Zodiac Unmasked (31 page)

madman who enjoyed being in control). Zodiac never wrote them again. Police might look for a man who had many subscriptions, but canceled the

Examiner
.

Wednesday, March 30, 1977

Allen had now
served thirty months—two years and fifteen days at Atascadero. He was returned to the Sonoma County Jail to prepare for a May

13, 1977 probation hearing. He waived that right.

Tuesday, August 30, 1977

Leigh had spent
a total of 150 days in the Sonoma County Jail. Between there and Atascadero he had been behind bars for two years, four

months, and twenty-five days. During al that time not one offense attributable to Zodiac had been committed. The attacks in Santa Rosa had

ceased; no new bodies were discarded below Franz Val ey Road; no genuine letters from Zodiac had been received. Even as late as this nine

hundredth day of Leigh’s captivity, a note—a sentence—a single word postmarked from outside Atascadero would have removed Al en from the

suspect list. But Zodiac’s last letter had been received three ful years before—July 8, 1974.

In the afternoon, a Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department deputy ushered Leigh downstairs. Their heels echoed in the long impersonal hal ways.

The deputy arranged white plastic numerals, #4-7-9-3-2, below Leigh’s face for an I.D. mug shot. He was garbed in prison clothes, his mustache

and goatee now showing gray. His expression was scowling, though the next day he was to be a free man. A friend of mine saw a different

expression in the same photo. “I think he looks sad,” she said.

California law enforcement authorities, under Section 290 of the State Penal Code, relied on convicted sex offenders to keep tabs on

themselves by notifying police when they moved. Since the state had no enforcement program, it was no surprise that only a handful of the multitude

of discharged offenders were currently registered. Atascadero officials notified the prison registry and the registry notified Val ejo authorities that

Al en was on the streets again. The next step was up to him. He returned to his cubicle, his steps echoing down the hal s, his image reflected ful

length in the highly polished floor bigger than ever.

Wednesday, August 31, 1977

Liberated from Atascadero,
Leigh Al en went to stay with friends in Paso Robles. The fol owing day Toschi received a typed letter from him, the

first mention of Zodiac within recent memory. “Kil ers invariably try to inject themselves into the investigation,” I said to Toschi. “Have any of the

suspects ever offered to help you catch Zodiac? With his disdain of the police, Zodiac would be irresistibly drawn to offer to catch himself.”

“Only one,” he said.

“And I bet it was typed.”

“Yes, it was. It just arrived.” He searched his desk. A bright shaft of light cut through the grimy window. Traffic crawled sluggishly along Bryant

Street. The old sign flashed its red neon in bright sunlight, “OK BAIL BONDS—OPEN 24 HOURS—WE SPECIALIZE IN TRAFFIC.” Toschi found

the letter and read aloud: “If I can ever be of any help to you just let me know. I’m sorry I wasn’t your man, but I’m out now and I’ve paid my debt to

society. [signed] Leigh Al en.”

“Sorry I wasn’t your man!’” said Toschi in wonderment. A note like this, with its mocking tone, was exactly the kind of letter Zodiac would write.

“He’s the one,” I said.

Back at the
Chronicle,
a sick, unpostmarked letter signed with a Zodiac symbol arrived that afternoon. Even crank letters like Old Tom’s were

treated seriously. Actual y, any Zodiac letter, no matter how obvious a hoax, always created a stir. No possibility could be dismissed. Police

lavished attention on each because Zodiac’s handprinting may have changed over the years.

“ILL DO IT BECAUSE I DONE IT 21 TIMES I CANT STOP BECAUSE EACH THAT I KILL MAKES IT WORSE AND I MUST KILL MORE

MAN IS THE MOST PRIZED GAME ILL NERVER GIVE MY NAME. . . .”

What perversity drove anyone to copy Zodiac? Future copycats had darker motives and bloodier hands. They went further than imitating writing—

they acted on the Zodiac crimes themselves.

Tuesday, January 3, 1978

Allen returned to
Val ejo. Water Town had changed little—lying clean, sprawling, and mysterious as always. Robert Louis Stevenson once said,

“Val ejo typical of many smal California towns—a blunder.” First thing, Leigh applied as a fleet mechanic to Benicia Import Auto Service. He was

honest about his past. “I served two years and a half at Atascadero,” he admitted. After they hired him at $6.15 an hour, he roved the hil s trying out

his wings. He was seemingly unaware the search for Zodiac had not abated in his absence. The same hounds were stil howling and leaping al

about him and across the waters in San Francisco. But on a national level, the FBI focused on new Zodiac suspects:

“At Buffalo, New York. Wil question an informant regarding his knowledge of and basis of his al egation of Zodiac’s activities, and why he

considers him a suspect in the ZODIAC case,” read a bul etin. “At Jacksonvil e, at Tavares, Florida. Wil advise Lake County as a possible

ZODIAC suspect. Wil obtain photos of subject and furnish to Sacramento, and also to Buffalo. ARMED AND DANGEROUS.”

The gray straits appeared icy in the morning. Leigh parked where a causeway across the Napa River and the straits joined Val ejo at the west to

an island. He gazed toward Mare Island. In Water Town’s early days, a barge transporting a herd of livestock had overturned. General Mariano

Guadalupe Val ejo, an early California land baron, had rescued a white mare swimming for the island and christened the cay Isla de la Yegua

—“Island of the Mare.”

Across the water, battleships moored alongside three-tiered warehouses with brick smokestacks. The Naval Shipyard was Val ejo’s principal

industry, served by third-, even fourth-generation workers. During World War I it returned a thousand repaired ships to duty and manufactured three

hundred submarines, destroyer escorts, sub tenders, and landing craft. The West’s oldest Naval instal ation assembled battleships like the

California,
cruisers like the
Chicago
. It was the first Pacific yard to build atomic-powered subs. The shipyard, completely self-contained,

manufactured everything it needed from bricks to rivets. Al en was equal y self-sufficient. He gazed longingly toward the sea, drove into work, and

got bad news. Import Auto Service was laying him off. “So soon?” said Leigh. “Business has just been too slow,” said the manager. Al en clenched

and unclenched his fists at the hopelessness of it al .

Friday, April 28, 1978

On Monday, someone
had dropped a letter with too much postage and signed “Zodiac” into a mailbox. Its postmark designated a Santa Clara or

San Mateo County origin. On Friday, April 28, the
Chronicle
received its first Zodiac letter since 1974. If it was not a hoax, the kil er had been

elsewhere for almost four years. The letter met al the usual requirements of a genuine Zodiac communication. But it had a forced look about it, and

quite quickly cries of “Hoax!” went up. Sherwood Morril in Sacramento ruled it authentic. For a while so did John Shimoda, Director of the Postal

Crime Laboratory, Western Regional Office, San Bruno. Eventual y Shimoda reversed his position and sided with expert Terry Pascoe, claiming it

to be a clever hoax. I wanted it to be authentic, but as time went by, my doubts about the letter increased. The cunning forgery would cause agony

for everyone.

“He’s lurking somewhere,” Toschi told the press, “and it scares the hel out of people, including my wife. The case has put considerable strain

upon my family. My three little girls were not big enough in 1969 to appreciate the magnitude of the case, but they were old enough to hear stories

from their schoolmates that their daddy was working on a case about a dangerous murderer. They would come and tel me they were afraid that

something horrible would happen to me. They lived with this fear. Of al the cases I have handled, this one is real y a personal case. . . . He’s playing

the ego game, trying to taunt us. . . . I try not to let this bother me, but it’s frustrating. We have not given up. The case is worked upon anytime

something is forwarded to us and we act upon it. The surrender box is stil open.”

Monday, May 15, 1978

“I wasn’t surprised
a popular film like
The Exorcist
drew Zodiac out back in ’74,” Toschi told me. “This guy is a real nut on movies.” I showed him an anonymous letter sent to me—exactly the kind the egotistical, publicity-mad kil er might write: “To Editor, or who ever is in charge of the Zodiac,”

it said. “Have you ever considered making a short film about the Zodiac?

“Like some of those Hitchcocks, you know where you have to come to your own conclusion for an ending as to who is the kil er? If a muvie

could be made, it can be shown in one of those smal theaters where mostly sex muvies are shown so that it wil look like some unknown

thought of the idea just to make money on something that sel s. . . . As I look at it, since the Zodiac takes so much pride in himself for his work,

He’l probably love the thought of a muvie about himself, and since he feels shure knowbody knows him, there is no reason for him not to go

and admire himself. . . . Thank you—no name . . . sorry for the mess, but I’m kind of in a hurry, I have work to do.”

Tuesday, May 16, 1978

Because of furor
over the April hoax letter, cries for Zodiac’s capture intensified. San Francisco residents put Police Chief Charles Gain under

terrific pressure to solve the case. He asked FBI Director Wil iam H. Webster to analyze six Zodiac cryptograms mailed to local papers in 1969.

Gain wrote:

“Three of these were subsequently broken but the others remain unsolved. We request that a new attempt be made to break these ciphers—

ENCLOSED:

1. Photo copy of ‘Zodiac’ letter with 13 characters. ‘My name is——.’

2. Photo copy of ‘Zodiac’ letter with 31 characters. 3. Photo copy of cryptogram excerpt from letter. 4. Copy of three broken

cryptograms.”

FBI attempts to decrypt, using the old key as part of a combination cryptosystem, failed, as did linear and route transposition. Experts examined

the first and last halves for a cyclic use of variants, did hand anagramming with the message as written or backwards or written columnarly. They

read it as first line forward and second line backward. They ran a sliding word through the messages. They tried concentrated anagramming

—“took, look, book, cook, shook, hook . . .” Al endeavors were non-productive. Toschi was not too surprised. Like many policemen, he had no

great faith in the elitist bureau.

Friday, May 19, 1978

In the meantime,
Gain obtained FBI lab results on his petitioned comparison of the Zodiac letters. The Questioned Documents examiner

considered sixteen manila folders containing the letters between October 13, 1969, and April 24, 1978. The expert renumbered them Q 85 through

Q 99. (The Riverside letters, including the desktop, were studied separately in photographic form and labeled Qc100.) The report, in longhand,

read:

“The handprinting on the Q 85-Qc100 letters show a wide range of variation and various writing speeds. Additional y, portions of the

material, particularly the three Riverside letters, may have been disguised or deliberately distorted. For the above reasons, the handprinting

examination of these letters was inconclusive. However, consistent handprinting characteristics were noted in the Q 85-Qc100 letters which

indicate that one person may have prepared al of the letters including the Riverside letters and the message found on the desk top in the

Riverside case.”

A month later Gain requested the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico review the letters’ contents and develop a psychological profile of Zodiac.

Later I cal ed to see if Cheney ever wrote any letters to Leigh Al en. “I couldn’t help but notice that your printing resembles Zodiac printing,” I said.

“Could Zodiac be copying your handprinting?” “Maybe!” said Cheney. “Before changing to permit microfilm, upper and lowercase lettering was

standard drafting practice.” Cheney, an engineer, referred me to
Technical Drawing
(Geisacke, Spencer, and Mitchel , Macmil an, 4th edition).

“Though I never got a letter from him with double postage,” he said, “Leigh typed his letters and recipes, misspel ing certain words on purpose.”

Al en began meeting with his parole officer, Bruce R. Pel e, Deputy Probation Officer, County of Solano. Pel e noticed that Al en consistently wore

old-fashioned pleated pants to their conferences. Their first monthly meeting was troubling to Pel e and uncomfortable for Al en. The parole officer

attempted to see just what would set him off, threatening him with a return to jail if he did not cooperate more ful y. This brought a lowering of his

head and a refrain of “I wouldn’t like that at al .” Al en’s improper relationships with children had not concluded either. When Pel e first visited Al en’s

home with his partner, Lloyd, the parolee had al the neighborhood children out front riding bicycles. Leigh had them circle their car waving red flags

to direct the officers into the driveway. He also maintained a friendship with a nine-year-old that would only cease when she reached sixteen.

One evening, Pel e gazed out his apartment window at the Bodega complex where he lived. Two stories below, the smel of chlorine and suntan

oil drifted upward. Next to the intermittently sparkling pool Leigh was holding hands with a little girl—a direct parole violation. Pel e realized that