Zodiac Unmasked (39 page)

psychiatrist, he was goofier than a bedbug.” Or just frightened?

In early 1970, long before Leigh began seeing Dr. Rykoff, a rumor circulated in San Francisco that Zodiac had lost a letter addressed to a

psychiatrist he was then seeing. Al egedly, it contained a death threat to the doctor’s family. A passerby found the letter and turned it over to the

police, who interviewed the doctor. Because of professional confidentiality he refused to name his patient, a Bay Area resident. Within this doctor’s

files, some believed, lay the real name of Zodiac.

“We went down and saw Pete Noyes,” Bawart continued. “He was one of the producers of
Johnny Carson
or
Jeopardy
. Somehow this guy got

involved with Rykoff, Santa Rosa cops, and al this goofy stuff. It was absolutely bizarre the stuff they were doing. They were gonna protect this Dr.

Rykoff because Arthur Leigh Al en was gonna come kil him. They thought one of the lieutenants on the Santa Rosa Police Department was in

cahoots with Leigh Al en. After I finished this I wondered, ‘Are these guys pranksters? Are they just that paranoid?’ Crazy stuff. It was to the point

when I developed al this—this guy in Santa Rosa didn’t want to talk to me. I was very straightforward. ‘I’m retired. I’m working this as a private

contractor for the Val ejo Police Department Homicide Investigation Division and I want to talk to you.’ Wel , he wouldn’t talk to me in Santa Rosa.

He insisted on meeting me in Petaluma, and he met me with his partner, a young fel ow. This guy, this cop, was real kind of superior-acting, as if I

were a dummy. That’s fine. To get what I want, I’l take that tack. And so we sat there and we chatted.”

“The main guy in this thing is somebody just too big. He’l get you and he’l kil you,” he told Bawart.

“Wel , tel me who it is,” Bawart said.

“I won’t,” he said.

“Wait a minute, pal,” Bawart said. “You’re a working cop and you’re tel ing me you won’t tel me something that’s germane to my investigation.”

“I won’t.”

“Wel , let me tel you what’s going to happen. I’m going to go back and speak to Captain Conway and Captain Conway is going to our chief of

police and say, ‘There’s a Santa Rosa cop that won’t cooperate with an investigation.’ Our chief of police is going to cal your chief of police and I

can bet you dol ars to doughnuts, fel a, you’l find yourself sitting in an office and tel ing me what I want to know. So make it easy on yourself and tel

me now.”

“No.”

“Wel , you’l hear from me.”

“Next day, sure as shit, that’s what happened,” Bawart told me. “This guy was ordered in the office. We al sat down. He final y told us who this

real y bad guy was—who turned out to be [a superior officer]. The reason he was a real y bad guy is because his backyard backed up to Ron

Al en’s. That’s no big deal. Ron Al en was a North Bay city planner. We interviewed the officer and Ron Al en and there was nothing to it. I got some

handwriting out of some guy out of Santa Rosa—not related to the psychologist, that was sent to me by this guy’s girlfriend. I looked at it. It’s a dead

ringer. The way he made his [check mark]
r
’s and everything. But I take it to the handwriting people and this was a letter that says, ‘Hey, honey, I

want to get back with you.’ It wasn’t a threatening letter. He was a kind of half-assed stalker and wouldn’t let her go. Anyway I took it to the

handwriting guy and he says, ‘Definitely not.’ They must know what they’re doing, but I’ve seen things in Al en’s handwriting that look good to me.”

Wednesday, February 17, 1982

Toschi had been
having a little discomfort from recent surgery. The month before, an ulcer had brought on massive internal bleeding. He had

been rushed by ambulance to Children’s Hospital, but was now recuperating at home—reading, resting, listening to Big Band records on the

stereo, and doing a lot of walking and thinking about the unsolved case. For a man who excel ed in basebal and basketbal , any inaction was

painful. “There is no police work being done on Zodiac at al ,” he complained. “I know this for a fact.” I spoke to Fred Shirisago at DOJ. “Like I say, I

have gotten so many damn cal s on this Leigh Al en,” Shirisago said. “I spend my time trying to do background. I don’t want to be left holding the

bag, the last person on the case. . . . Look, Al en might be the guy. I’m not saying he’s not. He goes to libraries and does a lot of research on crimes

against women. Every investigator I’ve talked with thinks it’s him. I read everything I can about the guy.”

An Oregon man suggested police could catch Zodiac by creating a fictional story that the kil er was already in custody. “Duped by the fictional

arrest,” he said, “we could trap him like a blind dog in a meat house.”

Thursday, May, 20, 1982

In November 1981,
evidence in the sixteen-year-old Cheri Jo Bates murder investigation had “come to light.” Riverside police assigned four

investigators ful -time and, believing themselves close to a solution, dispatched an outline to the D.A.’s office. “She had a couple of boyfriends and

there’s one guy in particular. We’re convinced the kil er might be him,” they argued. Since November 1968, they had been convinced one of Cheri

Jo’s former boyfriends or rejected suitors was her kil er. Al egedly he’d had scratches on his face (Cheri Jo had clawed her assailant’s face) and

had bragged about committing the crime. Not only was there not enough evidence to charge him, but friends alibied him. “The D.A.’s office tore [the

outline] apart from their point of view,” said Chief Victor Jones, adding, “The person we believe responsible for the slaying of Cheri Jo Bates is
not

the individual other law enforcement authorities believe responsible for the so-cal ed ‘Zodiac’ kil ings.” Jones believed Zodiac had been in the area,

but taken credit for a kil ing he had not committed. Captain Irv Cross, indicating the seven-month delay in letters, also suggested Zodiac had been

trying to capitalize on the publicity.

Tuesday, May 25, 1982

“I called [Detective]
Bud Kel y in Riverside this morning,” Toschi told me. He had cal ed in response to Chief Jones’s press conference. “He

couldn’t give me their suspect’s name, but they feel they know who kil ed the Bates girl. Some new information developed in the last three months

and the suspect does not check out as Zodiac. This suspect was looked at back when the murder occurred. I asked Kel ey if their guy was ever in

the Bay Area even for a short time. Answer: ‘NO.’ Their suspect has lived in Riverside al the time.

“Seems the Riverside P.D. has only a circumstantial case against their local man,” said Toschi. “No physical evidence can tie him to the case.

Kel ey says the Riverside County District Attorney does not like the case and is very hesitant about issuing a murder complaint. Kel ey says the

case wil probably never go to trial.”

Riverside P.D. stil had a single strand of hair caught in the watch-band of the paint-spattered men’s Timex Cheri Jo had torn from her attacker.

Police stored the hair in a refrigerated evidence locker. One day a conclusive test might be developed to either clear or incriminate their suspect.

The local man had had frequent brushes with the law. A secret psychological evaluation of Bates’s murderer had been completed eleven years

earlier for the Riverside D.A. The chief psychologist of Pat-ton State Hospital described Bates’s kil er as:

“[So] hypersensitive . . . that virtual y any little misperceived act could be blown up out of al proportion to the facts. He is obsessed and

pathological y preoccupied with intense hatred against female figures—al the more so if he sees the young woman as attractive. Because of

his own unconscious feelings of inadequacy, he is not likely to act out his feelings sexual y, but in fantasy. . . . I would like to emphasize that

there is a real possibility that he can become homicidal again.”

Sherwood Morril showed me a confidential handwriting analysis he had prepared November 24, 1970, for Chief of the Bureau A. L. Coffey and

Riverside Police Chief L. T. Kinkead. He had studied examples of the Riverside suspect’s writing.

“An examination of enclosures [case # 36-F-586] A through E [three envelopes and letters, photograph of a note signed ‘rh’ on desk,

photographs of five names beginning with H, two letters addressed to an acquaintance of the suspect, seven pages exemplar writing and

material of the prime Riverside suspect] resulted in the fol owing conclusions:

“1. It was first determined that the handprinting on the envelopes and letters of enclosure A was by the same person who prepared

the handprinting appearing on the desk, a photograph of which is enclosure B of this report.

“2. A comparison of this material with the Zodiac letters revealed many characteristics which resulted in the conclusion that

enclosures A and B were in fact prepared by the same person responsible for the Zodiac letters.

“3. The five names beginning with H could not be identified with any of the other material submitted.

“4. The letter postmarked in February of 1968 appears to have been drawn by a lettering set and does not conform with any of the

material submitted. The handprinted letter postmarked January 17, 1968 addressed to the suspect’s friend is stil in a different person’s

handprinting but does not conform with any of the other material submitted. It does, however, contain numerous divergencies from the

handprinting of the Riverside Suspect and definitely was not prepared by him.”

One thing was certain—the RPD’s prime suspect’s handprinting did not match the Riverside letters. Morril ruled that Zodiac
did
write those

letters.

Wednesday, June 2, 1982

At Sonoma State
University, Leigh Al en official y received his bachelor of arts degree in biology with a minor in chemistry.

Wednesday, June 9, 1982

At his Montgomery
Street law office, Bel i dropped a tape into his machine. “A pleasant evening to you, Melvin M. Bel i . . . (ha, ha, ha, ha, ha),” an

anonymous voice cackled. “OK, number one . . . I had thought possibly we might get together and meet and talk. I am at the point in this activity that I

have gotten into somehow. How, I don’t know. Why, I have no idea. Now what you should do is pul up a chair and sit down with your coffee or tea . .

. and relax because I am about to tel you the Goddamnedest story you have ever heard. Number one, our common interest is the interest of the

Zodiac kil er.

“Now this case has been going on for over twelve years. During that time—(the reason my voice is going down is I’m turning this radio down.

With this hil bil y music you can’t hear yourself think). Anyhow, at one point in these photostatic copies that I have of the Zodiac kil er there’s

reference . . . they’re talking of the cop. . . . ‘Over the years the five thousand people he has interviewed, the three thousand tips, the two thousand

possible suspects . . . ’ Anyhow, we’re talking there of almost over ten thousand items alone. Now I know where the Zodiac is. I know who the

Zodiac is. I know how to identify the Zodiac.

“For over a twenty-year period I have had a sincere interest in symbols, symbols of al kinds. . . . One week I went to a flea market and saw this

ring, which I paid sixty dol ars for. The ring has no identification marks of any country. The ring presented a chal enge, and so I said, ‘I’m going to

find out everything there is to know about this ring and the symbols on it.’ Over a period of four to five months I was laid off and started researching

the ring for many hours in the library. I have my own library, about a thousand books.

“Each symbol on top of the ring corresponded to seven different symbols—a total of thirty-seven symbols that related to chemistry and astrology.

The underside of the ring had more symbols. The guy who wore this must have real y been something. It had been the ring of a blind Norse god. The

things that have happened because of this ring are unbelievable. I’m laying this stuff on ya because I know of your sincere interest the last time the

Zodiac was active . . . you’re the very best of attorneys in the U.S. today. Now the reason that this cop could not catch Zodiac or even relate to him

is because he has such a spiritual background, such a reasonable amount of intel igence. He is the most intel igent man in the United States today.

“He comes from fire, he returns to fire. How are we going to identify this guy? He has a ring on his finger decorated with a sign of the Zodiac. That

sign, the sign of the Zodiac, is the sign of the ox. Now remember wel , my slim friend (heh, heh, heh), his ful power consists in the power of words

and the jumbling of words. His method of attack on these innocent young people was not of a frontal assault. His attack was first with the knife, then

with the gun, the rope, then reverting back to the knife for the blood ritual itself. The Zodiac’s ring is a blood stone, a darkishgreen stone with

sprinkles of red, and is governed by Mars. The blood stone and the ox are connected. Darlene Ferrin had seen Zodiac kil someone (a fact not

widely known until four years later).”

The speaker knew of a Zodiac ring such as Al en had worn since the murders began, a ring compel ing Zodiac to do horrible things. The unknown

voice might not be Zodiac, but his remarks about a Zodiac ring were truly unsettling.

Thursday, October 11, 1984

“I really didn’t
think this fifteenth anniversary of the San Francisco Zodiac kil ing would stir up this much interest,” Toschi said.