Zodiac Unmasked (63 page)

was ambidextrous after al , as you suspected. Eyewitnesses confirmed that Leigh wore unique Wing Walker shoes the same size as Zodiac’s. He

fits Zodiac’s physical description in every way—six-foot height and over two hundred and thirty pounds. The lumbering walk. Leigh, by his own

words, placed himself at the Berryessa and Riverside scenes. He had the technical knowledge to write codes, diagram and build bombs, and the

skil to shoot various weapons. He and Zodiac share the same birthday. He misspel ed the same words as Zodiac on his menu cards. And what

about Don Cheney? When he took a lie detector test, he passed. His comments in 1971 about Al en saying he wanted to hunt people and cal

himself the Zodiac were true.”

“That doesn’t surprise me at al ,” said Toschi.

“Now Phil Tucker says Al en told him the same things. Leigh confessed he was Zodiac to a variety of people—a Sonoma Auto Parts employee;

Spinel i, of course. Police referred to the criminal as ‘Zodiac.’ However, Zodiac referred to himself as ‘
The
Zodiac.’ Al en, in his taped interviews

with television crews, always said ‘
The
Zodiac.’ On his analyst’s tapes Al en reportedly sobbed and admitted he was ‘
The
Zodiac.’ He claimed he

spoke for Zodiac, and explained the origin of the Zodiac ciphers as having originated at Atascadero.”

“How do you discount remarks like that?” said Toschi. “Al en was a very sick, disturbed, and dangerous man—a frightening person. It was

unfortunate that the Val ejo P.D. didn’t charge him even though they knew he was Zodiac. It would have put closure on the darn thing. It would have

brought relief to those who survived. And made a lot of peace officers happy. The case is closed. That’s al I wanted to do was close the case. Tap

him on the shoulder and say, ‘Let me advise you of your Miranda rights,’ and then handcuff him. To this day, I stil say Leigh Al en was ‘my man.’

Guys would tease me and I’d say, ‘I think the case wil be solved someday.’ I think it is solved. If you’re comfortable on what you’ve done on this one,

then I would go with it.”

Could I find eyewitnesses placing Al en at the scene of the murders? Only two Zodiac crimes offered that potential. I began to re-examine them in

depth, including al that I had recently learned. I commenced with the stabbings at Lake Berryessa on September 27, 1969, on a lovely Saturday

afternoon.

38

the city at the bottom of the lake

As Bryan Hartnell
and Cecelia Shepard had over thirty years earlier, I went by way of Pope Val ey, rushing past old stone wineries and hot

springs until I reached the twisting shoreline and inlets of Lake Berryessa. At this tree-shaded resort east of Napa, Zodiac had become Count

Zaroff at his hunt—stalking his victims in the twilight. Riverside had a connection to this attack too. After two years at Angwin Col ege, Cecelia was

transferring to U.C. Riverside to study music. She had just driven up from San Bernardino with her friend Dalora Lee. They planned to drive back

the next day. I got a permit from Park Headquarters and turned left to drive two miles along the meandering shoreline of oak-studded groves and

coves. Twenty-five miles long, several miles wide, Berryessa was man-made. It had been created with the construction of Monticel o Dam in 1957.

In September the surface of the clear blue lake is warm. Two hundred and seventy-five feet below the temperature plunges to a frigid 40 degrees.

At the bottom schools of black bass swarm among the ruins of a town sacrificed for the dam. Somewhere in those submerged houses, where only

a scuba diver could go, Zodiac might have hidden trophies.

The clearing where Bryan and Cecelia had been attacked by Zodiac on September 27, 1969, lay 510 yards from the parking lot on a promontory

of the lake’s west shoreline. Behind burbled Smittle Creek. Beyond, sun flashed off placid water near an island. The wind lifted dust, blowing it

among the groves and stretch of deserted shoreline. Shrubbery covering the bank isolated it even more. A sign nailed to an oak read: “Dangerous

Area—no open fires or firearms.” I heard, as Zodiac must have, the stil ness of the forest, the wind sweeping solemnly across stretches of deserted

lake, and the bite of Wing Walker boots in the sand. The kil er had imprinted deep tracks al around the Karmann Ghia. Aerial police photos shot

from a fixed wing aircraft eerily marked his path, each step covered over with a little cardboard box. As I studied the secluded lake, I realized I had

underestimated how few people were visiting Lake Berryessa that terrible day. There had been virtual y no one around. Zodiac had to have been

seen without his hood.

Here’s who was at the lake: Bryan Hartnel and Cecelia Shepard (the victims), Park Rangers Dennis Land and Sergeant Wil iam White (both in a

patrol car three miles away when the cal came in), Ronald Henry Fong of San Francisco and his son on the lake fishing (who saw the couple and

rowed for help), Archie and Beth White at Rancho Monticel o (who arrived at the crime scene with White and Fong by boat, Land drove to scene

from park Headquarters), Cindy, a waitress, a patron at Moskowite Corners, and a father and two young boys across the lake shooting BB-guns.

They were al removed from the scene. At the scene were Dr. Clifton Rayfield and his son, David, three PUC col ege girls, and a stocky man who

walked oddly.

Original y I had discounted a description of a heavyset man at the lake because he had dark hair and Zodiac did not. That had been reinforced

two weeks later when Officer Fouke described Zodiac as blondish, balding, and “graying in back.” An anonymous typewritten letter 22 on Eaton

bond (like the Zodiac letters) sent to the
Chronicle
and bearing an FDR stamp read:

“Dear Sir: With the popularity of hair pieces today it would be a logical masquerade to remove whatever was the usual hair style if the

Zodiac kil er intended to strike. It would be normal to resume the hairstyle he usual y appeared in for daily appearances. To il ustrate my point, I

have cut the hair styling from the picture of the victim [Cecelia Shepard], and superimposed it on the composite. . . . Anything to help. I would as

soon remain anonymous.”

Had Zodiac as far back as 1970 been tel ing us (as he mentioned a Zodiac watch) that he had worn a wig at Berryessa? Now I recal ed Hartnel

had gotten a sense of that before he was stabbed. “I remember a kind of greasy forehead,” he told me. “The attacker had sweaty dark brown hair—

which showed through dark glasses covering eyelets in the hood. And it’s not impossible the guy was wearing a wig.” If Zodiac had been the dark-

haired man, then eyewitnesses had seen him without his hood, had observed events
preceding
the crime.

Three col ege seniors, al twenty-one years old, saw Zodiac unmasked. They attended the same col ege as Bryan and Cecelia—Pacific Union

Col ege at Angwin. The Seventh-day Adventist campus perched loftily atop an extinct volcano, Mt. Howel , about eight miles from St. Helena. They

had traveled the same route as Bryan and Cecelia, coming into Berryessa from Angwin via Pope Val ey and Knox Val ey Road. At 2:55 P.M., they

pul ed into a parking spot two miles north of the A&W at Sugar Loaf. Before they could exit, another car, a Chevrolet, “silver or ice-blue in color,” a

1966 two-door, ful -size sedan, slid alongside. As the driver pul ed past them, they saw the auto’s California plates. The stranger then backed up

until his rear bumper was paral el and off to the side of their car. Zodiac had performed a similar maneuver at Blue Rock Springs. The man sat

there, his head down as if reading. The girls got the impression he wasn’t.

“We had pul ed in at a gas station and this man pul ed up beside us,” Lorna,23 one of the students, told me. “He was scooted way down, his eyes

just kind of looking over at us—watching us. And he fol owed us to the parking place back maybe a hundred feet where we parked and walked

down to the water’s edge.” At 3:00 P.M. the trio had walked to the lake shore and settled under the oak-studded cover. Half an hour later, they were

in their swimsuits sunbathing when they noticed the stranger again—smoking cigarettes and watching them. Twenty minutes later he was stil there,

his T-shirt hanging out at the rear of his trousers.

“And within a few minutes he was in the trees watching us,” said Lorna. “My two girlfriends didn’t pay any attention. ‘I’m not going to look at him,’

they said. ‘He’s just a creep.’ But I watched him a lot, and over a period of almost an hour he watched us from various trees. He was between us

and the car so we couldn’t leave. He was not distinctive, just an average, normal plain person, other than he gave us the creeps. And he obviously

fol owed us and obviously watched us. I remember his face as being square, al sides symmetrical. I don’t remember him at al being pudgy, just

compact . . . stocky, solid. The minute you mentioned the suspect was a swimmer, that felt so right about his body type. I wouldn’t say he had a limp,

but he favored one leg when he walked. He was clean-cut, nice-looking, and wearing dark-blue pants, pleated like suit pants, and a black

sweatshirt with short sleeves, knitted at the ends.” Fouke had seen Zodiac wearing brown pleated pants.

The women estimated the man to be six feet to six feet two inches tal and between 200 and 230 pounds. Hartnel thought Zodiac weighed

between 225 and 250 pounds. “I don’t know how tal Zodiac was,” he told me, “maybe . . . six feet, somewhere in there. I’m a pretty poor judge of

height because of my own height. . . . He was a sloppy dresser.” Al en, then thirty-five, stood six feet and weighed between 200 and 230 pounds. “I

would say older than thirty-five—middle thirties,” Lorna said. “He was clean-cut and had hair that was too perfect.”

“You mentioned his shirttail was hanging out,” I said, “and I realized how inconsistent that was with neatly parted hair.”

“I know,” Lorna replied, “and it was exactly parted and combed and probably was a wig in such a breezy place. Other than in the gas station, I

don’t remember any other people up there. I think the only reason we were safe is that we faced a marina. There was no activity, but there were

mobile homes and boats at least parked there. We felt like there were people around, but I don’t think we saw people. There were none on the

beach. We were the only ones—none on the parking area. None on the road.”

At 3:50 P.M., the women looked up. The stranger was gone. When they didn’t see him again, they waited almost forty minutes to be sure it was

safe. “At one point he disappeared and at that point we made a run for the car,” Lorna told me. “When we got to the car, Bryan and Cece’s car was

parked behind ours. They were directly around the corner from us probably within three hundred yards. Later we were in one little cove and they

were right around the corner. We didn’t know it at the time, but their car was parked right by ours. Cecelia and I were maybe four or five rooms

apart [at PUC] on the same dorm floor. She was our floor monitor. We weren’t close friends but I knew her wel . She was a singer and I worked in

that department. She was incredible and the tiniest, most fragile person.”

When Ken Narlow and Deputy Land later asked the women to provide details, they were “very sure and positive of what they had seen.” “Al three

said they could identify the man if they saw him again,” said Narlow. “However, only [Lorna, the principal witness] felt confident enough to work with

an Ident-a-kit artist. This particular sketch was drawn with the assistance of the three young girls who had seen this particular individual in a car

acting suspiciously, but this wasn’t near the scene of the crime. To the best of my recol ection, it was probably four or five hours prior to the actual

crime.”

“It was a terrifying experience for me,” Lorna said. “At Cece’s funeral, the FBI had me outside with them thinking he might show up. When I was

interviewed by the police and the FBI, it was with the understanding no one ever knew who I was. It was probably irrational, but I had a lot of fear

about this man knowing who I was and trying to find me. I think at the time, because my description was so different, the police had a tendency to

discount what I had to say. It’s so coincidental that we were right there and this happened right there. What are the chances someone else would

have fol owed us that day?”

Amazingly, after March 1971, before Leigh Al en became a suspect, no policeman ever spoke with Lorna or showed her photos of suspects.

Thirty-one years later she was stil frightened. I provided her with photos of Leigh Al en. After first consulting with the Napa P.D., she insisted on

consulting her attorney before giving me her evaluation. I waited.

Moskowite Corners General Store stood across from Pearce’s Chevron Service near the lake. At noon the day of the stabbings, a round-faced

man rushed into the cafe and asked anxiously for directions on the “fastest way out of the area.” A patron eating lunch found him suspicious,

fol owed him out, and watched him drive off in an ice-blue Chevy. He matched Lorna’s description of the man watching her and her friends

sunbathing. In 1974 the patron spoke with police and “tentatively” identified a middle-aged suspect as the man leaving the cafe. Within two weeks,

the witness was kil ed in an explosion.

“We have better witnesses,” Narlow had told me, “people who had seen the suspect closer to the scene of the crime both geographical y and

time-wise than that sketch there, but it could easily have been the guy. We have evidence that about a quarter mile down the road, about forty-five