Zodiac Unmasked (25 page)

Chief of Inspectors Charlie Barca cal ed Toschi in. “The mayor wants you to take statements at the county jail.” “This real y stinks,” said Toschi. “I

don’t want to get involved, Chief.” “You’ve been ordered. You’re on loan, Toschi, as of tomorrow morning. And keep quiet about your findings.”

“And I did,” Toschi told me. “I worked alone to investigate the recent uprising at the county jail. The department was in terrible, terrible shape.”

Toschi’s assistance was invaluable. James Rodman, Grand Jury foreman, wrote Chief Scott that the SFPD was “indeed fortunate to have persons

of Inspector Toschi’s calibre as a member of its staff. It would have been impossible to carry out our assigned duties were it not for his assistance.”

Leigh Al en put his experience as a Union Oil chemist to use. His new job with Union Richfield in the East Bay al owed him time to settle down

evenings in front of his trailer. He was a likable man when he chose to be (his staunch and unshakeable Fresno Street defenders, the children who

thought he was a cowboy star, his drinking buddies, al were proof of that). These days, though, he carried a grim set to his mouth. He stil had not

forgiven the ransacking of his trailer or the oil refinery visit that got him fired. He stood in an arid patch of gravel, drinking a Coors, leaning back

against the stil -hot metal of his trailer, and watching autos rushing by on Santa Rosa Avenue. Droning like insects, the cars spun away, turning the

bend toward remote Franz Val ey Road. Crickets chirped. A warm westerly shrouded the court. He faced west, rocking on his heels, and peered

beyond two pink flamingos listing drunkenly in the gravel. Between their metal legs echoed the tumultuous roar of traffic on 101, which ran paral el to

Santa Rosa Avenue.

Leigh shuffled inside, where he had unlimited time to brood and to hate the SFPD. When he wasn’t working, diving, or hunting, he sought

diversions. Each year he attended the Scottish Games with his mother. But he missed the family dinners. “My mother longed for a happy family life,”

said a friend of Leigh’s. “I think she enjoyed going to Leigh Al en’s house because it appeared to be such a ‘nice family.’ Everyone had nice table

manners, and I think Leigh’s mother decorated the house very wel —that type of thing. It only goes to show you you can’t go by what’s on the

surface.” Leigh continued to attend Sonoma State Col ege, majoring in biological sciences and working toward a master’s in mammalogy /biology.

He had minored in chemistry, and had already earned a degree in botany and elementary education on the G.I. Bil in 1971. Learning came easy to

him. Life did not.

Tuesday, July 31, 1973

Just around that
bend from Al en’s trailer and down the country road, 2.2 miles north of Porter Creek on Franz Val ejo Road and down a familiar

wooded slope, bodies continued to be found. Caroline Davis was discovered in the
exact
spot as Sterling and Weber. It could not be determined if

Davis had been sexual y molested. Zodiac had threatened to experiment with different ways to kil people, and it appeared he or someone else

was doing just that.

Her body exhibited signs of tetanus, such as rigid muscles, indicating strychnine poisoning. Death from strychnine is similar to that from lock-jaw,

but more rapid—about fifteen minutes. Because of the irritating action of the poison on the spinal cord, muscular twitchings lead to generalized

convulsions that become so intense the spine arches. The body’s entire weight is borne on the heels and back. Final y, the skin darkens to gray-

blue and respiration ceases. Sergeant Brown wasn’t so sure Davis had been poisoned. “It’s kinda like when we get lab results on our autopsies of

a guy who has a lethal dose of amphetamines in him,” he said much later. “If the guy is a chronic crank user a lethal dose to him and me are going

to be total y different. As for strychnine poisoning, the state lab told me there’s a hal ucinogenic mushroom that creates strychnine or a derivative of

strychnine when it’s in your body. Basical y, it’s like when a junkie uses heroin it becomes morphine in his body. It doesn’t necessarily mean this girl

was poisoned; it means that she had probably taken these mushrooms. It doesn’t mean that poison kil ed her, but it might have been a contributing

factor. She also had a good ligature mark on her neck.”

Wednesday, October 24, 1973

Zodiac’s symbols were
always open to diverse interpretations. His crosshair symbol, used in targeting nuclear bombs, led police to quiz a

nuclear weapons expert stationed at Travis AFB. His other signs represented weather symbols to a pilot, silver hal marks to a jeweler, and

something else entirely to a postman at the North Station Post Office in White Plains. “I spotted a Zodiac cryptogram in the
New York News
,” he

explained to me. “After showing the three lines to several other postal employees, they al agreed that the symbols in the cryptogram were the same

twenty-five symbols used in the Civil Service Post Office examination.” Zodiac’s symbol could also represent the astrological Southern Cross

inscribed in an el ipse.

Chemistry formulas and symbols danced through Zodiac’s letters. That the bombs he diagrammed were chemical bombs had not been lost on

Toschi. Leigh Al en was an East Bay chemist. The previous April, the entire region had been jolted when a chemical plant there exploded. Physicist

John Dalton’s icons for types of elements and their atomic weights resembled Zodiac code symbols—hydrogen: a circle with a dot at its center and

sulfur: a crossed circle—the kil er’s personal signet. The aroma of sulfur and brimstone persistently clung to Zodiac. One could almost hear the

clatter of cloven hooves.

At the stroke of midnight the Devil made his appearance in the Zodiac case. A San Francisco man, attending a nude rock dance of the Venus

Psychedelic Church on Third Avenue, arrived dressed as Satan. As he approached a group of four nude men, one was leading a discussion about

Zodiac. “Zodiac must be some sort of devil or fiend,” interjected the costumed devil. The man discoursing about “Mr. Zodiac” wheeled suddenly and

pointed a finger at him. “YOU ARE THE ZODIAC!” he shouted. The red devil smiled, blushed beneath the red dye staining his face, and replied, “I

am Satan incarnate.” He moved on. However, the man fol owed and drew Satan aside. “I am the Zodiac, you fool,” he hissed, “and I made a point of

outfoxing the police and newspapers. I have kil ed many more than have ever been identified as Zodiac kil ings.”

“Is this because Zodiac has already kil ed twelve of the astrological Zodiac signs?” said Satan uneasily.

“I have kil ed more than thirty-seven,” said the burly but good-looking stranger. He now seemed, the devil recal ed, “cool, calm, col ected . . . an

OK, normal, 100 percent Al -American Guy, sound as he could be.” “Most of my victims are unknown,” he continued, “and never even linked to

Zodiac. It’s just a game like Monopoly, chess or checkers or bridge. I enjoy kil ing people as a game between myself and the police. Kil ing to me

means no more than flicking ashes.” The man rushed away with a pale, thin-lipped woman. The reveler never saw either again. Oddly enough, a

future letter from Zodiac on January 30, 1974 (the last time he gave a specific figure) claimed almost the same number of victims—thirty-seven.

“We continued to get tips on Satan worshippers and astrology freaks throughout the investigation,” Toschi said. Zodiac’s arcane symbols drew

wild theories, even threats against those involved in the occult. Satanist Anton Szandor La Vey, master of the Church of Satan, publisher of
The

Cloven Hoof
and
The Satanic Bible,
received a death threat from someone who thought he might be Zodiac. Because of the astrology angle,

witchcraft symbols, and satanic black robes (the “Code Kil er’s” grisly executioner’s costume had obvious ties to the Black Mass), La Vey himself

had once been a suspect. Immediately, he sent the letter over to Avery at the
Chronicle
.

“Dear Satan . . . Now women lay in the streets in your Devil control. But of course al things come to ends . . . forces are working against you.

My fight against you has been going on for many generations with little success. This real y bothers me, Satan, to no end! You can choose your

choice of weapons, but I prefer knives. . . . I wish more than anything to have your blood on my sword.”

“He prefers knives,” thought the journalist. He rang fel ow reporter Dave Peterson for his opinion on the threat. “And knives are used in rituals,”

Peterson told Avery, “which brings me to black magician Aleister Crowley’s ceremonial hooded robe. Crowley’s robe, used in arcane rituals, was

emblazoned with the Rose and Cross of the Secret Order of the Golden Dawn—a crossed circle.” If Zodiac was part of a satanic cult sacrificing

victims in accordance with the phases of the moon and religious holidays, that might explain everything. How else could Zodiac drive so many

different cars, kil over a sizable geographical area, come in so many shapes and sizes, and write letters in different handwriting styles? The hand

of Satan had to figure somewhere in the mystery.

“Satanism—possibly,” said Zodiac buff David Rice. “Satanism is a more fruitful area.” Zodiac used inverted words, the number thirteen, Sartor

Crosses, and Black Mass phrases. He employed astrology and numerology and drew evil eyes and bloody crosses. His triangles (representing the

Holy Trinity) were turned upside down. I had heard tales of the Blue Rock Springs victim’s interest in the occult—“a candle and skul in her San

Francisco apartment,” said her sister, “witchcraft in the Virgin Islands where she had gone skin diving on her honeymoon,” and “a Val ejo satanic

cult.”

Later on October 24, Dr. Gilbert Hol oway, an ESP expert, was interviewed by Jack Carney on KSFO Radio. “I have a possible leaning that the

kil er’s name is something like Cul en, Col in, or Cal en,” Hol oway said. He spel ed the names out. “I see a detective with an Italian name—

something like Banducci or Sanducci, tackling the Zodiac. But he has poison on his body like Herman Goering and does not expect to be taken

alive. . . . Zodiac has some acquaintance with the First Church of Satan in San Francisco. He is under largely Satanic influence.”

Satan caught the interest of the California Department of Justice too. Their 1971 report from Napa read:

“Because of Zodiac’s letter talking about the afterlife and ‘slaves in paradice,’ the Department of Justice focused on people in groups who

had these weird beliefs and they were able to eliminate everybody including al male members of the Manson family.”

“[Zodiac] has an evil deity with him who advises him,” an acknowledged mystic explained. “I saw it when I was in that card shop on Market

Street.” To give weight to his comments, the seer included copies of his psychic resume and a letter from the Premonitions Registry in New York.

Peter Hurkos, consulting psychic on the Boston Strangler and Sharon Tate murders, received threats from Zodiac while he was in Palm Springs.

He offered his services to the SFPD to help catch Zodiac (in exchange for a plane ticket to San Francisco), but they turned him down.

“Did Leigh ever discuss an afterlife?” I asked Cheney much later. “What were his feelings?”

“Victims to be slaves in the afterlife,” replied Cheney tersely.

Monday, December 13, 1973

A broad-shouldered man
continued to stalk the marshes, quarries, and lagoons along Lake Herman Road. Winds from the west stirred fields of

brittle grass. As evening fel , he stood motionless—indistinguishable from surrounding rocks. The same setting sun that colored the boulders gold

enlivened his impassive face. Meanwhile, in San Francisco the wait was maddening. Thirty-four months had passed since Zodiac’s last letter.

Why? Zodiac was al we talked about, al we thought about.

Over on Bryant Street, Toschi fished out a Zodiac letter received that morning. “I assume the writer wants me to think he is Zodiac,” he said with a

sigh. “He uses an Oakland address as a return, but the Oakland police building has a zip code of 94607. However, the writer has the San

Francisco Hal of Justice code correct, 94103. The word ‘HOMICIDE’ on the envelope is written by a clerk in our mail room.” He held it to the light

and squinted. “Notice the obvious crossed
t
’s and the dots over the
i
’s. Notice the paper size is 8½ by 11, and a legal-size envelope, different from the odd size of the Zodiac letters. This size envelope and size of paper is consistent with the stationery given inmates in the county jail or in prison.

It is different from the Zodiac letters and has a different watermark. Another hoax! As far as phony Zodiac writers, the number would be more like,

what, Bil ? Fifty so far?”

Something about Zodiac led to imitation: first hoax letters, then attempted murder, and final y homicide. For ten days in May 1973, a Richmond

teacher had been bombarded by menacing cal s from a sobbing man identifying himself as Zodiac. “I’m going to kil the lady in the blue house,” he

told the teacher. “I went to a Martinez school in search of victims, but left because the police were there.” Afterward, the teacher discovered his

back door had been pried open by a prowler. Shaken, he went to the refrigerator. Absentmindedly, he took a swig from an open bottle of cola. A

metal ic taste fil ed his mouth and he quickly spat the drink out. Someone had added a lethal dose of arsenic.

Another Zodiac copycat nearly severed noted lamp designer Robert Salem’s head with a long, thin-bladed knife. Homicide Inspectors Gus