Zodiac Unmasked (47 page)

experienced occasional muscle cramps, flank pain, and muscle twitching. His skin took on a slightly yel ow-brownish discoloration. Inside, healthy

as ever, anger stil blazed.

Long after Al en’s release from Atascadero, a staffer, consumed with worry, contacted me. “Is Arthur Leigh Al en stil alive and if so is he stil a

Zodiac suspect?” he asked. Apparently Leigh had told the Atascadero staff he was a Zodiac suspect. “To your knowledge, have there been

subsequent child molestation charges brought against this man? It is recognized in the mental health field that child molesters are notorious

recidivists. The molesters I’ve worked with have been repeat offenders.” Nor, with the passing of years, had the suffering of the victims lessened.

Psychic trauma had especial y been visited on the surviving Blue Rock Springs victim—Mike Mageau [
May-hew
], last seen in a Val ejo hospital on

August 19, 1969.

Though his operation had been on July 5, scars on the right side of Mike’s neck and left cheek shone lividly, mapping a bul et’s wandering path.

He was a study in agony—jaw wired shut, left leg encased in a cast to his hip; right arm and hand crippled by bul ets—as he stared at a slug,

floating in a solution in a glass bottle. That slug had been removed from his left thigh. As soon as he could, he disguised himself and fled Val ejo.

“About one and a half years ago,” a male nurse in San Bernardino told me, “I saw Michael Mageau as a patient for multiple medical problems

that appeared to be psychosomatic, probably secondary to the psychological scars he received as a result of his encounter with Zodiac. He freely

volunteered his association with Zodiac and had scars consistent with the described wounds. As I recal he had a run-in with drugs and was a street

person briefly. I met his fiancée, who is a strong woman and seemed to be giving him emotional and physical support. They are probably married

now. He told me that [Lake Berryessa victim] Bryan Hartnel was living in the area and that he had some infrequent contact with him. I find it

interesting that both Zodiac survivors now live in the area where the Zodiac murders began.” Hartnel had described Zodiac as 225-250 pounds.

Mageau’s first description was similar—the man’s build was “beefy, heavyset without being blubbery fat.” He appeared to have “a large face” and

was not wearing glasses. “He weighed 195-200 pounds and was between twenty-six and thirty-six years old. He was wearing a blue short-sleeved

shirt.” That sounded a lot like the prime suspect.

On this twenty-first anniversary of Paul Stine’s murder, Dave Toschi said, “I retired in 1985 without having the pleasure of reading [Zodiac] his

rights. Zodiac was the most baffling murder case in our history.” With coast-to-coast Zodiacs at large, it seemed unthinkable that the original Zodiac

could let such an opportunity go by without commenting on his New York counterpart. Only the most extreme adversity could prevent this prophet of

death from gloating over the proliferation of his obscene word. No letter came. Why?

Tuesday, December 18, 1990

Leigh Allen mentioned
the Zodiac imitator to his friends. But he had other things on his mind. I was in Val ejo when, on the morning of his birthday,

he donned a sweater his mother had knitted, buttoned his Navy pea coat, and drove to DMV to apply for a two-year renewal of his Class C driver’s

license. 14 The new license stipulated “RSTP: Corr Lens,” but in his driver’s photo Leigh is not wearing glasses. He cruised the water town in his

VW, final y parking at a golf course. I saw him turn up his col ar against the wind, as he studied Water Town. I knew he was intimate with al its

watery sections and salt flats. Lake Chabot Reservoir sprang from a dammed stream a hundred years ago. Then a storage cistern in Wild Horse

Val ey, twenty-two miles northeast, began pumping water to Fleming Hil reservoir. Today, the Gordon Val ey project and Cache Slough Pumping

Plant slaked Water Town’s endless thirst. His eyes roved across the choppy bay, where the hunt for Zodiac proceeded.

Al en was now undergoing kidney dialysis and suffering from diabetes. He walked with a cane, had a heart condition—possibly a circulation

problem, and suffered from severe arthritis. Zodiac’s withdrawal had been as mystifying as his arrival. When he had appeared twenty years ago,

there real y hadn’t been anything like Zodiac before. He had captured the public’s enduring interest. “Zodiac was one of the early serial kil ers to

acquire publicity,” said Park Dietz of UCLA. “The use of a logo and encrypted messages made him both wel -marketed and of interest to legions of

people who would like to solve the mystery.” So did the astrology angle.

Zodiac buff David Rice did a breakdown of Zodiac’s significant dates, but saw no astronomical pattern. He suggested to me there might be an

astrological
pattern, though, and on his computer, analyzed his findings with an Astr-5-Ø, Tropical Zodiac program.

“If Zodiac were using astronomical events such as the Winter, Summer, Spring, and Fal Solar Ingresses,” he explained, “it would seem likely

that he would ‘do his thing’ on the exact day, and not plus or minus 13 days. Not even if he were using the Sidereal Zodiac, which is considered

(with an SVP at 28 Pisces) to have a difference from the Tropical Zodiac of 28 degrees (there’s stil about two degrees to go before the ‘Age

of Aquarius’ replaces the current ‘Age of Pisces’), as it would stil be off. There might be an explanation, however. Statistical analysis on athletes, using the Tropical Zodiac, placed Mars at the Ascendant (rising) and the Midheaven (culminating) more often than chance al ows, at

the oh-five level. Doctors and lawyers have Jupiter in these ‘zones’ instead. Though an astrologer, I’d prefer an astronomical explanation to an

astrological one. The former one can weigh and measure, the latter is al egory and probabilities.”

Like the original Zodiac, New York’s copycat serial kil er had vanished without a trace. I prayed for a resolution to the East Coast mystery. It

would dispel half the nightmare. In history only Jack the Ripper had his copycats—and now, Zodiac did too.

26

zodiac II returns

Though the solution
to Zodiac I lay years away, let me tel you how it ended—as it began, in a blaze of bul ets. On Tuesday, March 1, 1994, New

York City police arrested a young man who “wouldn’t hurt a fly,” packing a homemade weapon. They automatical y fingerprinted anyone with a zip

gun because Zodiac I had used one. But the gun didn’t work, so cops sealed the young man’s file with the prints stil inside. He returned to his

Pitkin Avenue neighborhood, where he was known as “The Vampire.” Obsessed with al things military, “The Vampire” col ected martial hardware

and acted on occasion as a police drug informant. By day, he closeted himself in the nearly abandoned East New York apartment building he

shared with his mother and sister and some squatters. He raged against drug users who trafficked the squalid building. By night, he wandered the

streets, his Bible clutched under his arm.

“Your Zodiac, I think, is going to be caught,” I said on Ted Koppel’s
Nightline
. “I have had that feeling from the very beginning. He has already

been seen by more people than ever saw the original Zodiac.” Jerry Nachman, on the same program, made an interesting point on behalf of the

press. “We don’t create these situations. The Zodiac had shot two or three people before story one appeared. Son of Sam had murdered between

a third to half the number of people he would ever kil before the first Son of Sam story appeared. So, it is not as if it is a chicken and egg thing.

Sometimes these crimes have been unspooling for a while before we ever get notified of them or, indeed, get into them.”

On Monday, August 8, 1994, my phone rang. “There’s a third Zodiac,” Pete Noyes, a Los Angeles television newsman, told me. “A story out of

New York is that another person claiming to be the Zodiac Kil er has written to the
Post
describing a series of new shootings.”

“Another or the old one back again?” I said. “A third Zodiac—a copycat of a copycat? What do they think?”

“They say they don’t want to say.” He read me the AP report:

“‘This is the Zodiac.’ Those words, in a childlike scrawl, became the trademark greeting of a kil er who fil ed the New York summer of 1990

with dread. Now after years of silence, the Zodiac kil er may be back. In 1990, the Zodiac vowed to kil one person for each of the twelve

astrological signs . . . then abruptly quit. This week [August 1, 1994], the New York Post got a similar note from someone claiming to be the

Zodiac, and detectives are trying to determine whether the letter writer is the kil er or a copycat. The letter writer claims responsibility for five

shootings that police said left at least two people dead between August 10, 1992 and June 11 of this year. Al of the attacks took place in the

general area of the 1990 shooting. . . .”

Kieran Crowley phoned right after Noyes. “It’s four o’clock in New York right now and it’s happening again,” he said, “another Zodiac. He’s shot

five people. Remember four years ago? This Zodiac claims to be the original guy who kil ed al four. Obviously there are these points of agreement

between the letters and the original Zodiac. . . . Do you think it’s possible he’s taken on the persona, might think he’s the real Zodiac?”

“When this imitator came out for the first time,” I said, “my mother suggested I say in the press that this guy is not Zodiac. When I did he stopped.

Who knows, maybe he real y believed he was the San Francisco Zodiac. Or maybe he didn’t mean to kil his victims, only wound them. When Proce

died, he ceased kil ing.”

“It’s obvious to me that he’s read your book. He does a box score. He claims four victims four years ago, five now—a total of nine. The police

confirmed that the guy in this shooting—they got one bal istics match—a .22-caliber—which was like Zodiac.”

“Zodiac used a .22 in his first Northern California murder.”

“Do you think he’s using your book as a Bible? As far as I can tel he is.”

“I feel awful. My purpose in writing the book was to catch Zodiac or get so close that he was stalemated. I think we succeeded. San Francisco’s

Zodiac was effectively checkmated. With publication of his story and al the clues, with enhanced police scrutiny, we had no more murders, no more

letters.”

Few kil ers had copied a novel, duplicating fictional crimes or M.O. in real life. A few instances of fact fol owing fiction: Agatha Christie’s
The

Pale Horse
inspired a crime. A mass murderer who escaped from an asylum used her book as a guide to commit aconite poisonings. J. D.

Salinger’s
Catcher in the Rye
has shown up in the hands of a number of madmen—Hinckley, Bardo (who shot actress Rebecca Shafer). Former

Berkeley mathematics professor Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, copied the plot and philosophy laid out in Joseph Conrad’s
The Secret Agent,

about a professor who is a bomber. I knew of no non-fiction books inspiring real-life crimes. I mentioned an article on the subject, “A Writer’s

Nightmare,” to Crowley.

“And it’s a writer’s nightmare for you,” said Crowley. “That somebody studied your book—that’s horrible. For you, this is like twice—what the

police don’t know is if it’s the same guy or not. Which is scarier—that it is the same guy who came back or if it’s two different ones?”

“Two people that unbalanced and suggestible?”

“Confidential y,” said Crowley, “we believe it stil may be the guy from four years ago. The descriptions sort of match—I’l get back to you on that.”

Next day, he told me about a new Zodiac cipher in the
Post
. “If you put a hand mirror on the left side of the symbols you can see how he created

his new alphabet. They look like normal naval flags, but they’re not. I and a former Army cryptographer decoded his message. I’l read it to you . . .

let me give you the exact wording. One of the reasons I was able to crack it open—turns out they’re mirror image naval signal flags [based on a

maritime system of International Flags and Pennants]—almost al of them. We didn’t know that. We did the standard code-breaking stuff. The

symbols were doubled in the horizontal plane, in something known as a ‘looking glass’ alphabet code. It was likely created by placing a smal mirror

on the left side of each naval flag symbol. He says, ‘This is the Zodiac Speaking, I am in control through mastery. Be ready for more. Your’s truly.’

Obviously, there are different points of agreement between the letters of the original Zodiac. . . . The police have confirmed they’ve got one bal istic

match—.22-caliber, which was what Zodiac used. The description is not a black guy but that of a dark-skinned Latino.”

“That’s very different than the original description,” I said. “The new one could stil be Zodiac I I.” Retired NYPD Detectives Al Sheppard and

James Tedaldi suspected this was Zodiac I I—he did not stalk his victims as he had done in 1990, but chose them at random. The 1990 Zodiac

had a pattern of attacking on Thursdays and in increments of twenty-one and when certain star clusters were visible in the sky. The latest Zodiac did

not fol ow any pattern. The old Zodiac aimed for his victims’ torsos, the new aimed for the head. But both admitted there were enough similarities

that it could be the same man.

“August the fifth,”
Mike Ciravolo told me, “I get a cal saying, ‘Zodiac shot people. He’s writing notes. It checks out. He’s out there again. What

was incredible about 1990 was [Zodiac] has al four victims’ astrological signs on paper. To this day it is unknown how that happened. What we did