Zodiac Unmasked (40 page)

Herb Caen wrote:

“THURSDAY, OCT. 11, is a special annvy. for Police Inspector Dave Toschi. On that day in 1969, 15 yrs. ago, Toschi, then assigned to

homicide, was summoned to Washington and Cherry, where a Yel ow Cabbie had just been murdered. Four days later, a bloody swatch of the

victim’s shirt and a letter from The Zodiac arrived at the Chronicle—and thus began the string of stil unsolved Zodiac kil ings, most of them

accompanied by taunting letters. The last one to Toschi said simply ‘ME-37 (kil ings). S.F.P.D.-0.’ After slaying the Yel ow driver, The Zodiac

presumably faded away into the nearby Presidio forest. He could be walking down Market St. this very minute. . . .”

Wednesday, July 3, 1985

After thirty-two years
on the force, twenty-five of those as a police inspector, Dave Toschi, now fifty-two, quietly retired. He had already realized

his life’s dream when he joined the force in 1953, spending seven years as a patrol officer in the Richmond District “My dad always said that if I was

a cop, I’d always have a paycheck to bring home. He said I’d never get rich, though. He was right.” As a homicide inspector, Toschi won gold,

silver, and bronze medals of valor. “I stil consider the Zodiac case the most frustrating of al my cases. I real y believe it gave me bleeding ulcers.”

But he was proud of contributing to the solution of another case that had a “Z” in it—the Zebra murders that claimed the lives of twelve San

Franciscans between 1973 and 1974. “I’m gratified that I was part of a team that brought that terrible case to a successful conclusion.”

Toschi spent five years in Robbery Detail, receiving police commission honors as a “Heroic Officer” on February 22, 1984. Then he transferred

to the Sex Crimes Detail where he spent a year. Now, after working every crime against persons there was, including Aggravated Assaults, he was

retiring to become head of security at the Watergate apartment complex across the Bay in Emeryvil e near Berkeley. Within a year he would also

be a licensed private detective. What he did not know was that the Zodiac case was
only half over
.

Sunday, January 19, 1986

“Some of the
Val ejo police agree with author Robert Graysmith, some do not,” wrote reporter Gene Silverman on my just released book
Zodiac
:

“Val ejo Police Department Detective Sergeant Jack Mulanax—who had inherited the Ferrin case from Sergeant John Lynch, differs from his

predecessor on the inclusion of one of the kil ings. Mulanax believes the Lake Herman, Blue Rock Springs Park, Lake Berryessa and San

Francisco taxicab attacks were al done by the same man, that the man was Zodiac, and this is the man [Leigh Al en] to whom Graysmith gave the

name ‘Starr.’”

“I don’t think there is any doubt on those,” said Mulanax. “Although I base my conclusions, at least in part, on a large amount of circumstantial

evidence. We might find out when more people read this book. Graysmith did a good job and I agree with him. The book actual y provided me with

information. I didn’t know what Napa police had. I wasn’t contacted but two times by [Detective Sergeant Narlow].

“Graysmith mentioned the lack of information-trading among police departments as a problem,” reported Silverman. “He said in his book, ‘I

thought to myself that Lynch had cleared Al en because he did not match Lynch’s visual impression of the kil er.’ Lynch says this was true. ‘From

time to time your mind changes,’ he says, ‘but certain things stick, such as descriptions of the kil er given by victims who either survived or survived

long enough to talk.’ Lynch also believed there was more than one kil er.

“I believe that Zodiac is probably stil alive,” said Officer Richard Hoffman. “If he’d died there would be evidence found in a place where he lived.

The coroner would have come into it. So I think he’s stil alive.”

“Why, in that case, have the Zodiac-type crimes seemed to have stopped?” asked Silverman.

“I don’t know he’s not kil ing,” Hoffman said. “One of his last correspondences said he wasn’t going to talk about it anymore, take the credit for it

anymore. This is Graysmith’s opinion too.”

Pam, Darlene Ferrin’s sister, subject of threatening cal s every year on the anniversary of her sister’s death, said, “Zodiac is definitely alive. I

don’t think he’s doing any more kil ings. I think when he saw the police getting closer, he stopped. I have read Graysmith’s book four times. This

book has real y jogged my memory—so much. I’d read two pages and think and think.”

Wednesday, February 12, 1986

A twenty-year employee
of the Sonoma Sheriff’s Department, retired now and staying at her mother’s Val ejo home, wrote me. “On your TV

interview,” she said, “you tied in the seven girls who were found murdered in the Santa Rosa Area in 1972-73 to the Zodiac kil ings. I found this

interesting because the Sheriff’s Department in Sonoma County never did. I also agreed with you that the different police agencies did not

cooperate with one another or share any information that they might have that would tie in with what another county might have had.”

On August 25, 1976, while working in the coroner’s office, Sonoma County, she learned of a routine traffic accident fatality, a head-on col ision on

Highway 12 between Santa Rosa and Sebastopol. The deceased was a forty-one-year-old heavyset male school teacher. He had taught not only at

Santa Rosa Junior Col ege, which many of the victims attended, but Napa Junior Col ege and other surrounding counties including San Quentin.

“I believe he had previously taught in Southern California,” she elaborated, “but his only relatives lived in the East. Among the possessions in his

van were drawings of some of the seven victims in the Santa Rosa area, which portrayed them in hog-tied positions. Included with these drawings

were their names and sexual preferences. There was also a backpack belonging to one of the victims. Since the sheriff is also the coroner, the

deputy turned over his findings to the Detective Bureau where it was placed in evidence and the matter quickly dropped. The deputy said, ‘As long

as he’s dead, for his family’s sake, there’s no point in ruining his reputation. ’ Besides, if they declared him dead and a new lead came up across

country, the detectives wouldn’t get to go on another trip.”

She further explained that, as a general rule, the deceased’s belongings are usual y itemized and released to the next of kin. In this case,

however, not everything was itemized, only what was in his pockets were returned to his relatives. “By now,” she said, “the evidence has long been

destroyed. When I left years ago, they were in the process of micro-filming the coroner files and then destroying the file itself. We always kept the

driver’s license along with a coroner photograph in the coroner’s office. The file that was open to the general public at that time did not contain

everything on file in the County Clerk’s office. However, the County Clerk also wanted to get rid of Coroner files and about 1979 or ’80 we

discontinued filing them with the County Clerk. His fingerprints should be on file in Sacramento. . . . I think if he was real y the Zodiac that he could

also be tied into the Riverside murder because of his employment as a teacher down there.”

She gave me his name and case file number. Was this the murderer of the young women who passed near Leigh Al en’s trailer in Santa Rosa?

Leigh had been a student at Santa Rosa Junior Col ege. Could he have had a confederate al along, writing the letters for him, one that had died in

a highway crash while he was in Atascadero and could write no letters exonerating him?

“When the teacher’s widow was cataloging his property,” a Santa Rosa investigator told me, “she came across drawings of people being

whipped. The sketches suggested the husband had been involved in S & M. The instructor had drawn himself as a woman and labeled it with the

female version of his own name. Chief Wayne Dunham felt the deceased man might have something to do with Kim Wendy Al en’s death.” Kim, a

Santa Rosa Junior Col ege student, had last been seen March 4, 1972, hitching north on 101.

“I’ve actual y got a photocopy of two of the drawings they found,” Sergeant Brown told me years later. “He drew Kim and he drew himself as

‘Freda.’ He drew this other girl and those two girls had classes with him. And he had this hair in his wal et. They tested it, but it wasn’t Kim’s. I don’t

think the teacher did it. Maybe, but I doubt it. I read his letters. One investigator thought that the teacher had this sex/slave thing going, whips and

chains and al this weird stuff, and he was obsessed with big-breasted women. He probably taught Kim, and when she shows up dead, he became

real y obsessed with her. A weird dude.”

Wednesday, May 14, 1986

Pieces of the
puzzle began to fal together for Sergeant John Burke of the Santa Rosa P.D. “We have a ten-man team who have been keeping a

two-month surveil ance on an individual,” he told me. “Dave Legrow [a friend of Sheriff Butch Carlstedt] and Gary Crenshaw and I have been going

through his file. He was booked at the jailhouse in 1975 and was wearing a Zodiac watch. He’s six feet tal , 240 pounds. Born in Honolulu. I’l give

you his name in a moment. . . .”

“You don’t have to—he was born in 1933.”

“Yes, Leigh Al en. It was the weight that threw us at first, but then last night I noticed that at the time of the kil ings this man weighed 180 pounds.

What is unusual about this guy is that we have his 290 sex registrant file . . . these are broken up into an Alpha file and what we cal the five-by-eight

section, a list of I.D. characteristics. This is the first man I’ve ever seen to have both classifications. His registration is attached to his Alpha file. He

gave his address here in Santa Rosa at his brother’s. We might be able to get him for failing to report a move under the sex registration law. In the

murders here in Santa Rosa there is something I think no one else knows. On al the bodies were found fibrous hairs. We found matching hairs in

Al en’s trunk in his car. You know what they were?”

“What?”

“Chipmunk hairs.”

“Amazing.”

“I know when I got off work last night—got home a little late at six o’clock—my wife was getting ready to go to work. She can’t put on her makeup

standing, so she sits on the countertop in the bathroom with her feet in the sink. When she heard what I said about chipmunk hairs, she fel off the

counter. I had to catch her. Al en was using chipmunks to entice kids. Wel , It’s not over til the fat man sings.”

Thursday, May 22, 1986

With the publication
of what I had learned about Zodiac over a decade, an enthusiastic army of puzzle solvers were attracted to the hunt—my

intention from the start. As time passed, police files, spread to the four winds, began to show up in the hands of novice detectives. Zodiac buffs dug

them from garages and attics, lifted them from trash cans and closet shelves. Each day brought a final solution closer—that moment when

someone, somewhere would recognize Zodiac. But after someone mailed me a bloodstained shirt like Stine’s, I discovered I could no longer open

a single letter. A
Times
interviewer thought I “appeared uncomfortable dredging up details” of Zodiac. I admitted to him I had not read a single one

of the thousand letters I had received for fear of getting sucked into the case again. “I can’t deal with it—it’s hard to explain,” I told him. “I don’t want

to get physical y il again. I can’t do it. Not now.”

Warily, I studied boxes of manila envelopes forwarded to me—a dozen or so letters packed inside each. I opened them final y, surprised that,

with few exceptions, most were thoughtful, ingenious, even clever. This Thursday afternoon Leigh Al en had a minor auto accident. I had to wonder if

he was cracking up because of new interest in unmasking Zodiac.

Friday, August 8, 1986

Toschi, currently manager
of nationwide Globe Security, received a State Senate commendation for long meritorious service. His joy was

dampened when he learned Paul Stine’s blood-blackened shirt had vanished from within the SFPD. Three months later to the day, someone got

into the
Vallejo Times-Herald
and stole their entire Zodiac file. I recal ed how Avery’s Zodiac file had also been stolen from his car. I kept mine in

the safekeeping vault at Bank of America.

Thursday, April 16, 1987

Zodiac might be
powerful, intel igent, and extraordinarily deadly, but he had always lacked originality. From costume to weapons to motive to code

symbols, he drew his persona from outside himself—mostly from films. Movie-mad to the extreme, he had thus far resisted demanding a movie

about himself (though perhaps he had, anonymously). Two films had inspired his campaign of terror—the first and most influential movie suggested

his entire method of operation. He had seen it at a formative time in his life.

19

zodiac’s “dangerous game”

Zodiac: hooded, secretive,
precise—with a predilection for bizarre handmade weapons and unbreakable ciphers. A scent of demonic

possession and brimstone clung to Zodiac. Intel igent, compulsive, yet never original, he plagiarized his modus operandi from a watch face, short

story, and film. In his deciphered three-part cryptogram he explained his primary motivation—an obsession with Richard Connel ’s thril ing

adventure story “The Most Dangerous Game.”

“I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN,” Zodiac had written. “IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE