Zodiac Unmasked (72 page)

and pasted letters, holes punched. One reader, Mike Hopkins, studied the lone punch hole in the upper right-hand corner of the card. “It’s at

approximately the 11:00 position,” he explained. “When the card is oriented so the words ‘Sierra Club’ are upright, there is the suggestion of a

face in the foliage. Did Zodiac sketch himself into the picture and is that what he meant by ‘peek through the pines’?” The author obtained the

original elaborate brochure which Zodiac used to manufacture the postcard and studied it inch by inch. The kil er had added no additional

artwork to the pen and ink landscape. Postmark: Canceled Lincoln stamp in which the president is shown in left profile and mourning, which is

another indication that someone in Zodiac’s life had recently died.

18. January 29, 1974 (Tuesday). Zodiac’s letter to the
San Francisco Chronicle
. Exorcist Letter. SFPD Lab #14. FBI file #Qc62 and

Qc63. “Qc59-Qc61 being forward to Cryptography Section for evaluation,” reported the lab, “you wil be advised on the results.” Postmark: AM

29 JAN. 1974 940. Three contact palm edge prints were found in 2001 which did not match Al en’s palm print.

18A. Copycat card and envelope marked “SLA” to
Chronicle
, postmarked 14 February, 1974. SFPD Lab #11.

18B. Copycat postcard marked May 6, 1974. SFPD Lab #12.

19. May 8, 1974 (Wednesday). Zodiac’s letter from Alameda to the
San Francisco Chronicle. Badlands
Letter, signed “A Citizen.”

Postmark: 8 MAY 1974 Alameda County.

20. July 8, 1974 (Monday). Zodiac’s “Red Phantom” to the
San Francisco Chronicle
from San Rafael. SFPD Lab #13, FBI Specimen

Q97. Postmark: PM 8 JUL. 1974 San Rafael 1B.

21. April 24, 1978 (Monday). Hoax Zodiac letter to the
San Francisco Chronicle
. “I am back with you . . .” San Francisco Police notation:

“DNA SAMPLE OBTAINED/NOT AUTHENTIC ZODIAC LETTER.” SFPD Lab #15, FBI Specimen Q99. Postmark: PM 24 APR. 1978 8B.

ZODIAC COPYCAT LETTERS

22.October 29, 1987 (Wednesday). A Zodiac copycat, probably the true author of the April 1978 letter (21), writes the
Vallejo Times-

Herald
. “Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking I am crack proof. Tel herb caen that I am stil here. I have always been here. Tel the blue

pigs . . .”

23. June 19, 1990 (Tuesday). Anne Murray, a reporter with the
New York Post
received a letter from Zodiac I . “They faxed me a copy,”

Ciravolo told me. “It’s our guy—it’s obviously the same handwriting— claiming responsibility for three prior shootings. He says he shot a man

with a cane in the street on March 8.”

24. June 21, 1990 (Thursday). “In the letter I left,” Zodiac I said later, “I used the phrase I read from the encyclopedia. It was to throw you off

the track. . . . I just wanted to increase the fear.”

25. June 25, 1990 (Monday). Zodiac I wrote, “Only Orion [The Hunter] can stop Zodiac and the Seven Sister. No more games, pigs.”

26. August 5, 1994 (Saturday). Mike Ciravolo told me, “I get a cal saying ‘Zodiac shot people. He’s writing notes [and codes].’ It checks

out. He’s out there again.”

27. May 24, 1997 (Saturday). “So this is the beginning of the game,” read the letter from Japan’s Zodiac I I. “I desperately want to see

people die. Nothing makes me more excited than kil ing. Stupid police, stop me if you can. It’s great fun for me to kil people.”

28. June 5, 1997 (Thursday). The Japanese Zodiac’s rambling 1,400-word letter is published and signed Seito Sakakibara [Apostle

Sake Devil Rose]. Zodiac I I claimed this was his real name.

Books, Films, Radio, and Television Shows That Inspired Zodiac

“The Most Dangerous Game,” printed in
Variety
and published by Minton Balch & Company in 1924, won the O. Henry Memorial Award for that

year. Richard Connel ’s short story has been included in numerous adventure anthologies over the years.

The Most Dangerous Game
. In 1932 RKO-Radio Pictures, Inc. filmed a 63-minute-long black and white film version of “The Most Dangerous

Game” with executive producer David O. Selznick, producer Merian C. Cooper, and directors Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel (dialogue

director). Screenwriter was James Ashmore Creelman. The film starred Joel McCrea (Bob Rainsford), Fay Wray (Eve Trowbridge), Leslie Banks

(Count Zaroff), Robert Armstrong (Martin Trowbridge), Noble Johnson, Steve Clemento, and Dutch Hernian. Max Steiner, music. RKO Production

#602.

In 1945 RKO re-made
The Most Dangerous Game
as
A Game of Death
directed by Robert Wise and starring John Loder and Audrey Long.

Edgar Barrier played General Kreigner. The fol owing year,
Johnny Allegro
used elements of Connel ’s story. Nina Foch and George Raft. George

MacCready emulated our old friend Count Zaroff as a sportsman kil er, who liked to claim his victims with bow and arrow.

In 1956 came the third retel ing of Connel ’s yarn. Bob Waterfield, former L.A. Rams quarterback, produced the film. United Artist’s
Run for the Sun

starred Richard Widmark, Trevor Howard, and Jane Greer as a magazine editor who goes to Mexico to ferret out a reclusive novelist. Rather than

an island, this time the action was set on a jungle plantation. Widmark and Greer crash-land on the estate of a Nazi war criminal who hunts wayward

travelers with a pack of bloodhounds. Long after the film was completed, Greer learned she had been exposed to a rare virus contracted during the

grueling waterfal and swamp scenes, Coxsaci B, that lay dormant in her body for years. Only a heart operation in the 1960s saved her life.

In 1961, Robert Reed starred in
Bloodlust
—another variation. Cornel Wilde’s
The Naked Prey
was filmed five years later.
The Perverse Countess
was released in 1973,
Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity
in 1988, and
Deadly Game
in 1991—al versions of
The Most Dangerous Game.

Follow Me Quietly
. Directed by Richard Fleischer, RKO. Starring Wil iam Lundigan, Dorothy Patrick, and Edwin Max as “The Judge.” 1949, 59

minutes. “The Judge” is a Zodiac-like character who carries on a deadly chess match with a police inspector.

Charlie Chan at Treasure Island
. The 1939 20th Century-Fox film. Directed by Norman Foster and John Larkin. Original Story and Screenplay by

John Larkin. Based on the character Charlie Chan, created by Earl Derr Biggers. Sidney Toler, Cesar Romero, Pauline Moore (Eve Cairo), Victor

Sen Yung (Number Two son, Jimmy Chan), Douglas Fowley (Pete Lewis,
San Francisco Chronicle
crime reporter), June Gale (Myra Rhadini,

Rhadini’s wife and a professional knife-thrower), Douglass Dumbril e (Thomas Gregory, an insurance investigator), Sal y Blane (Stel a Essex), Bil ie

Seward (Bessie Sibley), Wal y Vernon (Elmer), Donald MacBride (Chief Kilvaine), Charles Halton (Redley), Trevor Bardette (the treacherous Dr.

Zodiac’s Turkish servant), Gerald Mohr (voice of Dr. Zodiac), Louis Jean Heydt (Paul Essex). 72 minutes. Al the magic props from this film were

later re-used in
A-Haunting We Will Go
(Fox, 1944), a Laurel and Hardy comedy.

The Boston Strangler
, the first docudrama about a real-life serial kil er, starred Tony Curtis, 1968.

No Way to Treat a Lady
. A psychotic kil er, Christopher Gil (Rod Steiger) disguises himself as a policeman, a woman, and a priest. He chooses to

play a cat-and-mouse game with a police detective, Morris Brummel (George Segal). The kil er cal s him after each crime, leaves clues in taunting

letters, and draws his mother’s lips on his victims’ foreheads. The cop and kil er both have mother complexes. Detective Brummel says to the kil er

of his victims, “But they al had lipstick, didn’t they? The very shape of your dear mother’s lips. The very lips on al those portraits out in your lobby.”

Zodiac conceivably took ideas from this 1968 movie in which Steiger portrayed what has been cal ed “the perfect fictional serial kil er . . . intel igent

and egotistical who never changes his pattern until suitable motivation is provided.”

The Exorcist
. Wil iam Peter Blatty’s book and 1973 film, influenced Zodiac as shown in his written critique of the movie on January 29, 1974 in

which he deemed the film “the best saterical comidy” he had ever seen. Perhaps demonic possession as a factor in serial kil ings intrigued the

Cipher Slayer.

Badlands
, a movie based on the Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate 1950s murder spree, aroused Zodiac to write the
Chronicle
again on

May 8, 1974 to express his “consternation concerning your poor taste” by running ads for the film.

“The Most Dangerous Game” appeared on the radio on
Suspense
on September 23, 1943, as the most famous audio adaptation of Connel ’s

short story. The fifty-eighth episode of the series, the program starred Orson Wel es and Keenan Wynn. Jacques A. Finke wrote the script for

producer-director Wil iam Spier. The radio show was stil sustaining (without a sponsor) and had just moved from Saturday nights to Thursday the

month before.

On February 1, 1945, Finke’s script was used for a second
Suspense
broadcast, but this time starred J. Carrol Naish and Joseph Cotten. Two

years after that Les Crutchfield adapted “The Most Dangerous Game” as a half-hour show for producer-director Norman Macdonnel ’s
Escape
, on

October 1, 1947, starring Paul Frees and Hans Conried.
Escape
had begun its irregular run on CBS radio in July.

A 1950s
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
starring Myron McCormick and adapted from a story by Wil iam C. Morrison—featured a young man with a

flashlight taped to his rifle. “Just shoot for the dark spot in the light and you wil hit your target,” he said—exactly as Zodiac wrote. Hunting smal

game at night, he chanced upon two lovers—result: accidental murder and the man’s imprisonment. His vengeful father says at the conclusion, eyes

glittering: “The excitement of a manhunt—the most dangerous game.”

The Man Who Never Was
, starring Robert Lansing and featuring the crossed-circle symbol. This ABC television show debuted Wednesday,

September 7, 1966.

Films and Television Shows That Zodiac Inspired

Zodiac
, a minimum-budget, 84-minute color film in which Zodiac is highly fictionalized. The film features a penlight on a gun barrel and lovers’ lane

murders. Shown exclusively at the RKO Golden Gate Theater at Golden Gate Avenue and Taylor Street for a single week. Police staked it out in

case Zodiac should attend and fil out a card explaining, in twenty-five words or less, why they believed Zodiac kil ed. The person who answered

best would win a free Kawasaki 350cc motorcycle. One review: “A movie disguised as a warning sneaked into the Golden Gate this week . . . the

print is flawed, but this is expected to be improved. Less easily remedied is the script and its dialogue . . . the picture ends limply, despite a few

remarks in the narrative that Zodiac may be the man behind you in the theatre.” The cast includes Hal Reed, Bob Jones, Ray Lynch, and Tom

Pittman. Produced and directed by Tom Hanson, with a screenplay by Ray Cantrel and Manny Cardoza. The film was advertised in the
Chronicle

with the lines, “Who is he . . . what is he . . . when is he going to strike again??” and “Zodiac says . . . ‘I Lay Awake Nights Thinking of My Next

Victim.’”

Dirty Harry
. While
Zodiac
was low-budget, Don Siegel’s 1971
Dirty Harry
was shot in Technicolor Panavision and starred Clint Eastwood as an Inspector Toschi-type searching for a ski-masked sniper named “Scorpio” (Andy Robinson) who signs himself with a crossed-circle symbol. Like

The Most Dangerous Game
, Scorpio fired a 30-.06 rifle with a sniper scope such as Zaroff used in the movie. Interestingly, Scorpio wore the

military shoes worn by Zodiac. In
Dirty Harry
police used the personal column of the
Chronicle
to communicate with him. I suspect that the real

Zodiac also used the paper’s personal column to communicate with a confederate or instil fear in people who suspected him. “Dirty” Harry tracks

the serial kil er through the underbrush of Mt. Davidson and corners him near Golden Gate Park at Kezar Stadium close to Stanyan and Haight

Streets, not far from Paul Stine’s house. Faithful to the facts, the movie diverges in making Zodiac’s threat to kidnap a school bus fil ed with children

a reality. Written by Harry Julian Fink, R. M. Fink, and Dean Reisner, photographed by Bruce Surtees. First choices for the role were Frank Sinatra

(an injured tendon in his hand made it painful to hold a gun) and Paul Newman (who objected to its politics and suggested Clint Eastwood). The

name of Eric Zelms, Fouke’s partner the night Zodiac escaped into the Presidio, is shown on a memorial plaque to San Francisco police officers.

Zelms died in the line of duty in 1970.

Lured
, directed by Douglas Sirk, a “lost” film from 1947. Black and White, 105 minutes and starring Lucil e Bal , George Sanders, Boris Karloff, and

Charles Coburn. Produced by James Nasser with screenplay by Leo Rosten. This film concerned a serial kil er preying on young women in London.

The January Man
, starring Kevin Kline.

Exorcist III: Legion
. The “Gemini Kil er” is based on Zodiac.

Millennium
. This Fox Network series featured a realistic drama about Zodiac. The scene where Agent Frank Black approached Zodiac’s trailer is