Zodiac Unmasked (24 page)

Stranglers,” Kenneth Bianchi, had wanted to be an L.A. policeman, even taken a police science course at a Rochester community col ege. When

cops apprehended Bianchi in Bel ingham, Washington, he was enrol ed as a deputy in the sheriff’s reserve training program. His white, late-model

auto with silver spotlights mounted on both sides resembled a police car. Inside his black attaché case he carried a highway patrolman’s badge

and cuffs.

John Wayne Gacy, as a youth, dressed in the policelike uniform of his local civil defense squad. Fascinated by the trappings of law enforcement,

he obsessively fixed upon James Hanley, a detective with the hit-and-run unit. Gacy became “Jack” Hanley, a brutal, muscular homicide cop who

existed only in his mind. Jack, “a devoted hater of homosexuals,” was the savage, sadistic cop that Gacy both admired and feared. When Gacy

was drunk or stoned, his alter ego assumed control and committed the acts a sober Gacy never could.2 Because Jack had been in charge, Gacy

suppressed the details of his crimes. He forgot the acts he had committed on the boys he buried in the wal s of his house. Fantasy Detective Jack

made nightly forays into the seamy sections of town, cruising slowly in an old black Oldsmobile, radio scanner squawking, spotlight and red lights

rotating. Dressed in a leather jacket, trousers, and highway patrolman’s shoes, Gacy picked up boys and handcuffed them. Some psychiatrists

analyzed Zodiac as being at least “a latent homosexual to whom bul ets and knives afforded perverse satisfaction.”

Dr. Lunde warned to look for a suspect who had a col ection of guns and early interest in guns, knives, and various instruments of torture. “As an

adult,” Lunde wrote in
Murder and Madness,
“a col ection of such instruments, proficiency in their use, and an emotional attraction to weapons may

be seen which goes far beyond that of any ordinary col ector.” Serial kil ers wil become incredibly skil ful in their use. Whenever Zodiac’s lair was

uncovered and a search made, I was certain huge numbers of weapons would be present—guns, bombs, or the “Death Machine” Zodiac bragged

about. Had Arthur Leigh Al en—like Wil iams, Bianchi, Kemper, Bundy, and Gacy—once wanted to be a policeman?

He had.

On May 2, 1952, Al en, then nineteen, sought employment with the Val ejo Police Department. They turned him down. “He applied right out of high

school to be a Val ejo cop,” a source explained, “and they said no. Therefore he had a very good reason for hating the Val ejo Police Department—

rejection.” Al en offered his heart to the law again much later. On June 11, 1964, he was a non-certified personnel applicant at the Watsonvil e

Police Department. Watsonvil e spurned him too. Sometimes it seemed everyone did. “Wel , there you go,” said Toschi. “A guy who is a ‘wannabe’

cop and cannot make it, hates al cops. It’s been proven. They hate any authority figure after that because they couldn’t pass whatever tests were

necessary.”

Chicago clairvoyant Joe DeLouise, who felt tuned into Zodiac’s mind, agreed. “The person who created Zodiac was somebody very familiar with

law enforcement,” he said. “I think he was an ex-cop. In his letters to the police he knew everything that was going on with the police. He knew his

victims. I feel he wil kil until he is caught.” Had Leigh, like Kemper, gotten close to the police and learned about the impending search of his trailer?

California Highway Patrolman Lynn Lafferty had been Leigh’s childhood friend, and possibly Al en may have wanted to emulate him. Lafferty had

been anxiously searching for Zodiac on his own.

Leigh had been an occasional teacher at Travis AFB, where Wing Walker shoes were sold at the base exchange. He qualified for exchange

privileges on several counts—as a dependent of a Navy commander, an employee, and as a former Navy man. Naval enlistments ran from four to

six years (with thirty days leave each year), but Leigh served only from 1956 to 1958. I was told why. “Al en was in the military—in the Navy,” the

daughter of a woman Leigh once dated platonical y told me. “What led to his being discharged was his arrest by the Val ejo Police Department for

disturbing the peace [on June 15, 1958]. He had gotten into a fight with a friend [Ralph Spinel i]. He went into the Navy in 1956, was in there two

years, and less-than-honorably discharged—a cheap way to get rid of someone you don’t want. I think Leigh Al en was trying to become a frogman

in the Navy. For either psychological or physical reasons they would not accept him into the program for deep diving or being on the submarines for

long lengths of time. My mother remembers this as a very, very large disappointment for him. I believe he did have an intense dislike for his father

because of his militaristic attitude. I believe that when my mother was ever at his house, he had to address his father as ‘sir.’ Perhaps his father’s

influence had something to do with this also. My mother felt this period of time had a great influence on his life.”

Though civil charges were dismissed on July 8, 1958, Al en received a “less than honorable discharge” from the Navy late that year. One of the

ancil ary reasons for his expulsion was that he had again left weapons in plain sight in his car. From 1959 on he listed his draft status as “Non-

finished active duty and reserve time, USN.” Because of the police, Al en’s greatest ambitions would never be realized. He would never become a

Navy Seal or submarine commander or cop. By the end of 1972 Al en had at least five reasons for hating the police—his rejections by Val ejo and

Watsonvil e P.D., VPD’s arrest of him and resulting Navy discharge, his firing from the refinery, and the humiliating search of his trailer. If he were

Zodiac, he had a sixth reason to despise cops—SFPD had nearly captured him.

In the Navy Al en had worked on a refrigerator ship, mostly scraping and painting hul s in the bright California light. “Leigh was also an excel ent

marksman in the Navy,” my Val ejo source verified, “one of the best in his group. Additional y, he often wrote to my mother and used the signals

used by the flags at the bottom of the letters [Zodiac symbols in the letter codes could be matched to various semaphore flags]. Yet she burned the

letters after her knowledge of Leigh later being sent to Atascadero.”

He had even taken training in code. Zodiac had a masterful knowledge of code. “He did know code, and not only sewed wel but was a sail

maker,” said a source. The neat stitching on the hood worn by Zodiac at Berryessa suggested a man who could sew. It was doubtful Zodiac could

ask anyone else to sew him an executioner’s hood. Leigh not only learned aquatic scuba diving during his Navy stint, but briefly worked as a wire

operator, third-class radioman. Napa Captain Narlow was convinced that whoever Zodiac was, he also had technical knowledge of a #15 Teletype

transmitter—he had duplicated its circuitry on one of his bomb plans and an early note attributed to him had been on Teletype paper.

“The plans for Zodiac’s bomb came from [the schematic of a] UP 15 teleprinter,” an expert told me. “I also noticed that in his schematic

diagrams, he properly draws ‘jumpers’ over two intersecting lines. I think these are the best clues for finding the Zodiac and that there is more than

a fifty percent probability that he was an amateur radio operator (also known as ‘hams’). First, operators who used RTTY (Radio Teletype) used

these surplus machines. . . . Secondly, the simple fact that he uses ‘jumpers’ on his schematic diagram tel s me he has more than just a passing

knowledge of electronics, which hams must master . . . other possible alternatives are Navy and Coast Guard personnel such as electronic techs

and radiomen.”

The relationship between heavy Leigh Al en and his slender father was complex. The strongest Navy influence came from the father. Ethan

Warren Al en, a wel -known, highly decorated Naval commander and pilot, was born April 6, 1903, in Meade, Kansas, the son of George M. Al en

and Cora Woodard, both of Kansas. Leigh’s father, a twenty-five-year Val ejo resident, put in twenty-four years of service in Hawaii and on Treasure

Island in San Francisco Bay. In his retirement, Ethan became a draftsman for the City of Val ejo. When he married Bernice Hanson of California,

they had two sons, Arthur Leigh and Ronald Gene. Ethan passed on a love of hunting, flying, and sailing to both, but his elder son, Leigh, took it

most to heart.

It was no coincidence that Leigh hunted, had a pilot’s license, and sailed. But after his plane crash, Ethan, no longer the vibrant and confident

officer he had once been, could not curb’s Leigh’s outbursts and abuse of Bernice. The death of his stern father set Al en free, but the earlier jet

crack-up had given him license to pursue his desires. In this home, dominated by a strong-wil ed woman, the father, Ethan, became a shadow in the

years before his death. Ethan died of carcinoma of the prostate with metastases on March 17, 1971.

January 4, 1971, two months before Al en’s father died, an anonymous letter came to the paper:

“If you are game print the fol owing letter. An open letter to The Zodiac. You need no explosives for your big
blast
, just go to the nearest

Police station and tel the truth about the man who has made a kil er out of you, your father who has been getting away with famous American

crimes since 1947 and is now an expert at giving kil ing lessons. Once you asked ‘What wil they do to me?’ You wil be placed in a mental

institution which is better than a session with a double edge sword or a shot in the back because after the conviction of the scapegoats for your

father’s murders with your help, he wil have to take care of you since you have been placing a dent into his good reputation by duplicating his

murders.” The typed letter went on to talk about an older brother. “Think about the big noses you could rub so many big boo-boos, it is fantastic.

. . . You could also clear up a little mystery. If two people with only their hands tied do not run out to seek help, is it not because they are already

in the process of being kil ed by two men. . . .”

Father and son kil ing alongside one another? An odd theory and an even odder fantasy.

Something certainly had happened in Zodiac’s life during the month of March 1971. After a six-month gap, Zodiac had penned two letters—

March 13 to the
Times
and another on March 22 to the
Chronicle
. The first used the phrase “don’t bury me . . .” and the second depicted a man

digging with a shovel.

Ethan lingered in the Oakland Naval Hospital for seventeen days. As Al en’s dad was dying, he was hospitalized in the 94566 postal district, the

same ZIP code from which Zodiac mailed his letter to the
L.A. Times
. The two threatening March letters might have been Zodiac’s panicky stab at

anonymous immortality. I recal ed how old-fashioned Zodiac’s clothes had been—pleated pants pointed to an older man, or someone wearing an

older man’s clothing. The Zodiac costume was real y only Navy dress, his appearance only that of a sailor: close-cut hair, shined shoes, bel -

bottoms, dark navy-blue jacket. Had Al en, out of hatred or love, dressed in his father’s clothes to do his kil ing as Zodiac? But Ethan, unlike his son,

had been a slender man and Leigh, because of his size, could never have worn his father’s Naval costume.

Sergeants Lynch and Lundblad had interviewed Al en from the first, Lynch more than once. Each time Al en pointed to his scuba gear or smiled

his watery smile. His alibi was that he had gone diving alone or with people whose names he did not know at “Fort Point” or “Bodega Bay.” On the

outskirts of Val ejo the quarries and creeks, ponds and lakes ran stil , cold, and deep, holding who knows what secrets and mementos. The

weapons police sought might even lie beneath the frigid clear waters of Lake Berryessa.

Sources speculated that Zodiac had financial resources because he “purchased any number of guns, attended theater, saw numerous films,

read multiple newspapers, overposted his letters, and had the luxury of free time in the summer and many cars and residences.” Others speculated

that Zodiac was either rich or received money from relatives or a trust fund. Leigh Al en’s family had some money; police had known that from the

first.

10

the devil

Tuesday, March 6, 1973

Though eight months
had dragged by since Toschi and Armstrong ransacked his trailer, Al en knew he was stil under scrutiny. He owned a

police scanner and listened in on Val ejo police staking out his basement from a block away. But for large stretches of time he was unobserved.

The Zodiac case was simply too immense, the pool of suspects too enormous, and manpower stretched too far for unbroken surveil ance to be

feasible. And there were hundreds of other suspects. One of Zodiac’s chief hunters, Dave Toschi, was often sidetracked by il ness or suddenly

diverted from his pursuit by other tasks.

“We were not only working on Zodiac when it came our week to go on cal ,” Toschi told me, “but catching other cases. That particular week we

had four. The night before we had a fireman stabbed to death out in the Haight. I was so exhausted because we had to go into the office on

Saturday and I had nothing to eat but animal crackers and cold coffee. Then I dropped into bed about 8:30 P.M. An hour later the phone rang. I was

barely able to get out of bed—punchy—a headache, but I had to get up. We had another one.”

Mayor Joe Alioto also handpicked Toschi as a special investigator for the San Francisco Criminal Grand Jury on March 6, 1973, the first such

assignment since a 1936 scandal. Alioto wanted Toschi to probe two riots and two fires at the San Bruno main county jail. Chief Don Scott and