Zodiac Unmasked (12 page)

held a franchise on homicidal maniacs. Toschi, in spite of once being a fitness instructor, was subject to bouts of il ness from stress. He was a

contradiction—he was modest, but enjoyed the limelight. Some nights he slipped on his al -weather raincoat and Hush Puppies, then strol ed, head

down, through his Sunset neighborhood. Other nights he took long drives down the coast highway, or slumped in his easy chair listening to Big

Band 78s in stereo. As he desperately tried to sort it al out, he recal ed that exactly eleven years ago today Chief Tom Cahil had signed his

transfer to the Bureau of Inspectors. It had been the second happiest day of his life.

Friday, September 17, 1971

Armstrong and Toschi
later ascertained from Ron Al en that his brother spent at least two days a week at their mother’s home. Al en’s mother,

Bernice, traveled abroad frequently, her trips spanning many weeks. These excursions, arranged through the Val ejo Travel Club, were financed by

pension money from Leigh’s recently deceased father. During his mother’s absence, Al en would reside alone at the family residence. Though the

upstairs was free to him, he stil clung, leechlike, to that dank, unkempt basement bedroom where the secret box had been stored. It was as if he

were guarding a fortress.

However, Bernice had been il and remained home. Out of respect for her, the police held back from searching her home. Al en was, after al , only

one of nearly three thousand Zodiac suspects. “We were always concerned about his elderly mother who was not wel ,” Toschi told me. “The family

had mentioned it several times and asked us not to go in. The brother is tel ing us, ‘I can search the basement myself. I know where he keeps things

especial y when he’s away.’ Jack Mulanax never wanted to talk seriously about a search warrant. He had been turned down on handprinting and on

fingerprints. He just said, ‘He sure looks good, but I don’t even know if I could get a search warrant.’”

“We did not search the residence at his mother of 32 Fresno Street in Val ejo,” wrote Armstrong later. “We relied on his brother, Ron, who was

cooperating with the investigation, to look through Al en’s room in the basement of this residence. . . . Ron had informed us that he had observed

some cryptogram-type materials, but was unsure if they were related to Zodiac. No further action was taken regarding a search of 32 Fresno and

the basement there.”

Whoever Zodiac was, he had a cel ar where he did his secret and devilish work. “What you do not know,” he said in an November 9, 1969, letter

to the
Chronicle,
“is whether the death machine is at the sight or whether it is being stored in my basement for further use.” Police, dumbfounded by

the bizarre threats of the “death machine” letter, said at the time, “We have reason to believe he’s a maniac. It appears to us that he’s kil ing just for

the thril of kil ing.” On April 20, 1970, Zodiac complained he had been “swamped out by the rain we had a while back.” Rain might flood a

basement room. A burst pipe or water heater would cause a similar inundation. No one checked to see if the house on Fresno Street had been

flooded. But what if Zodiac had not meant a proper basement? Mobile-home dwel ers cal the area beneath the trailer a “basement.” While it is

il egal to store things there, it is done al the time. Sometimes a rain puddle on the road becomes a swamp under a trailer. Leigh had a trailer off-

wheels in an another county, and for over a year had been squirreling away things under it. The problem was that Toschi and Armstrong were not

only unaware of the trailer’s location, but its existence.

“Al en’s got to have someplace where he can stash and hide things and be certain no cop wil ever know where he has everything,” Mulanax told

Toschi.

“What he’s going to show us is just things on the surface,” replied Toschi. “And we know that he’s laughing at us on the inside.”

Mulanax nodded.

Monday, November 22, 1971

Leigh was approved
for his Red Cross Certificate for Standard First Aid. Since he was constantly boating in a sailing club, and considering

taking up air jumping over water, it was a useful skil . Meanwhile in San Francisco, Toschi and Armstrong had made scant progress in the three and

a half months since the questioning at the oil refinery. “Apparently,” Toschi told me, “Al en’s family stil harbored grave misgivings about him. The

brother and sister-in-law were very concerned because they see that Al en is stil walking around and don’t know how thoroughly the Val ejo Police

Department went into the investigation. What we didn’t know was that they were building up courage to speak to us.

“I could always tel Ken Narlow was a little disturbed because San Francisco was getting al the big play in the media. We were getting more work

too. Which we didn’t need. But it was because Armstrong and I were getting so much media attention that Ron and Karen later felt right in cal ing

us. And it put me in a very precarious position. I didn’t want anyone thinking we were trying to monopolize the case. My God, we had enough work

to do on our own without making more work out of another jurisdiction. We were getting so many tips and phone cal s just from San Francisco.

People cal ing him ‘the
San Francisco
Zodiac kil er,’ when there’re multi-counties involved. Zodiac came to us for more attention. He wanted to see

his name there.” More than once Toschi wondered, “Why?”

The situation was worse than on the surface. Every three weeks Toschi and Armstrong also had a load of brand-new homicides to crack.

Unknown to them, at that time, Al en was no longer in Val ejo. The morning of November 22, he had traveled south to Torrance, where Don Cheney

lived, perhaps for a confrontation. Long after, I asked Cheney, “Do you have any idea why Leigh visited Torrance on November 22, 1971?” There

was a gasp of surprise. “If I had known about it at the time, it would have worried me,” Cheney said. “And yet, though I was always listed down in

Southern California, I never got one crank phone cal or threat after police interviewed Leigh.”

Tuesday, November 23, 1971

Panzarella never realized
Al en was in Torrance. Even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered. Panzarel a was a cool customer. He hadn’t been

scared when Zodiac wrote the
L.A. Times,
even though he suspected Al en was the author. While he was in town, Leigh got into enough mischief

on Hawthorne Boulevard to be arrested for disturbing the peace. Cheney stil considered Zodiac’s connections to unknown murders in Southern

California as possible and Zodiac’s connection to Al en as “very probable.” Though Al en had ties to the area, most of his movements down south

were a mystery, at least to the police.

Wednesday, November 24, 1971

At times the
Val ejo P.D. had a sense that the SFPD was trying to freeze them out and col ar Zodiac al by themselves. “Val ejo is smal potatoes

compared to San Francisco,” Detective Bawart told me, “but when you take and look at the homicide division in San Francisco, they’re like

anything else in police work. They divide up al the murder cases. One homicide detective there is working about the same amount of cases as one

homicide detective in Val ejo. It’s grueling.”

And in San Francisco, Toschi was equal y unsure he was getting everything Val ejo knew. “My thoughts were,” he explained, “when they would

say, ‘Wel , we talked to this person and that person,’ my mind was always like a minute ahead. I was saying to myself, ‘Did you real y?’ Because

when I said I talked to somebody, you can bet al your good money on it I did. I would never lie about that.” He began to fear the Zodiac information

highway might be a one-way street. And that was just the way Zodiac liked it. The kil er preferred to strike in zones of confused jurisdiction—

different counties, on borderlines, and in unincorporated wilderness areas. He counted on adjoining departments working against each other, not

sharing information—the more the merrier. It was a big case, a competitive investigation. Everyone wanted a piece of it and whoever solved it

would be the Ace of Detectives. Zodiac, with his huge ego, counted on the egos of policemen to al ow him to continue his deadly work.

Armstrong and Toschi could not get Leigh Al en off their minds, and sought to jump-start their investigation. They needed another tip. After such a

promising beginning, Toschi studied the growing face of the moon. He could almost hear Zodiac’s laughter—the laughter of Satan. And the rustle of

that terrible black costume.

4

arthur leigh allen

Arthur Leigh Allen
, born in Honolulu, Hawaii, December 18, 1933, was a Sagittarius (November 22-December 21). His zodiac sign was The

Archer, and he became an expert with a bow and arrow. While Zodiac wore glasses, possibly as a disguise, Leigh rarely did (though the DMV

required he wear lenses to drive). In 1964 Leigh weighed 185 pounds, but within three years his weight had bal ooned drastical y. The photo on his

driver’s license [#3B672352], taken on October 13, 1967, depicted a moonfaced thirty-three-year-old whose weight now yo-yoed between 230 and

250 pounds. Al en, in 1967, listed his address simply as a post office box in Burson.

As for Leigh’s checkered educational record, he truly was a “professional student.” He attended Val ejo Senior High School, which shared the

same building on Amador Street as the junior col ege. Across the street at 801 Nebraska Street stood The Plunge, a Val ejo community swimming

center also shared by high school and junior col ege students. There, a slender, good-looking Al en, a member of the wrestling team, toiled at the

pool as a popular lifeguard from 1950 through his graduation in 1951 and a short time after. “Leigh was a hel of a diver,” one student recal ed, “and

drove a Cadil ac.” Al en, during this period, became intensely jealous of his friend, Robert Emmett, who was not only captain of the Val ejo High

School swimming team, but Leigh’s diving coach.

“I knew Leigh my last two years of high school and part of my junior col ege year,” his close friend, Kay, told me.“I lived in Carquinez and my folks,

about that time, bought a house in town and I became a ‘townie.’ My dad worked as a fireman, then at Mare Island. Leigh started offering me a lift to

and from school and soon was taking any number of our friends in his Cadil ac. In fact, I learned to change my first tire on that car. Leigh came out

of the house one time from visiting. He says, ‘Kay, have you ever changed a flat before?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Wel , there’s no time like the present,’ he

said, then sat and supervised.

“Other times we’d go to the pool. Leigh going up the ladder for a high dive would cause laughter because he was built sort of pear-shaped and

he would go up the ladder like a woman would. There would be a lot of snickering in the crowd. And so he would walk to the end of the board like he

was going to make his dive. He cal ed it a ‘Change Your Mind Dive.’ He would go up, hit the board, turn and do a back flip, landing back on the

board as if he had had second thoughts. Then he would suddenly shoot up in a two and a half forward somersault, cutting the water below without a

ripple. That gymnastic dive got the crowd’s attention fast. They didn’t laugh anymore! He could also start a front dive, do it backing up from the

board and end up doing a back dive, but that was real y hard and he missed that quite often.

“Leigh cut quite a figure with his Cadil ac, his trick dives, his white dog, Frosty, and Petunia, a skunk who was
not
de-scented. What he real y

liked to talk about with me was music and plays, anything from comedy to farce, mysteries to Gilbert and Sul ivan.” Kay assumed Leigh was gay as

he rarely dated. When he did go out, he brought along his father. “Leigh would give a cal and we’d take off to the movies together,” she recal ed,

“Leigh’s father was very gracious and took me to symphonies and plays with them. I knew the father from ’53 through ’56, a very, very gentle man. I

met Leigh’s mother only a couple of times. She never made herself visible. I saw her at swim meets. I liked to go and look at the guys. Leigh was

extremely intel igent, almost scary sometimes. He was a bright fel ow, but his brother Ron was the golden boy. His mother wouldn’t have much to do

with Leigh. I wasn’t ever privy to the fights, but I was privy to the cold shoulders. Commander Al en would ask her if she wanted to go along with us

and she’d snap, ‘Why?’ Sometimes Ron went with us and I would have thought she would have been glad to go. Sometimes Leigh spoke of a girl

named Bobbie who had ‘broken his heart.’ Bobbie was Leigh’s first big love, and he used to just talk in glowing colors about her. She was the love

of his life.”

Bobbie’s daughter later told me of her mother’s friendship with Leigh Al en. “She was a diver whose picture often appeared in Val ejo papers in

the sports section between 1952 to 1957,” she said. “Sometimes Al en’s picture was alongside hers in the paper. I think he was a platform diver

and a wrestler. Very clumsy walk when walking down the diving board, he looked terrible until he left the board and dove. Then he was very graceful.

But when walking he was terribly lumbering. He had a funny hip. In case you don’t already know.” Harold Huffman, Leigh’s childhood friend, thought

Leigh’s fluctuating weight caused the limp.

Leigh attended Val ejo Junior Col ege, majoring in the liberal arts, and became Al -American Diving Champ there. On September 18, 1954, he

enrol ed at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. During the 1950s and 1960s Cal Poly San Luis Obispo was affiliated with