Zodiac Unmasked (14 page)

beach for evidence. The lead sheriff’s detective, Wil iam Baker, feared they might have compromised the integrity of the crime scene. “You have an

inkling of what I am up against,” Baker told me, “as I strive to resurrect from the ashes the reality of the case. You have to figure it was 1963. We’d

go out with either Search and Rescue, or sometimes get other explorers. This time they had trustees out there going on searches for cartridge

casings or whatever else they could find. I shudder when I think about it, but that’s the reality. And they did find some casings, quite a few, expended

along the victims’ flight path—a dry creek bed that led from the blanket near the beach up towards the shack where the kids were actual y found.

Two distinct points where more casings were located served to pinpoint where the victims were initial y dropped.”

One convict spotted twenty .22-caliber shel casings glimmering in the canyon creek bed. Detectives spied something too—shoe tracks cut

deeply into the light sand and sparse grass leading to and from the ragged shelter. The tracks came from a Navy or Air Force shoe similar to Wing

Walkers. Both the ammo and shoes were sold through base exchanges. Vandenberg Air Force Base, a SAC unit, lay near Lompoc, and was only

an hour’s drive from the murder site.

“And since this was an early experience for the kil er,” Baker noted, “he may have held onto his weapon and even the same ammo to use again.”

The murderer had used Winchester .22 ammo, long-rifle—the same brand and caliber Zodiac would use five and a half years later on dark Lake

Herman Road just outside Val ejo. “The location where Domingos and Edwards chose to spend ‘Ditch Day’ was isolated,” Baker said, “and not a

site where one would expect to find young couples, even with the presence of the victims’ car at the turnout. Given that, the kil er, armed with a

firearm and knife, along with precut lengths of rope and wooden matches, descended upon our victims with apparent murderous intent. Were they

fol owed there? Had he selected his victims beforehand and was there a way to find a connection between the victims and the kil er?”

Though Baker could not name them, he suspected items were missing from the crime site. In his studies, he scanned six eight-by-ten-inch police

glossies. One showed the arson attempt upon the lean-to, the male victim in situ within the shack. Another photo showed Sheriff James W.

Webster, Chief of Detectives Charles Taylor, and a local TV anchorman by the lean-to. The newsman was posed with his hand on the shack and a

cigarette in his mouth. Baker studied three pictures of Robert on the autopsy table showing contusions and abrasions on his knuckles. The

discoloration on the knuckles of his right hand (Baker could not see the left in the pictures) led him to suspect Robert had fought with his attacker.

“Those abrasions on his face were perimortem or postmortem when he was dragged face down by his feet to the shack,” said Baker. “I suspect the

same thing would have happened to the Berryessa victims if they had broken loose from Zodiac. Zodiac would have dropped his knife and gunned

them down. As for the red-haired man [seen the day before], police found him and determined to their satisfaction that he wasn’t involved. Other

circumstances didn’t lead me to give it any particular emphasis. As for Riverside, I felt Zodiac had only taken credit for that murder. But the attack

had occurred in Southern California and Zodiac talked about there being a lot more of them down here. He might have meant our case.”

Wednesday, June 5, 1963

Edwards and Domingos
had just been kil ed and were in everyone’s thoughts. Certainly the tragedy occupied Panzarel a and Cheney’s minds.

They had discussed the murders at length. Because of that, they were able to accurately recal the exact weekend Al en appeared suddenly at their

door. In Lompoc the high school graduations ceremonies were stil held, but conducted around two empty seats. Above those lonely chairs, a flag

fluttered at half-mast. Six months passed as the terrible and motiveless murders remained unsolved.

Monday, December 9, 1963

Allen, still qualifying
for his teaching credentials, continued to apply for various positions at the Department of Education in Sacramento. While he

was waiting, his scholastic record and military background al owed him to teach school at Travis AFB in Fairfield, not far from Val ejo. Though he

preferred elementary classes, he settled for instructing seventh- and eighth-graders in spel ing, health, and P.E. He was permitted to shop at the

base exchange, purchasing goods at discount—everything from ammo for his hunting trips to boots. However, Wing Walker shoes were not sold

there until two years later when the Weinbrenner shipment was dispersed. After a year at the Travis school, he was fired for habitual y leaving an

assortment of deadly weapons lying about his car in plain sight.

“The thing that got me,” recal ed Panzarel a, “was that when Leigh lost a teaching job, he came down in his Austin Healey sports car and tried to

convince us guys that he lost the job because they had a security check and he was carrying a revolver. But the real reason was child molesting. He

used the phrase that it made him so angry that he wanted to ‘kil the little kiddies as they came bouncing off the bus.’ That stuck with me al my life.

And that’s the phrase that was later used by the Zodiac kil er.”

In 1964, Leigh taught at Watsonvil e, north of Salinas, and heard a strange story. In the San Bernardino area at Pacific High School, a young

student in dark-framed glasses with a black elastic band strode unannounced to the front of the classroom. The teacher had not yet arrived. “In very

large letters, he wrote ZODIAC on the blackboard,” said a student there, “along with a few codelike symbols I cannot recal .”

In August 1965, Leigh lacerated his leg in an accident that required plastic surgery, and though his mishap hobbled him wel into 1966, he stil

sent out feelers for a new teaching job. “The injury,” he wrote on December 23, 1965, “put me out of commission until recently.” But he was

reportedly able to work a little for his friend Glen Rinehart’s brother, Dale, at an airfield in Texas, where he got his pilot’s license. His weight was

now 220 pounds.

Saturday, June 18, 1966

Claiming a state
credential in General Elementary and four years’ teaching experience, Al en applied by mail to the Calaveras Unified School

District in San Andreas for work. “I also enjoy the country,” he wrote, “and I can’t
stand
smog.” He listed the grades he wanted to instruct in order of

preference—“4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.” “I can teach physical education and art and music, but not too wel .” The elementary school subjects that most

interested him were “athletics, science, nature study, and music appreciation.” He gave his height as six feet, altered his weight to reflect another

ten pounds gained because of his incapacity, and mentioned membership “until this year” in two professional organizations—the NEA and CTA.

Leigh exaggerated the time he had actual y taught, and claimed a present salary of $300 per month. He quickly altered the figure to $400. “When

can you come in for an interview?” he was asked. “Mondays or Tuesdays would be best as I am involved in recreation on other days,” he answered.

He began honing his teaching skil s at a school cal ed Mountain Town in the Sierras and at Val ey Springs Elementary School in Val ey Springs,

a Northern California town just west of San Andreas. On the Val ey Springs application he wrote down Ted Kidder as a reference. Leigh taught his

first year of grade school at Val ey Springs uneventful y, but soon old problems arose—his improper attentions toward children and poorly

concealed hatred of women.

“Leigh sent out a lot of resumes,” Cheney told me, “and worked hard to find a teaching job. But I didn’t know about the teaching jobs that he had

had. He didn’t speak about that. I knew he taught at Travis, but I didn’t see or visit him while he was there. He looked a lot like Dan Blocker, ‘Hoss’

Cartwright on the
Bonanza
television show, so in the sixties, when Leigh used to go to a big sporting event or there were a lot of people around, he

had a big white cowboy hat he would wear. He wanted people, especial y kids, to think he was Dan Blocker. As for that cowboy hat, Leigh had that

before I met him, and probably had been pul ing that deception since the show came on the air in 1959.” Leigh would smile and say, “‘Hoss’ is

Scandinavian for Good Luck.”

Sunday, October 30, 1966

Leigh Allen, wearing
his white cowboy hat and “Big” Dan Blocker smile, traveled to Riverside to attend the Los Angeles International Grand Prix.

That autumn afternoon, he watched the race along with approximately eighty thousand people. At 6:10 P.M. Cheri Jo Bates, an eighteen-year-old

Riverside City Col ege freshman, set out along Magnolia to the RCC library. The library closed between 5:00 and 6:00 P.M. In order to realize her

ambition to become an airline stewardess, Cheri Jo had to meet education and age requirements. She would qualify by the end of her sophomore

year and had contacted many of the major airlines. Cheri Jo had just visited her fiancé of two years, Dennis Earl Highland, at San Francisco State

University. Inexplicably, she told two girlfriends, “I’m going to the library to meet my boyfriend.” However, Highland was at that moment playing

footbal in San Francisco at S. F. State. Police later conjectured that she had meant a former suitor.

A friend observed the strikingly attractive, blond cheerleader speed by in her lime-green VW. A 1965-66 bronze Oldsmobile fol owed closely

behind. She parked, leaving the right passenger window partial y down. Ten minutes later Cheri Jo checked out three books from the local col ege

library. Though her friends were at the smal , cramped library between 7:15 and 8:57 P.M., none recal ed seeing her there. At 9:00 P.M., when the

archives closed, she returned to her car to discover the engine would not catch. And here she had been working part-time at the Riverside National

Bank just to pay for the vehicle. Parked behind her car was a Tucker Torpedo that had not been there before.

In her absence, someone had gained access to the engine, yanked out the distributor coil and condenser, and disconnected the middle wire of

the distributor. As Cheri Jo ran the battery down, a man approached from the shadows and stepped to the partial y rol ed-down right-side window.

“Having trouble?” he said. “Let me take a look at the engine.” After failing to start the auto, he said, “My car is over in the parking lot. Come on, I’l

give you a lift.” She left her books on the seat and keys stil in the ignition. Did she know the man, or had he forced her to accompany him?

The unlit gravel road to the parking lot was long, dark, and silent. The pair walked approximately two hundred feet away and paused in a dirt

driveway midway between two vacant frame houses at 3680 and 3692 Terracina. Their conversation was later detailed in a typed “confession

letter” sent to the police. “It’s about time,” he said. “About time for what?” she asked. “It’s about time for you to die.” A knife was in his hand.

Between 10:15 and 10:45 P.M. a female neighbor heard an “awful scream.” At 10:30 another heard “two screams.” After a couple of minutes of

silence, an old car started up. In that time the kil er, trailing drops of blood, had gone back to search for something he had dropped.

Monday, October 31, 1966

A groundskeeper discovered
Cheri Jo at 6:28 A.M. From the forty-two stab wounds, estimates were the knife blade was approximately three

and one-half inches long and one and one-half inch wide. The motive was mystifying—she was ful y clothed and had not been sexual y attacked or

robbed. During a ferocious, earth-churning battle, Bates had scratched her kil er’s face and ripped a paint-spattered Timex watch from his wrist.

The black band, broken away from one side of the watch face, measured seven inches in circumference. The Timex had been purchased at a

military base exchange. The B.F. Goodrich heel prints found near Bates’s body indicated a size-8-to-10 Wing Walker-like shoe manufactured for

the military by Leavenworth prisoners and sold by military exchanges. Just outside Riverside city limits lay March Air Force Base, a SAC base. A

number of greasy finger and palm prints were discovered on the left door of the victim’s car. Four workmen had been seen across the street from

where Bates’s car was parked on Terracina. The prints were sent to Washington and the Timex to CI&I.

At 8:30 A.M. Leigh Al en cal ed in sick. For the first time, he missed a day of work at Val ey Springs School. The next day, he fil ed out an

absence form and signed it. No one recal ed scratches on his face, but Al en said he was in Pomona when he heard Cheri Jo Bates was kil ed. He

had served as a painter in the Navy. That might explain paint specks on the base exchange Timex, but that was a long time ago.

“I was at the Riverside City Col ege library the night Cheri Bates was murdered,” an RCC student told me. “I had the same kind of car that she

had and I was parked in front of her. I normal y left the library when it closed, as she did, but I left earlier that night. The point is that I always felt [the victim] could have been me because of the timing and that I must have been in the library with him that night. Bates was a cheerleader and my best

friend.”

A transient, with a knife in his possession, was discovered sleeping in his nearby car, questioned, then released. A local mother found a kitchen

knife missing and told police she suspected her son might be the kil er. After questioning Cheri Jo’s friends, police turned to questioning fifteen