Toschi, routinely working six murders simultaneously, felt at times that the Bay Area