Zodiac Unmasked (52 page)

jump if anyone but Bel i showed up. Bel i suggested Old St. Mary’s in Chinatown. They final y agreed on St. Vincent de Paul’s Thrift Shop at 6726

Mission Street in Daly City. A rummage sale was being held there later that morning. Bel i set off, crouched on the floor of a police car al the way.

Dunbar recal ed the scene at the Thrift Shop. During that frightening experience he saw sharpshooters on the roof and submachine guns hidden

under priests’ habits. Dunbar admitted he was scared. “I had a young family and car payments to make,” he said. He envisioned being caught in a

hail of lead. Later, he came to think the entire event may have been a publicity stunt. Meanwhile, the cop who had taken Zodiac’s 2:00 A.M. cal had

been watching the show. He was certain he had spoken to the real Zodiac and that Sam’s voice was not the same. Bel i waited forty-five minutes,

but Zodiac didn’t show up. “I don’t wonder why,” remembered Bel i. “An army of police from San Francisco and Daly City was there. The cops had

been monitoring Dunbar’s line, and certainly weren’t going to let this opportunity to catch the Zodiac and vindicate themselves before the public ... I

had already made a deal in advance with the S.F. District Attorney, John Jay Ferdon, not to press for the death penalty if the Zodiac turned himself

in. I figured that wouldn’t be the end of it, however. The Zodiac, judging from his taunting notes to the police and the press, wanted public attention. I

was sure he’d cal again. He did.”

Thursday, December 18, 1969

Zodiac called the
attorney’s home, but got his housekeeper nstead.16 She explained that the white-maned attorney was in Munich, Germany, for a

conference of military trial lawyers. “I can’t wait,” said the cal er, who had identified himself as Zodiac. “Today’s my birthday. I’ve got to kil !” He hung

up abruptly.

“On December 18, 1969,” Bel i recal ed, “the Zodiac mailed me a brief note wishing me a happy Christmas. I went off on safari to Africa. But

while I was there, the Zodiac, according to my housekeeper, phoned me several [more] times.”

Saturday, December 20, 1969

Two days after
the cal , exactly a year after the first Northern California murders, Zodiac’s letter containing a square of Stine’s bloody shirt arrived

at Bel i’s home. Unopened, it was forwarded down to his business office to be opened by his secretary. It was addressed “Mr. Melvin M. Bel i 1228

Mtgy San Fran Calif.” Neatly folded inside of the four-by-seven-inch white envelope was a portion of Stine’s blood-blackened shirt and a message

in felt-tip pen. A photocopy of the message was hand-carried by a legal associate to Bel i, Room #293, the Bayershoff Hotel. Bel i opened it with

unsteady fingers and read:

“Dear Melvin This is the Zodiac speaking I wish you a happy Christmass. The one thing I ask of you is this, please help me. I cannot reach

out for help because of this thing in me won’t let me. I am finding it extreamly dificult to hold it in check I am afraid I wil loose control again and

take my nineth & posibly tenth victom. Please help me I am drownding. At the moment the children are safe from the bomb because it is so

massive to dig in & the triger mech requires much work to get it adjusted just right. But if I hold back too long from no nine I wil loose complet

al controol of my self & set the bomb up.”

“Please help me I can not remain in control for much longer,” Zodiac concluded, paraphrasing Wil iam Heirens, the 1940s “Lipstick Kil er of

Chicago.” Heirens, a sexual sadist, in a heartrending cry for help, had scrawled on a mirror in lipstick: “For heavens Sake catch me Before I kil

more I cannot control myself.”

It appeared Zodiac was being sarcastic in quoting Heirens, but Bel i thought otherwise. He considered the letter heartfelt. “I believe he wants to

stop kil ing,” he said. “I have careful y studied his letter . . . and I feel it was written at a time when he calmly and rational y was considering the future.

He knows eventual y he wil be apprehended and that unless he gets proper legal representation, he wil most probably be sentenced to die in the

gas chamber. That is why he is crying out for help. . . . Why has he come to me? He wants to be saved from the gas chamber. . . . I think we can do

something for him. . . . We might get this guy and save some lives—including his. Maybe we could convince him he would get some treatment and

that he would not be executed.” Bel i offered to bring along a “priest, a doctor, or a psychiatrist” and meet with Zodiac in “the San Marine area or in

Nevada.”

Bel i ful y anticipated Zodiac, who had gotten along famously with his housekeeper on the phone, “to be sitting in the front room with the

housekeeper, waiting for him, getting on very wel .” He went on to Naples to defend a Navy doctor charged with misappropriation of military

property. “I’d like to finish this case in Naples,” said Bel i, “but if I get an urgent cal about Zodiac I wil go back to California at once. I’l catch the first plane back if that is what he wants. I think we wil have another communication from Zodiac soon.” After finishing a delicious dinner of green ravioli,

Bel i phoned Avery in a transatlantic cal . “It’s mighty cold in Naples,” he said. “I have the nagging feeling that Zodiac might be someone who knows

me.” Bel i returned to California, saying, “My maid said she was very agitated to see me. She knows his voice.”

Toschi and Armstrong rushed to Bel i’s to discuss the new letter. Bel i, silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, French cuffs, silver watch chain on

his vest, beamed expansively. “Bel i was expecting us, natural y,” Toschi recal ed, “and he said, ‘I’m going to have company, but don’t worry about it.

They know I’m assisting the police department.’ So we asked him, ‘Would you mind stepping away from your guests?’ We told the man and woman

at the table, ‘We’d like to talk with Mr. Bel i for about ten or fifteen minutes and he told us it’s OK. It’s about the Zodiac case.’ She says, ‘Oh, yes,

yes. Melvin’s told us al about it.’ Not only were his dinner guests rapt with attention, but I could tel Bel i was loving every moment. He was always on

stage and always the star, even in court. I recal ed how the jury and even the judge would turn their heads whenever he entered.”

“The police stayed on the case,” said Bel i. “They felt the Zodiac may indeed have kil ed more persons than they’d original y believed, including

one young woman in Riverside, California, in 1966 and another woman in the San Bernardino area in 1967. And then, in 1971, they had a lead that

took them right to Riverside University’s law school.”

Sunday, June 8, 1971

Belli’s next real-life
brush with Zodiac occurred in Riverside, where he attempted to strengthen Zodiac’s connection between the Bay Area and

Southern California. “Dean Charles Ashman phoned me,” said Bel i, “to say the cops were coming into the school, undercover, to check out one of

his law students, a kid who had once threatened a girl he knew and told her he was the Zodiac.”

Bel i knew handwriting comparisons had been inconclusive. Under the guise of delivering a lecture, Bel i hoped the boy, sitting in the second row,

might ask a question. In that way, he could tel if his voice matched Zodiac’s. Every person crowded around the student was an undercover cop.

After the speech the student leaped up and rushed to shake “The Great One’s” hand. “You don’t know how much I admire you, Mr. Bel i,” he said.

Bel i knew immediately it wasn’t the same voice he had heard and decided to settle the matter. “Hey, kid, are you the Zodiac kil er?” he snapped.

The kid seemed stunned. “What do you mean, sir?” “Are you the Zodiac kil er?” said Bel i. “I hear you used to cal yourself Zodiac.” The cops

moved in, anxious to hear the kid’s answer. “No,” he said. “I didn’t kil anybody.” “I believed him,” Bel i said later. “So did the cops.” As for Sam, I

later found him. He was not Zodiac, simply a troubled young man cal ing from a mental hospital.

A valuable clue lay in Zodiac’s long-distance relationship with Bel i. At one point, though, the kil er seemed to have soured on him.

“If you don’t want me to have this blast,” Zodiac wrote April 29, 1970, “you must do two things. 1 Tel every one about the bus bomb with al

the details. 2 I would like to see some nice Zodiac butons [sic] wandering about town. Every one else has these buttons like . . . melvin eats

blubber, etc. Wel it would cheer me up considerbly if I saw a lot of people wearing my buton. Please no nasty ones like melvin’s Thank you.”

Zodiac seemed irritated at Melvin Bel i. But why? Recal that on Thursday, December 18, 1969, Zodiac rang the attorney’s housekeeper and

remarked that today was his birthday. Two days later, December 20, a letter from Zodiac arrived at Bel i’s office. The FBI quoted that conversation

in report 9-49911-88:

VIA TELETYPE ENCIPHERED JAN 14 1970 2:14 PM URGENT “ZODIAC.” EXTORTION. RE: SAN FRANCISCO AIRTEL. DECEMBER

TWENTY-NINE LAST. ON INSTANT DATE, INSPECTOR ARMSTRONG HOMICIDE DETAIL . . . CONFIDENTIALLY ADVISED THAT

UNSUB, WHO IDENTIFIED HIMSELF AS “ZODIAC,” TELEPHONICALLY CONTACTED BELLI’S RESIDENCE IN EFFORT TO CONTACT

BELLI. UNSUB WAS ADVISED BELLI IN EUROPE AND STATED, “I CAN’T WAIT. TODAY’S MY BIRTHDAY.” SUTEL. ARMED AND

DANGEROUS. END NSM FBI WASH DC.

Keep in mind that Al en had been questioned by Lynch two months before this cal and been let go. Not until his interrogation at the refinery twenty

months later would he be a viable suspect. Zodiac had felt comfortable in giving his actual birthday—December 18.

December 18 was Arthur Leigh Allen’s birthday
.

30

media starr

Wednesday, May 22, 1991

The
Val ejo Times-Herald headlined: “Signs Point to Val ejo Man; Investigation into Bizarre Zodiac Murders Goes On.”

“VALLEJO—Val ejo police seized pipe bombs, an underwater Zodiac watch and other items earlier this year from the house of a Val ejo

man who was a prime suspect in the stil -unsolved 1969-70 Zodiac kil ings. No charges have been filed against Al en for possession of the

explosives, which he said belonged to an ex-convict who is now dead. And the police investigation remains a mystery. In 1971 San Francisco

police targeted Al en as the prime suspect in at least six unsolved California murders and two attempted kil ings in the 1960s. The kil er was

cal ed Zodiac because of the cryptic messages he loaded with astrological symbols and sent to the news media and police investigators

during the kil ing spree.

“A series of cryptic letters from the Zodiac came to a three-year halt after Al en’s Santa Rosa trailer was searched, Robert Graysmith notes

in his 1986 book ‘Zodiac.’ Similarly, in 1975, when Al en was committed to an institution on a child molesting conviction, Zodiac’s

correspondence ceased for two years until his release. The linked murders of hitchhikers around Santa Rosa also came to a halt, Graysmith

notes. Val ejo police have refused to confirm or deny any motive for reopening the investigation.”

“Do I expect an imminent arrest in regards to Zodiac?” said Val ejo Police Chief Gerald Galvin. “No, I do not. It’s an ongoing and sensitive

investigation.”

“Al en looked very good,” Toschi told the press. “We searched a Santa Rosa trailer where he lived part-time in 1972. But an analysis of his

fingerprints did not match partial prints found on a Zodiac victim’s cab in 1969. We could not find enough evidence on which to convict Al en. I can’t

discuss why Al en was dismissed as a suspect.”

Wednesday, May 29, 1991

“Let me tell
you what’s happened here,” Pete Noyes told me. “Apparently this suspect [Al en] had a series of meetings with a psychologist in

Val ejo. The psychologist was afraid this guy might kil him. And relayed this information on to a friend and that’s where it al stands now. The

psychologist feared for his life. He works for some institute up there and he gave al this information. The information is out there right now. These

people are trying to sel me the information down here in L.A.”

“Don’t pay a penny,” I cautioned.

“They’ve got a series of tapes and al that,” he concluded.

“Tapes?”

Saturday, June 1, 1991

The same individuals
tried to sel the tapes to
Unsolved Mysteries
and were turned down. But Noyes told me, “The cops are very interested. The

story is there. There was some concern that an analyst should not reveal statements made during private sessions.”

“I think that under the law,” I said, “if a person is a danger to society, an analyst can turn session tapes over.”

“The psychiatrist’s brother is a San Francisco cop and they decided to solve the murder on their own,” said Noyes. “They went and staked out

Al en’s home about eight or nine months ago. A woman went in posing as a real-estate agent. He got wise to her and started screaming and yel ing

at her and chased her out of the house. He got the license number of her car. It was registered to her mother. Two days later, there was a death

threat made on her mother.

“The psychiatrist treated Al en in the late 1970s as a condition of his release. They have al this information. What they said to me is that this guy

told them more than anyone knows who’s not wel versed in the case. The guys who have been staking out his house got al this information from the

shrink. I just did a check to see if the informant is not a criminal or anything. He’s a fifty-three-year-old man with no criminal record.”

I didn’t correct him. “What’s your next step?” I asked.