Zodiac Unmasked (34 page)

Thursday, November 16, 1978.

Dr. Rykoff had
Karen back in. He placed her under a deep hypnosis conducted by Husted and Lieutenant Larry Haynes of the Concord P.D.

Haynes, trained by the LAPD’s Law Enforcement Hypnotic Institute, had hypnotized one of victim Darlene Ferrin’s baby-sitters back on June 16,

1977. “Does it matter how much time has passed since the incident?” asked Rykoff.

“No,” replied Husted, who gently uncovered a number of large crystals he kept swathed in soft black fabric. Each glittering gem hung from a

slender chain. Haynes induced a hypnotic trance by swinging or spinning a crystal. This time, when Karen recal ed the choking incident over dinner,

she saw something new.

“There was a second figure,” she said.

“A second figure?” said Husted. The big blond officer leaned forward. Rykoff put down his pen.

“He was on top of Ron as wel ,” she said. “I could see a second ghostly figure of Leigh on top of my husband, another identity. It was as if he were

a second Leigh Al en. When Leigh stood up, he seemed to change into yet another personality, like Jekyl and Hyde.” A source told me, “Leigh was

a twin whose brother died at birth.” Then Karen recal ed the paper she had seen in Leigh’s hand in November of 1969. This was the note she had

mentioned to Toschi and Armstrong years before. Husted and Haynes were certain she was deeply under and not fabricating the vision. Hypnotists

have to careful not to give subtle, unwitting suggestions to a person under hypnosis and create what they want to find. “Sometimes it’s difficult to

distinguish what is in a person’s mind from what you are putting there,” said Haynes.

“It was covered with strange lines of symbols,” she said. “‘What’s that?’ I asked him. ‘This is the work of an insane person,’ he replied. ‘I’l show it

to you later.’ He never did, and replaced it in a gray metal box he kept in his room.”

Haynes, Rykoff, and Husted were desperate to see what had been on that paper. But how? It had been destroyed long ago. They decided to see

if Karen could redraw these arcane symbols under hypnosis. In automatic writing, she slowly drew four lines of symbols. Automatic writing was

normal y sprawling and uncontrol ed, but Karen’s was straight, gridlike—like Zodiac’s codes. The symbols closely resembled the third line of the

Zodiac 340-character cipher mailed to the
Chronicle
on November 8, 1969. As the mesmeric session progressed, she spoke more and more

about Leigh. Karen began to shake and tremble. Her knuckles whitened. Husted had Haynes bring her out of the trance. Afterward, in his office, he

showed me the writing. Though I wasn’t al owed to photocopy possible evidence, I was al owed to copy it down as exactly as I could. Reproduced

for the first time here are the symbols Karen wrote:

Hypnosis was popular at this time, but by the 1980s state law enforcement agencies would rarely use it as an investigative tool. In 1982 the

Supreme Court would curtail the scope of testimony from witnesses who had been hypnotized, deeming such accounts inherently unreliable. Later,

California law would be shaped to the court’s decision—hypnosis could be used only to clarify information given before a person was hypnotized.

Testimony obtained under hypnosis could only be used in court after a judge has ruled that the evidence could not be acquired by any other means.

“Potential for danger,” Rykoff had thought. Increasingly, the doctor became more apprehensive of his patient and his “dark sense of humor.” At

the beginning of the month, he had asked his brother, a San Francisco policeman, to look into the matter. The officer asked Toschi and the reply

was anything but reassuring. “I remember Dr. Rykoff’s brother coming up to me,” said Toschi, “a real y sweetheart of a guy, real y straight up front.

No games. He wanted some information for his brother and so I told him, ‘We felt strongly then [August 1971] and now that Al en was our best

suspect. We cut him loose in 1972 because we weren’t able to find any physical evidence connecting him to the crimes. We did everything we

could with the guy. Personal y, my gut feeling is that he is the man. Tel Dr. Rykoff that when he talks to Leigh, do it in a place that he can get out of in

a hurry . . . and above al —don’t make him angry.” The officer reported back to his brother. “I’ve found out he’s the prime suspect, in the Zodiac

case,” he said. Rykoff blockprinted the word “sociopath” by Al en’s name in their next to last session. The term meant he was “selfish, impulsive,

and unable to learn from experience. He felt he was above moral codes and laws and was the most likely type of murderer to repeat his crimes.”

More unsettling, Leigh had caught me watching him more than once. Later, on March 12, 1980, I was waiting in a darkened car on Tennessee

Street as he drove by. He slowed alongside. I turned and looked directly into his eyes.

Friday, November 17, 1978

Leigh, as a
member of the Pacific Multi-hul Racing Association, sailed only one of the boats his mother had bought him. He stored the second, an

adapted boat that “ran on unknown fuel,” elsewhere.7 His tan station wagon, #XAM 469, sat by the curb unused. On December 31, 1975, he had

registered a special construction trailer to be “used as a camper.” Where he kept it no one knew. Rumor had it it was stored in a friend’s woods.

One of Al en’s 1971 checks, made out to Tal tree Trailer Storage, suggested he was renting spaces for trailers somewhere else.

“You know, [Phil] Tucker was questioned by our department,” said George Bawart, “He was always a pretty straight shooter. When he left GVRD,

I wasn’t too much younger than he was. I knew him. I knew his family. If I were to say, just to guess, I wouldn’t think he had anything to do with

Zodiac.” When Al en worked at GVRD, next to the police department, he could have had access to reports, police techniques, and day-to-day

gossip. Once a police groupie, always a police groupie.

14

suspects

Friday, November 24, 1978

Though juggling caseloads
of robberies, Inspector Toschi stil felt an al egiance to the Zodiac case. Between November 20 and November 24,

he received a typical number of phone tips on his former case. “The first cal was from an unemployed freelance writer who seemed in too much a

hurry to get to meet me,” Toschi said. “I thought about not going on my own time to meet him, but I cal ed the guy back and decided he was sincere

about giving me information. He was an ex-NYPD man himself, and he said he could see how the Zodiac case after ten years had real y gotten to

be an ego thing when you’re so involved as I was.

“‘If anyone in the country deserves to make the arrest on Zodiac,’ he said, ‘it’s got to be Dave Toschi.’ I thanked him, but since I was official y off

the case, referred him to Jack Jordan. Next, a lady named Katrina cal ed. She had gotten short shrift at SFPD. To set her mind at ease, she sought

me out. She had a suspect in mind, an ex-boyfriend who had accidental y died in 1973. Fortunately, I didn’t have to refer to the files. I had the

information in my head and answered her queries in about three minutes. Final y, at week’s end, a D.A.’s investigator stopped me in the elevator.

‘I’ve got some info on an old case of yours,’ he whispered. ‘I want to talk only to you on it.’ I listened and committed the tip to memory. So, I can

never get away from the Zodiac case and I do not think I ever wil . It’s become part of my life—on and off duty.”

On the morning of November 24, up at Lake Berryessa, Cindy, a waitress working at Moskowite Corners General Store, watched a strange man

enter. He sat down in the rear and stared at her so long he made her nervous. Final y, she approached him. “Can I get you anything?” she asked.

“Do you know you’re a very good-looking woman,” he replied. She went back to the counter. After a time he left. Only then did she recal that nine

years earlier, on the terrible day two PUC students were attacked, a similar-looking man had been drinking a Coke at the same table.

Police original y attributed the 1971 murder of Lynda Kanes, another PUC coed, to Zodiac’s hand. “I have always been haunted by this maniac

Zodiac,” a PUC graduate told me, “because I was attending PUC in Angwin during the time Bryan Hartnel and Cecelia Shepard were stabbed.

This was a very traumatic thing to happen to anyone . . . but especial y when it took place so close to home. I attended her funeral at the PUC

sanctuary, which had a massive turnout, and wondered if the kil er could be there secretly delighting in the pain of al who were grieving for Cecelia.

The police [and FBI] thought so too and took extensive photos of the crowd at Cecelia’s funeral.

“I also remember very wel the Lynda Kanes incident. I remember the day her car was found—radio stil on—but no Lynda. I remember the light

snowfal the next morning, the barricades, the horseback posses, the bloodhounds, and police asking for volunteers from PUC and others in the

vicinity to help search the rugged area by foot. It sent chil s through my soul as I remembered the countless times I have traveled windy, lonely Old

Howel Mountain Road . . . not to mention the countless times I have driven up to Lake Berryessa alone and spent the day wrapped up in a book

while baking in the hot sun. At the time most of the locals believed the kil er was ‘Wil y the Woodchopper’ at the base of Old Howel Mountain Road

where it meets Silverado Trail. Wil y got his name because he could be seen most of the time at his house chopping firewood. Lynda used to stop

and chat with him on her way back to campus from town via Old Howel Mountain Road.” Zodiac, much to our relief, had not been involved. In 1971,

in Napa Superior Court, Walter “Wil ie the Woodcutter” Wil iams was convicted of Kanes’s murder. Her bloodstained clothing had been found in his

home.

Thursday, December 7, 1978

Allen had been
driving on a suspended license. In the morning his new driver’s permit (#BO 67-2352) became effective just as Homicide

Inspector James Deasy received the keys to that tough little number cal ed Zodiac. Deasy, formal y of the SFPD Gang Task Force, hunkered down

to take on the job of fielding Zodiac tips. Gathering leads on an unsolvable case was character-building, but futile. An informant rang Deasy from

Canada, claiming that a now-deceased Albion, California, public safety officer, retired Fire Chief Ralph Perry, had been Zodiac. He al eged Perry

had owned a Zodiac-style hood. The tip became more intriguing when Deasy attempted to check Perry’s prints.

Monday, December 18, 1978

“The funny thing
about it is,” Deasy said, “we tried to check this guy’s fingerprints through his agency’s print files and found out that they had no

prints on record for him. Neither did the State Department of Justice. Neither did the FBI. We came up total y blank on this guy’s prints. Spooky.”

Deasy and Captain Narlow knew they had to convince a D.A. to issue a court order to exhume Perry’s body and take prints. He wondered how long

fingertip ridges survived underground. “Can you successful y lift prints from a corpse?” Deasy inquired of their print man.

Without enough information to obtain a search warrant, they conducted two explorations of the home with Perry’s widow’s permission. During the

first exploration, they turned up an il egal silencer for a .22-caliber pistol. “The widow said that her husband, right out of the blue, once asked her an

odd question,” said Deasy. “‘Aren’t you afraid, going to bed every night with the Zodiac?’” Deasy paused to sigh, then added, “We thought we were

getting pretty close at that point. Sometimes you get a feeling in the pit of your stomach and you say to yourself, ‘You just can’t eliminate a suspect

who looks good in every other respect just because he’s too old.’ I told her on our second trip that we had only a few more questions that we wanted

to check up on, just to satisfy our minds. She wasn’t too happy about it, but she let us do it. I told her that if we didn’t find what we were looking for,

we wouldn’t be back, and we haven’t. It just wasn’t there.” In Val ejo, Leigh Al en celebrated his second birthday since leaving prison.

Wednesday, June 13, 1979

“Personnel Order: Captain’s
Order #21 Effective 0800 hrs., Inspector David Toschi, #1807, presently assigned to Pawnshop Section, Property

Crimes Division, is assigned to the Robbery Section. Captain Charles A. Schuler, Commanding Officer, Personal Crimes Division.”

15

arthur leigh allen

Monday, September 17, 1979

Though Leigh accumulated
no more boats, his list of trailers continued to grow. The universal house trailer Toschi and Armstrong had searched

was only one of many. Another special-construction camper, #GS8803, was kept in an unknown location. While Leigh lived in his trailers, sailed,

and flew his plane, I spoke again with his P.O.

“Basical y, Arthur is that interesting in that he has access not only to the vehicles he owns, but to those of his friends. Almost any vehicle he wants.

His mother has a Mercedes. He’s got a white ’62 VW Karmann Ghia now—just like Hartnel ’s. I wonder if owning a car exactly like the Lake

Berryessa victim’s is a subconscious cal for attention.” Leigh had registered the car’s license, #DXW 186, only eight days ago. An identical auto

had attracted Zodiac at the virtual y deserted lake, signifying to him that potential victims were picnicking on a narrow peninsula.

During the summer, Leigh’s childhood friend Harold Huffman had driven his VW Dasher by Val ejo to introduce his eight-year-old son, Rob, to

Al en. Harold had married Leigh’s friend, Kay. “I had seen Harold play footbal and swim,” Kay told me. “I knew who he was, but I didn’t know him. At