Zodiac Unmasked (43 page)

decided to hold its third world’s fair on the man-made island.

The Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939-40 opened in February 1939. Under bright blue skies, visitors drove across the bridge or

came by steam ferries to enter Aztec-Inca “Elephant Gates.” The Exposition’s features included Pacifica, her hands raised in benediction; the four-

hundred-foot Tower of the Sun; and Benny Goodman’s Swing music rocking an amusement zone packed with rol er coasters, ferris wheels, and

nude dancers. A few months afterward, Hitler invaded Poland, and France had fal en by the time the fair closed in September 1940. San Francisco

abandoned al plans of converting Treasure Island into a city airport. After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy transformed it into a Naval base, building

upon the detonated fragments of Pacifica, converting the Hal of Western States to a barracks, and turning the river-boat
Delta Queen
into quarters

and classrooms. They made the Food and Beverages Building the “world’s biggest mess hal ,” altered the large hangarlike buildings behind the

Administration Building, and modified the Exposition’s three permanent buildings at the south end of the island.

After the war Naval Commander Ethan Al en was stationed at this first U.S. stop for Navy men returning at the rate of twelve thousand a day. In

1947, a fourteen-year-old Leigh Al en wandered the artificial island while his father worked. The Naval Station housed four commands: the Naval

Receiving Station, Naval Schools Command, the Naval Station itself (which administered the island), and Western Sea Frontier Headquarters.

Movies changed daily and cost only a quarter to see. “He used to watch movies at Treasure Island al the time,” a friend of Leigh’s confirmed. “My

mom worked as a secretary on Treasure Island and she saw him there often and may have been his ‘date’ at the movies.
The Exorcist
was another

favorite of his.”

He saw a film about Treasure Island that became a last blueprint for Zodiac—the 1939 20th Century-Fox film
Charlie Chan at Treasure Island,

starring Sydney Toler. In the 1960s local KRON-TV screened its seventy-two-minute length cut to fifty-nine minutes. “Zodiac?” asks detective

Charlie Chan (who is arriving in San Francisco by plane from Honolulu—Al en’s birthplace). “Yeah, he’s the big shot in the spook racket around

here,” says another passenger. Dr. Zodiac, a crooked medium dressed in black robes, uses his guise as psychic consultant to blackmail his

clients. He answers the phone, “This is Zodiac speaking,” carries an odd knife, and shoots a crossbow. One of his victims block-prints: “CAN’T

ESCAPE ZODIAC—” Eve Cairo reads the minds of assembled suspects at a party and says, “Dr. Zodiac. I hear the name Dr. Zodiac in his

thoughts. . . . I can’t go on! I can’t! I hear death among us! I’m frightened! There’s evil here! Someone here is thinking murder!”

Zodiac, says Chan, is “not ordinary criminal. He is a man of great ego. Criminal egotist find pleasure in laughing at police.” Chan uses the
San

Francisco Chronicle
and its police reporter, Pete (Douglas Fowley), to try to trap Zodiac. “RHADINI CHALLENGES DR. ZODIAC” appears on the

front page. A dapper magician, Fred Rhadini (Cesar Romero), of the Temple of Magic on Treasure Island, joins forces with Chan to expose

Zodiac. “I accept your chal enge. . . .” Zodiac replies in a note pinned to a wal with a knife. In the end, Rhadini turns out to be Zodiac.

“Favorite pastime of man is fooling himself,” Chan observes. “So far no one has col ected [on the chal enge], not even the great Dr. Zodiac.” One

bet you could be sure of winning was that Zodiac had seen this film and been inspired by it.

“
Charlie Chan at Treasure Island
was Leigh’s favorite movie as a kid,” his friend Jim told me, “and his dad worked on Treasure Island.”

22

arthur leigh allen

Tuesday, January 10, 1989

Allen’s mother, Bernice,
died at age eighty-three. “Mrs. Al en was dead by the time I got real y involved in the case,” Val ejo Detective George

Bawart later told me. “For the longest time I was aware of Al en. As you know, the chief investigator on the Zodiac case until he retired was Mulanax.

Then, when Mulanax left, they turned it pretty much over to me. During this span of time, even when Mulanax was working on it, different things would

come in. I might be sitting at my desk and it would be something about the Zodiac. I’d either make a few cal s or do what had to be done on it. Most

of them were goofy things. I’d tel Mulanax, ‘I took this cal for you. I don’t think it’s anything but here’s my report on it. Do what you want with it.’ He

would file it, but then after he retired I became the receptacle for al those kind of cal s. I wasn’t actively working the case at al . When your book

came out our cal s went up ten thousand percent.

“I have copies of [Al en’s] handprinting done in the Santa Rosa trailer—where he wrote left-handed. Then I seized a whole bunch of writings he

had at his house. Forms, letters to friends—the content of it wasn’t anything germane to the case. It was casual handwriting he wouldn’t be trying to

disguise. It was actual y his handwriting. We turned those over to our handwriting guy. He looked at it and said it’s not the Zodiac’s handwriting.

That’s our biggest stumbling block in that case. There’s a theory that when he went into his Zodiac mode he had a split personality and became a

different person.”

One expert worried Zodiac might be schizophrenic, his Zodiac persona awakened, control ed, or influenced by the lunar cycles and planetary

cycles. “What if he doesn’t know he’s Zodiac?” the man said. “There were long delays in those murders and letters,” I told Bawart. “I always chalked

it up to the fact that you got real close and Zodiac backed off.”

“That’s my theory too. They got real close and he said, ‘Oh, oh, I better not do anything.’ Also, there was a span of time when he was in

Atascadero and there were no letters at al .”

“What was important was that after Al en’s questioning at the refinery, no letter ever again began, ‘This is the Zodiac speaking.’ From then on he

signed them, ‘Me,’ ‘A Citizen,’ or ‘The Red Phantom.’ After Leigh went into Atascadero, Zodiac never wrote another letter. That’s got to mean

something.”

The next day a woman contacted me. “This is a note that was left for me in a Lyons Restaurant in Antioch by an older man,” she said. “He said he

wanted to help me out with the Zodiac. The handwriting looks to me much like the Zodiac’s. SFPD has it. I gave it to Inspector Deasy, along with a

tape he left tel ing me he is my secret admirer.” The message was in excel ent Zodiac printing and suggested Zodiac had been a stalker:

“Sexual Sadist ’61-’62 white chevorlet Impala Stocky man five-foot, ten-inches, paunch 220 pounds. Watched 2nd victim Val ejo-Darlene

Ferrin.”

Friday, September 1, 1989

Bawart retired from
the Val ejo P.D., but was retained on a contract-type basis to fol ow up any new Zodiac leads that trickled in. A wel -respected

detective, he had been lead investigator on the 1989 Hunter Hil Rest Stop murders. “During the span of my career, I don’t think the Zodiac is the

most interesting,” he told me. “Back in ’79 a guy on the most-wanted list came to Val ejo, shot a grandmother in the head, and was going to kil a

seven-year-old kid. I tracked him al over the United States. The one I’m thinking of is the Fisher Case. It was involved with a syndicate gang out of

Kentucky. It was supposed to be the most corrupt city in the world. I went back there and worked with cops who made a thousand dol ars a month

and lived in mansions. You knew they were on the take. But they knew their business. It real y had a twist in the end and if I were going to write a

story, I would write a story about that.”

Wednesday, October 11, 1989

Toschi had worked
a variety of security jobs since his retirement—Mount Zion Hospital on Divisadero, St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital on Army. At

work on October 11, he opened his morning paper to Herb Caen’s column.

“ANNIVERSARY: Today, retired police inspector Dave Toschi wil drive to Washington and Cherry, park and observe a few minutes of silent

contemplation. At that very corner on Oct. 11, 1969—20 years ago—the serial kil er who cal ed himself The Zodiac committed his last murder,

shooting a Yel ow Cab driver and disappearing into the Presidio, never to be seen again. . . . The Zodiac’s last taunting letters to Toschi always ended with ‘Me—37. S.F.P.D.—0.’ A blowout.”

Meanwhile, amateur detectives, undistracted by the grim procession of other murders that police faced, kept after Zodiac:

“I hope that you have been curious as to who is writing these stories and lessons in deciphering the Zodiac code,” a San Francisco man

wrote. “First, I’d like every one to know there is a purpose for my writing in this way. I know that there is a God, and he chooses me to do his

work. The Zodiac Crimes are not just another mass murderer gone bezerk, and on rampage, no, everything about his murders suggests

someone who has planned every detail careful y, step by step. In every communication, he has displayed a clever, even satirical style of writing.

This would seem that someone of extraordinary intel igence is committing the murders.”

After twenty years some of that confusion was about to be dispel ed.

Thursday, November 30, 1989

“I wonder if
you ever heard of the name Arthur Leigh Al en?” City Hal reporter Bob Popp asked me.

“Yeah, sure. What happened?”

“Nothing, except there’s a woman who cal ed in yesterday. She’s the daughter of a woman who started to talk to you several years ago and then

got panicked and hung up. Scared. But now the daughter wants you to know that the mother is wil ing to talk about an Arthur Leigh Al en. And that

name kind of rang a bel with me a little bit. She wanted to know how to get in touch with you.”

“I wouldn’t mind hearing from her,” I said.

“Where do I remember that name from? He lived up north, didn’t he?”

“Right. A scary guy.”

“That’s what she said. She sounded lucid.”

Karen Harris cal ed. “I’ve waited I guess years to contact you,” she said. “Partly because my mother’s so afraid of anyone finding out about it.

She’s very afraid of this person. My mother knew the district attorney in Santa Rosa, John Hawkes. I grew up with his children. He said, ‘Yes, that is

the man we’re watching.’ I can understand your curiosity in wanting to solve it. I’d like to find out as much information as I can to give you without

letting my mother know. She never real y knew anything about him until he was arrested for molesting a young boy who was the son of a friend of

his, a woman.

“Then, while he was in Atascadero, he did write to us and say, ‘They suspect me of being the Zodiac kil er.’ I remembered he looked like Burl Ives

to me. Just last weekend, over Thanksgiving, I did drive by his house. I heard he had been working at Ace Hardware but had lost his job. I don’t

think he’s working now. I had been to his house as a child (I was an only child) when I was about seven. I remember him drinking the big bottles of

beer. My mother was concerned because he was diabetic.

“He lived with a roommate for a while in Val ejo—an Oriental man. I remember feeling more uneasy about him than Leigh Al en. He was of

medium build and busy doing smal household chores. Based on some written notes by my mother, I think [the roommate] worked for the phone

company. . . . And I’m not sure if we were at [Leigh Al en’s] mother’s house or some other location. I remember him cooking a large pot of chili and

we ate that while were were there. We went sailing with him on a catamaran. He does know how to make sails and al that stuff.

“Your book is at home. Mother has al kinds of notes in it of every instance where she remembers incidents. He had the Wing Walker boots—the

whole bit. She knew Leigh throughout the time he was in the Navy. The only writing sample she has is from a yearbook and that’s the only sample I

could get hold of. He was a teacher at an elementary school.

“My mother cal ed you once and hung up. She got scared and didn’t want to give her name. But I want to see him again for some reason. I want to

watch him.”

“You be very careful,” I cautioned. “It’s a very hypnotic, obsessive, and al -consuming project. That case just eats at you. It just doesn’t let go.”

“My mother is terrified of this man. He drives by her house sometimes.”

“Recently?”

“Probably around the time he got out of Atascadero. She got an alarm system in the house. He stil has the Karmann Ghia and a Skylark over by

the house in the back of the driveway. They’re watching him again according to the sheriff’s department. My parents know someone who works

there—he’s a deputy. Two fourteen-year-old girls have disappeared and now they’re watching him again. If he’s the one . . . Oh, why can’t they catch

him? I wish they could catch him.

“Leigh used to write to my mother with these Navy flag semaphore symbols. And she threw al that stuff away—I’d show you, but if my mother

were to find out . . . He looks pretty much how I remember him looking. I went by to try and see him from a distance. But he would recognize me. I’m

thirty years old, but when I was a child my face looked the same. I look like my mother. I thought for a moment, ‘Oh, no. He’s sees me!’

“During the holidays, such as last Thanksgiving, my mother was very nervous for fear that Leigh was in the area visiting his brother. He used to

drive by my parents’ home and stop and stare in the windows from the street. That’s when my mother put in an alarm system in their home. . . . She