This Is the Zodiac Speaking (2024) s01e01 Episode Script
We Called Him Mr. Allen
1
[ominous music playing]
[children chattering indistinctly]
[man 1] How do you feel?
Really nervous.
- [man 1] Why do you feel nervous?
- I've
'Cause I feel like I'm betraying someone
that I cared about for a long time.
[ominous music continues]
[woman 1] My sister and my brothers' lives
were molded by him.
They are who they are because of him.
[man 2] My siblings and I,
we called him Mr. Allen.
I'll never forget
the first time seeing him at the pool.
[man 3] He was this big, heavy dude
that was just a clumsy kind of oaf.
But when he got on that dive board,
this transformation would happen.
You would swear
he was a primo ballet star.
He would do stuff
that nobody else could do.
[man 2] I was just filled with pride.
I was real proud to know him.
I really thought I knew him.
But I didn't.
[dramatic music playing]
[woman 1] If there was any information
that we had that could help
that would be what it's all about, really.
[man 2] You know, you've got
people that are close to you
that can lie so easy.
[man 3] He hid behind us.
He hid behind my mother.
[woman 1] You know, the families
of the victims should know.
They have to know the whole story.
They need to know if he was this person.
I feel like I'm betraying him,
but he needs to be told on.
[tense music playing]
[reporter] San Francisco apparently has
a mad killer in its midst.
Since last December,
five persons have been murdered
in the San Francisco area.
He calls himself Zodiac.
[man 4] American law enforcement
had never seen anything like this.
[woman 2] Before the Manson murders,
Gacy, or the Golden State killer,
there was the Zodiac case.
Zodiac was different.
He got away with it.
[man 5] He goes around killing people,
by rope, by gun, by knife.
And he says,
"I'm gonna call myself Zodiac."
To add to the troubles of Bay Area police,
a person or persons
who calls himself Zodiac
has made his presence known.
[man 5] He's mailing letters and ciphers
full of violence and threats.
He was terrifying.
This guy is just a killer, a mad killer,
and you have no motives.
[woman 2]
It turned into a public obsession.
When you think about all the TV shows,
the books, the movie.
I'm Robert Graysmith, at the Chronicle.
I was wondering if I could buy you lunch.
I don't think
there's anybody else that was there.
I was there.
Fifty years from now,
we'll be talking about this case.
It's the case that will never die.
[man 4] What haunts me is not knowing
what might have been missed.
Why couldn't we catch him?
[Robert Graysmith] Somebody out there
knows something.
[woman 3] We were just kids,
but knowing now what we know now,
I'd have preferred to leave it in a box,
hidden away, and never seen it again.
But my brothers convinced me
that very few people
even knew about our family.
I asked him if he was the Zodiac.
He told me, "If I told you that,
I'd have to kill you too."
[somber music playing]
[man] The very beginning of 1961,
my mother enrolled us
in the Santa Rosa Elementary School
in Atascadero.
[school bell ringing]
I was in fourth grade.
Connie was third grade,
and Don was either kindergarten
or first grade.
[Connie Seawater] My brothers and me,
we did everything together.
We were The Three Musketeers.
We were kind of scared
because our last name being Seawater,
all the kids thought it was hilarious.
First day of fourth grade,
I remember we came around the corner,
and I could see in the classroom.
The principal said,
"This is your new teacher, Mr. Allen."
There's Mr. Allen, and there's me.
He was just a huge man,
and the first male teacher I'd ever had.
He just was so nice and so friendly.
When I met him, I was I was in awe.
He was like the Hoss Cartwright
off of Bonanza.
Great, big, burly, smiley, friendly.
A few months after we moved to Atascadero
and we started school,
Mr. Allen started tutoring me.
It would be too late
to be walking home alone,
and so he started giving us rides home.
That's when he met our mother.
My mother had six children
and soon to be seven.
She really had her hands full.
[David Seawater]
I think he knew our background.
He knew our father
was in the state hospital.
He knew we had no father with us.
[Connie] When I was seven and a half,
maybe eight,
I had a friend staying the night.
I was telling her
that I didn't always like
what my daddy did to me,
and she told me, "Daddies don't do that."
"They don't do that."
When I turned my father in,
they made me go to court,
and it was pretty scary
for an eight-year-old.
His excuse was he was teaching me
to be the best wife anybody ever had.
[sniffles]
And, uh, they locked him up.
[Don Seawater] My father was arrested
and sent to Atascadero State Hospital.
[David] They considered what he did
was an offense of bad brain behavior,
and they felt like
they could get you in there
and put you through group sessions
and cure you.
[Don] My mother was alone.
[David] She started having
Mr. Allen over for dinner.
He'd be in the kitchen
helping my mother get stuff together.
Mr. Allen would bring desserts
and sodas for the kids.
Usually, he'd bring
like a flower or two for my mother.
[Don] He hated his picture taken.
My mother was a picture taker.
[David] Mr. Allen just endeared himself
to us really quick.
And he treated us like royalty,
like his own kids.
We thought he was just the best.
Those were the good years.
[woman] The last day of class,
right before Christmas break,
was December 20th.
Vallejo was a small town.
So, what did you do?
You had a boyfriend,
you got a car in tenth grade,
and you'd go make out.
[car engine starts]
You had a choice of three places.
You could go to St. Catherine's Church
or Blue Rock Springs.
But Lake Herman Road was
There was nobody out there at all.
[dramatic musical sting]
It was a road
you shouldn't really be out on.
Kids would go out there to race.
Take your cars up to 125 miles an hour
and race on the back road.
[scanning FM frequencies]
[footsteps approaching]
[gunshots]
A bunch of us were
at somebody's house for a slumber party.
The morning that we woke up,
on December 21st,
all we were thinking about was,
"What's our day gonna be like?"
"Where will we have breakfast
and what are we gonna do?"
My friend walks in with the newspaper.
[man on radio] Five, four, three, two
[Pat Chiono] Then she says,
"Betty Lou Jensen was killed last night."
Killed on Lake Herman Road.
Lovers' Lane.
There was a picture of the door open
and Betty Lou's body up in front.
It was horrific.
And I'd just seen her the day before.
[melancholy music playing]
[reporter] Sergeant,
could you briefly describe
what apparently happened last night?
Yes. We had a double homicide
that took place out on a county road
sometime after eleven o'clock last night.
Victims were a 16-year-old girl
and a 17-year-old boy.
The boy was shot
right at the side of the car,
and the girl apparently tried to run.
[gunshots]
[reporter] You have any idea
what the possible motive might be
for this killing?
We have no motive at this time.
The freaky part,
somebody knew the area well enough
to know that this is where people went
if you wanted to be alone and not be seen.
They really had no leads.
[woman] I remember it
like it was yesterday.
It was the Fourth of July in '69.
I was 16.
My sister Darlene was 22,
and she was a new mother.
Fourth of July, they had
a lighted boat parade down by Mare Island.
So I said, "Will you take me?
She said, "Okay, sure."
We were on this boat.
You know, you got fireworks.
And it was good. We had fun.
After that, we also stopped by Terry's.
She was a waitress at Terry's,
which was a really big coffee shop
in Vallejo.
Customers loved her.
But she was off that night.
When we walked out of Terry's
and got in the car,
a guy came over to the car,
and I don't remember what he said
or what he even looked like.
I didn't know him.
When we got home,
Darlene did her best to beg my dad
to let me go and light off
some fireworks at her house.
She was my big sister.
She always was so much fun.
But my dad said, "No. She's had
enough excitement for one night."
So I hugged her and kissed her goodnight,
and that was it.
[crying] And she was gone.
[sobs]
I was woken up a couple hours later
by my dad crying.
He said, "It's your sister, Darlene."
I was just You know,
I was thinking, "Man, I"
"I just spent
a wonderful evening with her."
"Why is she gone?"
You know? I didn't understand that.
He just told me
that she was with Michael Mageau.
He was just a friend from Vallejo.
He told me
they were parked at a golf course.
[fireworks exploding in the distance]
Just thought it was a cop
pulled up behind her.
She rolled the window down.
My dad said that he had a flashlight
shining into their eyes.
They were blinded.
And he just started shooting.
[gunshots]
Mike flipped into the back seat
'cause he was shot in the knee
and the mouth.
But he was laying there,
and I guess he crawled out of the car.
And the killer shot some more.
Mostly in her.
I went to the morgue.
I saw her laying out on a slab.
She looked beautiful.
Like nothing was wrong.
Like she was just sleeping.
I gave her a kiss, told her I loved her,
and that
and that I'm gonna find out who did this.
[sniffles]
[tense music playing]
[Robert] At that time,
I was in my mid-twenties.
I was working
for the San Francisco Chronicle,
and I was the political cartoonist.
Every day at ten o'clock,
we'd go into the conference room.
I take the elevator upstairs, as usual.
Crank, crank, clank, clank, clank.
It goes up to three stories.
Then you have to press
the secret button code.
And we go inside.
That day, our secretary
comes into the room.
And she says, "I got this strange letter."
[Zodiac] This is the murderer
of the two teenagers
last Christmas at Lake Herman.
And the girl on the Fourth of July.
[fireworks exploding]
She opens it up. It was terrifying.
[Zodiac] To prove I killed them,
I shall state some facts,
which only I and the police know.
First, girl was wearing patterned slacks.
Second, the boy was also shot in the knee.
Third, brand name of ammo was Western.
[Robert] In the letter,
he also sent this cipher.
Oh my goodness. It's crazy.
[Zodiac] I want you to print this cipher
on your front page
by Fry afternoon, August 1st, 1969.
If you do not do this,
I will go on a kill rampage.
Of course, the publisher
is just going crazy.
"Oh my God. Call the police."
I'm trying to look at it
and write it down.
It's a challenge.
We have to crack it.
And I got hooked immediately.
[Zodiac] I will cruise around
and pick off all stray people
or couples that are alone,
then move on to kill some more
until I have killed over a dozen people.
[Robert] He signs "circle crossed."
This cipher has three parts.
He sent it to three newspapers,
and they all decided to publish it.
[uneasy music playing]
The Chronicle's circulation
just went through the roof.
He took over everything.
That's all people talk about.
The whole Bay Area turned in.
No one could crack it.
Two schoolteachers,
Don Harden and his wife,
sit down to work on the code.
They thought the word "kill"
would be in the cipher.
So they looked for double L's.
And they break that cipher.
[Zodiac] I like killing people
because it is so much fun.
It is more fun
than killing wild game in the forest
because man is
the most dangerous animal of all.
I will not give you my name.
Because you will try to slow down or stop
my collecting of slaves for my afterlife.
[Robert] That's pretty scary.
But the police didn't believe
the letter came from the killer.
They said, "Okay, prove it."
[footsteps approaching]
So he does.
"Dear editor,
this is the Zodiac speaking."
This is the first time
he uses the name "Zodiac."
"In answer to your asking for more details
about the good times I've had in Vallejo,
I shall be very happy
to supply you with even more material."
One of the things about Zodiac we noticed,
he would misspell words
and then spell them correctly.
But he always used good English.
He knew the difference
between "shall" and "will."
[Zodiac] Last Christmas, in that episode,
the police were wondering how I could
shoot and hit my victims in the dark.
What I did was tape
a small pencil flashlight
to the barrel of my gun.
All I had to do
was spray them as if it was a water hose.
There was no need to use the gun sights.
[Pat] The whole thing was
People were scared to go out.
I got detectives in my classroom,
sitting in the back of the room.
[Pat] It made Vallejo feel
like a much more dangerous city
in general.
[Kris Chambers]
I was always thinking somebody was coming.
The kids were all scared.
Maybe he was somebody
that I did see that night.
[sinister music playing]
[man] I've had 11 years
patrolling this lake,
and I've seen a lot of people
cut up by boat accidents and this,
but this is one of the worst things
I ever witnessed.
For no reason at all.
Just a hooded man came up
with a pistol drawn on them,
tied them up,
and told him he had to kill them.
About the worst I ever seen,
kids chopped up,
real nice college kids
just stabbed for no reason at all.
I never witnessed anything like it before.
[reporter] Cecelia Shepard
and Bryan Hartnell,
both in their early twenties,
were sitting on this knoll of land
overlooking part of Lake Berryessa.
They thought they were alone.
But there was a third man on this knoll,
a man who wore
a medieval-style executioner's hood,
carried a knife and gun,
and intended to use them.
So, what happens is he stabbed
And I don't even want to talk about it,
but stabs them.
Astonishingly, Bryan survives.
At the beginning,
I did think I was going to die.
He had this black hood on,
just little slits in the eyes,
and these clip-on glasses,
they were clipped into those little loops.
[Robert] In my investigations,
I talked to Bryan.
He said his hands were trembling.
The lengths of rope,
it's actually nylon clothesline,
are pre-cut.
He's wearing these strange shoes,
military combat boots.
I saw that little sketch
that Bryan Hartnell did,
and I drew my own version.
He has a logo.
He's in this costume with the square hood.
This guy's deadly and scary.
[sinister music continues]
But before he leaves,
Zodiac goes to their car.
He goes to the side
that's away from the road,
and he writes the time
and the date and what happened.
He also writes the dates
of the other murders.
And then he draws the symbol.
We talked to a number of people
here in the Napa area,
and there's quite a bit of fear.
People are walking around
looking over their shoulder.
[Bryan] This is a man who you don't
None of us really understand,
and he might stop now,
and he might continue.
I'm not personally afraid of my life.
They've got such tight security
at this hospital.
There would be more chance
for the average person
walking down the street.
[tense music playing]
[Robert] Berryessa is isolated.
There were only ten people
on that entire 25-mile peninsula.
The day of the killing,
one particular man
was given a ticket for speeding.
The policeman says,
"Why is there blood on your seat?"
He says, "I used the knife
to kill a chicken."
"Oh, okay." That's it.
"I believe you." That's it.
So he drives off.
It's a guy who lives in Vallejo.
Arthur Leigh Allen.
He had been skin diving in the area
where that murder had taken place.
[somber music playing]
[Don] Mr. Allen was an amazing swimmer.
Whenever we would be with him,
he'd be around the water.
[David] Mr. Allen would dive for clams.
We'd sit there on the beach
and wait for him.
We'd follow him down there,
and he'd have a wetsuit on
that he made himself.
We'd watch him go out there. Incredible.
He'd go out there in these big waves
and just be bobbing.
He'd disappear.
And we'd wonder,
"Where'd you go?" You know?
I was in awe of his skills
with swimming and diving.
[diving board clatters]
[Don] Everybody at the pool knew that
he was a state champion platform diver.
And I felt lucky
that he was my swim coach.
He taught me how to dive.
He made me a Farmer John type of top
so that when I'd belly flop
or hit my back on the water,
it wouldn't sting.
He taught me
not to be afraid to do things.
For my siblings and I,
he was Mr. Allen, the teacher.
[somber music playing]
[David] It's hardwired
into my brain forever.
I remember one
of the first things Mr. Allen did.
He wrote the alphabet on the board
and then asked, you know,
"What kind of sign goes on A?"
And somebody would go,
"Oh, a circle. A circle."
"Oh, what sign do you want for B?"
"Oh, a squiggle."
[man] In the classroom,
he taught us how to take codes apart
and decipher letters and messages.
He started us with a grid,
by putting the letter A
in the upper-left corner
and then putting the letters
in order across rows.
You would create a matrix
where you could identify
one of the squares using two numbers.
And so, for the first half of the year,
I think it was every Friday,
we would be given a cipher,
and we would have to decode it.
[David] He was just trying to teach us
that there were other ways
to go about communicating.
He collected animals,
and then bring them back to the class.
Lizards, a frog that he called Forg.
That's the way he was.
He would just change the names of things
to just make you think outside the box.
And if we'd be doing studies,
there would be music in the background.
He was a music freak.
He'd play
"(Hang Down Your Head) Tom Dooley."
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley ♪
Stabbed her with my knife ♪
[Melody Barger] That's how we got to know
the Kingston Trio.
We didn't know that kind of music
until he was playing it for us at recess.
[David] And he would also play The Mikado.
As someday it may happen
That a victim must be found ♪
I've got a little list! ♪
I've got a little list! ♪
[David] He would dance and sing along
and just go all over the room.
["I've Got A Little List"
continues playing]
[sinister music playing]
[Robert] After the murder
at Lake Berryessa,
two weeks later,
the Zodiac came to San Francisco.
This wonderful cab driver,
Paul Stine, who's a student,
picks up this guy
standing in front of a smoke shop
next to a theater.
He gets in the cab,
and he tells him
exactly where to take him.
And he commits this terrible murder.
He's in the back seat,
gun against the head, whole thing.
[gunshot]
But he's not leaving.
He goes around,
he's pulling off pieces of a shirt.
He wipes the cab down with the shirt
to get blood on it.
Two witnesses
in the house across the street
saw him walking up the block.
And there's a police car coming.
He could have been caught any second.
[police siren wailing]
He goes up and he turns the corner.
The officers, they saw him.
They stop him.
"Did you see anybody do this?" they say.
"Yes, he's gone that way."
The police said, "Thank you for the help."
So he goes up and he turns the corner.
And he's gone.
A mere two days later,
I was in the Chronicle, drawing cartoons.
The publisher flings open the door.
"Oh, look, guys, letter."
My God. We didn't go to the Zodiac,
he came to us.
This is the Zodiac speaking.
I am the murderer of the taxi driver,
and did in the people
in the North Bay area.
[reporter 1] This bloody shirt belonged
to the latest victim, the cab driver.
Zodiac mailed a small piece of it
with his letter.
Handwriting analysis
of a foreboding letter
indicates the writer is the same man
who's committed five murders.
One here, three in Vallejo,
and one in Napa over the last ten months.
A composite drawing
sketched from witnesses' descriptions
has been widely publicized.
[reporter 1] Police Captain Martin Lee
read to reporters
the Zodiac's latest threat.
[sinister music continues]
"Schoolchildren make fine targets."
"I think I shall wipe out
a school bus some morning."
[all gasp] Oh!
"Just shoot out the front tire
and then pick off the kiddies
as they come bouncing out."
[all clamoring]
[reporter 1] At the bottom of the letter,
the killer's signature,
the sign of the Zodiac.
[reporter 2] Captain, what kind of a man
are we talking about?
He appears to have no conscience at all,
no remorse for anything that he does.
There is no one suspect
that we're focusing on at this time.
He made a threat against children.
"Schoolchildren make nice targets."
[scoffs]
Our kids are going to school.
Oh, I hate this part.
My son rode that bus. That was terrifying.
Police cars trailed the bus.
Airplanes flew overboard following it.
Of all the things that he threatened,
that's the one that people took.
And they took it seriously, everybody.
The case just took on a legendary status.
The next thing I know,
Dave Toschi and Bill Armstrong,
these are the two toughest,
most famous policemen in the city,
they're in my city room.
Dave Toschi with his bow tie.
He's got charisma, he's got good looks.
The movie Dirty Harry was based off him.
[gunshot]
So it just took on a legendary status.
[reporter 1] How far along are you?
Does this latest communication
do anything for you?
We are going under the assumption
that it is a communication
from the man known as Zodiac.
So, here's my office.
Well, it's technically the Art Department.
And we see all of this going on,
and I'm trying to listen.
At the present time,
my partner and I
are being literally swamped at our desk
with communications
from the entire Bay Area.
[Robert] Everyone was paranoid
at this point.
Over 1,000 suspects were looked into.
In a case of this magnitude,
we stay on top of it as much as we can.
[Robert] What I learned is that
these killers, they get comfortable,
and as they gradually believe
in their own skills
and outwitting the police,
they spread out.
Well, our guy spread out to San Francisco.
[reporter 2] The Zodiac Killer
seems to crave publicity.
When this guy hailed Paul Stine's cab,
he's in front of the theater
which was eventually playing The Mikado.
Well, here's the weird thing.
The Mikado is quoted
in a letter the Zodiac writes.
As someday it may happen
That a victim must be found ♪
I've got a little list! ♪
[Zodiac] I've got a little list
of society offenders
who might well be underground,
who would never be missed,
who would never be missed.
[Robert] He was trying to emulate
the Lord High Executioner.
He has this wicked sense of humor
and he's highly intellectual.
Coordinating the hunt
for a psychotic mass murderer.
San Francisco apparently has
a mad killer in its midst.
Unfortunately, the police believe
The Zodiac Killer will try and kill again.
His chilling allusions to future slayings
are being countered with an intense drive.
[reporter 1] You don't
walk around here at night?
[chuckles nervously] No, no, no.
I will not come out at night.
No, I'd be kind of afraid, really.
[reporter 2] In San Francisco,
two more communications
have been received.
[reporter 3] There was also
a greeting card.
It said, "Sorry I haven't written sooner.
I just washed my pen."
[reporter 4] The murderer said
he is so lonely he could do his thing.
[Zodiac] I thought you would need
a good laugh before you hear the bad news.
You won't get the news for a while yet.
P.S. Could you print this new cipher
on your front page?
[reporter 5] The new letters
from The Zodiac Killer
were sent to the city room
of the San Francisco Chronicle.
One of the letters is seven pages long,
and in it,
Zodiac brags he's killed seven people.
[Capt. Martin Lee] He has demonstrated
a hostility toward police.
Now we are "blue pigs."
[Zodiac] The death machine
is already made.
What you do not know is
whether the death machine is at the site
or whether it is being stored
in my basement for future use.
Have fun. By the way, it could be
rather messy if you try to bluff me.
So now he's talking about making bombs.
There was such a fear.
This case, it touched everybody I knew,
in a city I love.
[tense music playing]
The letter says, "You'll never catch me."
I'll show you, buddy. I'm gonna do that.
I wanted to see if there was anything
that the police might have missed.
I couldn't let go.
I spent ages
driving around to all the crime scenes,
trying to find something.
My friend once asked me, "What do you do
when you're through with work?"
Well, like everybody,
I go sit in front of a suspect's house.
[chuckling] You know, 10:00 at night.
I'm not good at puzzle solving,
but I don't give up.
They did something really unusual
at Vallejo Police Station.
They take me into this big room
with all the drawers,
and I'm facing the drawers.
And then the policeman says,
"Oh, I think I hear the phone."
Or, "I have to go somewhere.
You stay here."
I'm like, "Sure."
Clap my hands,
I'm just sitting there, waiting.
He comes back, looks sort of displeased.
"I have to go again."
And then I realize
I'm supposed to open the drawers. [laughs]
He's offering me everything.
So I would memorize, memorize,
and I'd run across the street,
and I'd buy a big chicken dinner,
and I'd eat it while I'm trying
to remember every single word.
Then I reversed,
and I started giving them stuff,
which is a major part
of the David Fincher movie.
I've been doing research
on the first cipher.
Everything an amateur would need
to create it can be found in these books.
[Robert] During my investigation,
I'd read this book on psychology.
It said almost any of these killers,
they wanna find out what's going on,
and they say things or they wanna help.
I went to Dave Toschi,
and I said, "All these suspects"
I mean, 2,500 at one point.
"Did any of these suspects
ever offer to catch Zodiac for you?"
"How can I help?"
And he goes, "Only one."
And he leans over,
pulls out the bottom drawer,
reaches in.
Up comes a white envelope.
He opens it.
"Sorry I couldn't help you catch your man.
Arthur Leigh Allen."
Exactly. And I said,
"He's your guy. He's gotta be."
[uneasy music playing]
[Don] The summer of '61,
Mr. Allen asked our mother
if he could take us for a field trip
in his blue Austin-Healey.
[Connie] I mean, she had a bunch of kids.
She was really overwhelmed.
I'm sure she was happy as heck
to get three of her monsters
off her hands for a while.
I was like nine or ten,
and we were thrilled.
He had several cars.
He used to let us steer the car.
[Connie] I sat on his lap.
I steered this big old car
while he's guzzling his beer.
He cheered me on every time I made it
past something without hitting it.
The gear shifter
was right in between my knees,
so I learned how to shift that way.
He took us on all kinds of trips
like that, that summer.
[Melody] That summer,
we would go to the movies.
Mr. Allen would take us
to see documentaries on whales,
different animals, mostly Disney.
Just had a good old time.
[school bell ringing]
[Darin Alvord] Even when
we were in Mr. Allen's class,
we got the sense that it was,
you know, an informal relationship.
He did everything he could to be gentle
because he was always so big,
and certainly towering
over fourth graders.
[Melody] The way I saw him,
he was soft-spoken
until you ticked him off. [chuckles]
Like maybe we didn't listen or do what
And then he would get a little loud,
but nothing out of the ordinary.
But Mr. Allen was really smitten
with David's sister, Connie.
He really liked her.
He was always showing around,
putting his arm around her,
giving her hugs
and trying to make light of it.
David, he would make comments like,
"Hmm. Mr. Allen really likes my sister."
[sinister music playing]
I realized, yeah, probably some
of the things he said and did
may have been improper.
Mr. Allen paid different attention
to the girls than the boys.
He would occasionally compliment girls
in a way I thought
was a little over the top.
He would address the prettier girls
as "My beautiful" then give the name.
[Melody] Somebody said,
"He was grooming you."
And I'm going,
"I know nothing about that kind of stuff."
I didn't even know what "grooming" meant.
But then that freaked me out.
That, "Oh my gosh,
did they really do that?"
And then thinking about it,
he'd put his arm around me
and give me a hug.
He used to take me home
from school sometimes.
Him and my dad were Navy vets,
so they talked about Navy all the time.
It's like, why else would he
come to your house all the time
and talk to your dad?
But that, to us, just seemed normal.
[sinister music continues]
This is the Zodiac speaking.
By the way, have you cracked
the last cipher I sent you?
My name is
I have killed ten people to date.
It would have been a lot more,
except that my bus bomb was a dud.
[reporter] Have the ciphers, the symbols,
and the letters themselves
been of any use to you to this point?
No, we haven't been too successful.
We've had them out with experts.
The latest one we had, oh, six months ago,
when he sent us a cryptogram,
was never broken.
But I see in his latest letter
that he has said he's killed ten,
but he didn't specifically state
that they happened in San Francisco.
[Robert] At the Chronicle,
we were working every day
on the Zodiac case.
We get this call one day.
This sheriff, he and his men believed
that a murder in 1963 was the Zodiac's.
I thought, "What are the odds on this?"
[school bell ringing]
[woman] It was senior ditch day.
My fiancé and I were supposed to go
with Linda and Bobby to the beach.
Linda was one of my best friends.
She was going to be my maid of honor.
She called me and said,
"Hey, it's ditch day,
why don't we just go to the beach?"
And we said, "Okay."
We were getting ready to go,
but then my fiancé,
who was older, couldn't get off work,
and so we didn't go.
And Linda and Bobby went by themselves.
In the morning,
my mother came in and woke me up.
Bobby's mom was on the phone.
They wanted to know
if I knew where Linda and Bobby were.
Told my mom, "I know where they went."
There was a beach that we always went to
between Gaviota State Park
and Refugio State Park.
Some people refer to it as Tajiguas.
It was a beautiful beach. It's secluded.
We drove to the location,
and there was Bobby's car.
The sheriff walked up the creek,
where there was a shack
that somebody had built,
and there was Linda and Bobby.
They found the shell casings.
They found twine.
It had been pre-cut to tie them up.
They were pulled to the shack.
He had laid Bobby's body down
and laid Linda's over the top of his.
Had cut her bathing suit open.
The sheriff told my dad,
"You don't want to see this."
[crying] All I could say was,
"But But she just helped me
pick out my wedding dress."
"How can this be? How can it
How can this be real?"
[Robert] When we all
started to go down there,
I thought, "Oh my God, this has to be"
"It's so similar, it's beyond belief."
Always students, always about to graduate,
usually near water,
usually it was a holiday.
He chases them, catches them.
It's every single piece.
They're tied, the pre-cut lengths of rope.
Like he's gone into the future
and read everything that happened
at Lake Berryessa.
He's got a .22.
The same as the Lake Herman Road case.
That's when I realized
this was a rehearsal.
This must be The Zodiac Killer.
[foreboding music playing]
[David] At the end
of the school year in 1963,
Mr. Allen showed up at the house
and wanted to know
if we wanted to go with him to the coast,
and he was gonna go diving.
We took off south on the 101.
He had this other car.
It was a big primer-black car
that just hauled ass.
It was just an incredible feeling.
When I got in that car,
I was happy as a clam.
[Connie] Beautiful sunny day,
and we were just cruising along,
looking at the ocean.
We went down the coast a ways,
and then we pulled
into Lompoc Military Commissary.
[David] Mr. Allen was in the Navy
before he was a teacher.
So he had PX privileges.
He goes into the PX
and comes out with a couple of bottles
of beer under one arm.
And in the other hand, he had two boxes
that looked like cardboard boxes
about that big,
and had metal configurations
on each corner
holding the boxes together.
Mr. Allen got back in the car,
went down through Gaviota Pass,
and stopped at a place
called Tajiguas Point.
[Connie] We had
been there before with him.
We had gone down and played on the beach.
But this time
he told us to stay in the car.
And he got out, opened the trunk.
I was looking through the back window,
and then he closed the trunk,
and whatever was in his hand,
he walked away with.
There's a trail that goes down the bluff.
He goes down the hill alone.
[Connie] He looked over his shoulder
to make sure we stayed in the car,
on his way.
As soon as he got out of sight,
we were out of the car.
[dramatic music playing]
We were messing around.
[Don] We got to play on the tracks
for a long time.
[Connie] My brother Donnie
was putting rocks on the railroad track.
And I'm telling him not to do it
because the train's gonna come
and derail and kill us all.
[train horn blowing]
Mr. Allen may have been gone
maybe an hour or less.
[tense music playing]
And then he comes
climbing back up the bank of the bluff.
[David] When he came up,
he was huffing and puffing,
in a big hurry.
When he got up where I could see him,
I saw something on his hands.
And I saw it was red.
So, being a little girl,
I ran over and grabbed a rag
and was trying to help,
but he actually shoved me over.
[Don] Shoves her away,
and he gets her away,
and he wipes himself off,
and puts something in the back of the car.
[Connie] He was in a hurry.
He got in the car really fast.
And I asked him why he was bleeding.
We took off like a bat out of hell.
[car engine roaring, tires squealing]
[dramatic music playing]
[ominous music playing]
[children chattering indistinctly]
[man 1] How do you feel?
Really nervous.
- [man 1] Why do you feel nervous?
- I've
'Cause I feel like I'm betraying someone
that I cared about for a long time.
[ominous music continues]
[woman 1] My sister and my brothers' lives
were molded by him.
They are who they are because of him.
[man 2] My siblings and I,
we called him Mr. Allen.
I'll never forget
the first time seeing him at the pool.
[man 3] He was this big, heavy dude
that was just a clumsy kind of oaf.
But when he got on that dive board,
this transformation would happen.
You would swear
he was a primo ballet star.
He would do stuff
that nobody else could do.
[man 2] I was just filled with pride.
I was real proud to know him.
I really thought I knew him.
But I didn't.
[dramatic music playing]
[woman 1] If there was any information
that we had that could help
that would be what it's all about, really.
[man 2] You know, you've got
people that are close to you
that can lie so easy.
[man 3] He hid behind us.
He hid behind my mother.
[woman 1] You know, the families
of the victims should know.
They have to know the whole story.
They need to know if he was this person.
I feel like I'm betraying him,
but he needs to be told on.
[tense music playing]
[reporter] San Francisco apparently has
a mad killer in its midst.
Since last December,
five persons have been murdered
in the San Francisco area.
He calls himself Zodiac.
[man 4] American law enforcement
had never seen anything like this.
[woman 2] Before the Manson murders,
Gacy, or the Golden State killer,
there was the Zodiac case.
Zodiac was different.
He got away with it.
[man 5] He goes around killing people,
by rope, by gun, by knife.
And he says,
"I'm gonna call myself Zodiac."
To add to the troubles of Bay Area police,
a person or persons
who calls himself Zodiac
has made his presence known.
[man 5] He's mailing letters and ciphers
full of violence and threats.
He was terrifying.
This guy is just a killer, a mad killer,
and you have no motives.
[woman 2]
It turned into a public obsession.
When you think about all the TV shows,
the books, the movie.
I'm Robert Graysmith, at the Chronicle.
I was wondering if I could buy you lunch.
I don't think
there's anybody else that was there.
I was there.
Fifty years from now,
we'll be talking about this case.
It's the case that will never die.
[man 4] What haunts me is not knowing
what might have been missed.
Why couldn't we catch him?
[Robert Graysmith] Somebody out there
knows something.
[woman 3] We were just kids,
but knowing now what we know now,
I'd have preferred to leave it in a box,
hidden away, and never seen it again.
But my brothers convinced me
that very few people
even knew about our family.
I asked him if he was the Zodiac.
He told me, "If I told you that,
I'd have to kill you too."
[somber music playing]
[man] The very beginning of 1961,
my mother enrolled us
in the Santa Rosa Elementary School
in Atascadero.
[school bell ringing]
I was in fourth grade.
Connie was third grade,
and Don was either kindergarten
or first grade.
[Connie Seawater] My brothers and me,
we did everything together.
We were The Three Musketeers.
We were kind of scared
because our last name being Seawater,
all the kids thought it was hilarious.
First day of fourth grade,
I remember we came around the corner,
and I could see in the classroom.
The principal said,
"This is your new teacher, Mr. Allen."
There's Mr. Allen, and there's me.
He was just a huge man,
and the first male teacher I'd ever had.
He just was so nice and so friendly.
When I met him, I was I was in awe.
He was like the Hoss Cartwright
off of Bonanza.
Great, big, burly, smiley, friendly.
A few months after we moved to Atascadero
and we started school,
Mr. Allen started tutoring me.
It would be too late
to be walking home alone,
and so he started giving us rides home.
That's when he met our mother.
My mother had six children
and soon to be seven.
She really had her hands full.
[David Seawater]
I think he knew our background.
He knew our father
was in the state hospital.
He knew we had no father with us.
[Connie] When I was seven and a half,
maybe eight,
I had a friend staying the night.
I was telling her
that I didn't always like
what my daddy did to me,
and she told me, "Daddies don't do that."
"They don't do that."
When I turned my father in,
they made me go to court,
and it was pretty scary
for an eight-year-old.
His excuse was he was teaching me
to be the best wife anybody ever had.
[sniffles]
And, uh, they locked him up.
[Don Seawater] My father was arrested
and sent to Atascadero State Hospital.
[David] They considered what he did
was an offense of bad brain behavior,
and they felt like
they could get you in there
and put you through group sessions
and cure you.
[Don] My mother was alone.
[David] She started having
Mr. Allen over for dinner.
He'd be in the kitchen
helping my mother get stuff together.
Mr. Allen would bring desserts
and sodas for the kids.
Usually, he'd bring
like a flower or two for my mother.
[Don] He hated his picture taken.
My mother was a picture taker.
[David] Mr. Allen just endeared himself
to us really quick.
And he treated us like royalty,
like his own kids.
We thought he was just the best.
Those were the good years.
[woman] The last day of class,
right before Christmas break,
was December 20th.
Vallejo was a small town.
So, what did you do?
You had a boyfriend,
you got a car in tenth grade,
and you'd go make out.
[car engine starts]
You had a choice of three places.
You could go to St. Catherine's Church
or Blue Rock Springs.
But Lake Herman Road was
There was nobody out there at all.
[dramatic musical sting]
It was a road
you shouldn't really be out on.
Kids would go out there to race.
Take your cars up to 125 miles an hour
and race on the back road.
[scanning FM frequencies]
[footsteps approaching]
[gunshots]
A bunch of us were
at somebody's house for a slumber party.
The morning that we woke up,
on December 21st,
all we were thinking about was,
"What's our day gonna be like?"
"Where will we have breakfast
and what are we gonna do?"
My friend walks in with the newspaper.
[man on radio] Five, four, three, two
[Pat Chiono] Then she says,
"Betty Lou Jensen was killed last night."
Killed on Lake Herman Road.
Lovers' Lane.
There was a picture of the door open
and Betty Lou's body up in front.
It was horrific.
And I'd just seen her the day before.
[melancholy music playing]
[reporter] Sergeant,
could you briefly describe
what apparently happened last night?
Yes. We had a double homicide
that took place out on a county road
sometime after eleven o'clock last night.
Victims were a 16-year-old girl
and a 17-year-old boy.
The boy was shot
right at the side of the car,
and the girl apparently tried to run.
[gunshots]
[reporter] You have any idea
what the possible motive might be
for this killing?
We have no motive at this time.
The freaky part,
somebody knew the area well enough
to know that this is where people went
if you wanted to be alone and not be seen.
They really had no leads.
[woman] I remember it
like it was yesterday.
It was the Fourth of July in '69.
I was 16.
My sister Darlene was 22,
and she was a new mother.
Fourth of July, they had
a lighted boat parade down by Mare Island.
So I said, "Will you take me?
She said, "Okay, sure."
We were on this boat.
You know, you got fireworks.
And it was good. We had fun.
After that, we also stopped by Terry's.
She was a waitress at Terry's,
which was a really big coffee shop
in Vallejo.
Customers loved her.
But she was off that night.
When we walked out of Terry's
and got in the car,
a guy came over to the car,
and I don't remember what he said
or what he even looked like.
I didn't know him.
When we got home,
Darlene did her best to beg my dad
to let me go and light off
some fireworks at her house.
She was my big sister.
She always was so much fun.
But my dad said, "No. She's had
enough excitement for one night."
So I hugged her and kissed her goodnight,
and that was it.
[crying] And she was gone.
[sobs]
I was woken up a couple hours later
by my dad crying.
He said, "It's your sister, Darlene."
I was just You know,
I was thinking, "Man, I"
"I just spent
a wonderful evening with her."
"Why is she gone?"
You know? I didn't understand that.
He just told me
that she was with Michael Mageau.
He was just a friend from Vallejo.
He told me
they were parked at a golf course.
[fireworks exploding in the distance]
Just thought it was a cop
pulled up behind her.
She rolled the window down.
My dad said that he had a flashlight
shining into their eyes.
They were blinded.
And he just started shooting.
[gunshots]
Mike flipped into the back seat
'cause he was shot in the knee
and the mouth.
But he was laying there,
and I guess he crawled out of the car.
And the killer shot some more.
Mostly in her.
I went to the morgue.
I saw her laying out on a slab.
She looked beautiful.
Like nothing was wrong.
Like she was just sleeping.
I gave her a kiss, told her I loved her,
and that
and that I'm gonna find out who did this.
[sniffles]
[tense music playing]
[Robert] At that time,
I was in my mid-twenties.
I was working
for the San Francisco Chronicle,
and I was the political cartoonist.
Every day at ten o'clock,
we'd go into the conference room.
I take the elevator upstairs, as usual.
Crank, crank, clank, clank, clank.
It goes up to three stories.
Then you have to press
the secret button code.
And we go inside.
That day, our secretary
comes into the room.
And she says, "I got this strange letter."
[Zodiac] This is the murderer
of the two teenagers
last Christmas at Lake Herman.
And the girl on the Fourth of July.
[fireworks exploding]
She opens it up. It was terrifying.
[Zodiac] To prove I killed them,
I shall state some facts,
which only I and the police know.
First, girl was wearing patterned slacks.
Second, the boy was also shot in the knee.
Third, brand name of ammo was Western.
[Robert] In the letter,
he also sent this cipher.
Oh my goodness. It's crazy.
[Zodiac] I want you to print this cipher
on your front page
by Fry afternoon, August 1st, 1969.
If you do not do this,
I will go on a kill rampage.
Of course, the publisher
is just going crazy.
"Oh my God. Call the police."
I'm trying to look at it
and write it down.
It's a challenge.
We have to crack it.
And I got hooked immediately.
[Zodiac] I will cruise around
and pick off all stray people
or couples that are alone,
then move on to kill some more
until I have killed over a dozen people.
[Robert] He signs "circle crossed."
This cipher has three parts.
He sent it to three newspapers,
and they all decided to publish it.
[uneasy music playing]
The Chronicle's circulation
just went through the roof.
He took over everything.
That's all people talk about.
The whole Bay Area turned in.
No one could crack it.
Two schoolteachers,
Don Harden and his wife,
sit down to work on the code.
They thought the word "kill"
would be in the cipher.
So they looked for double L's.
And they break that cipher.
[Zodiac] I like killing people
because it is so much fun.
It is more fun
than killing wild game in the forest
because man is
the most dangerous animal of all.
I will not give you my name.
Because you will try to slow down or stop
my collecting of slaves for my afterlife.
[Robert] That's pretty scary.
But the police didn't believe
the letter came from the killer.
They said, "Okay, prove it."
[footsteps approaching]
So he does.
"Dear editor,
this is the Zodiac speaking."
This is the first time
he uses the name "Zodiac."
"In answer to your asking for more details
about the good times I've had in Vallejo,
I shall be very happy
to supply you with even more material."
One of the things about Zodiac we noticed,
he would misspell words
and then spell them correctly.
But he always used good English.
He knew the difference
between "shall" and "will."
[Zodiac] Last Christmas, in that episode,
the police were wondering how I could
shoot and hit my victims in the dark.
What I did was tape
a small pencil flashlight
to the barrel of my gun.
All I had to do
was spray them as if it was a water hose.
There was no need to use the gun sights.
[Pat] The whole thing was
People were scared to go out.
I got detectives in my classroom,
sitting in the back of the room.
[Pat] It made Vallejo feel
like a much more dangerous city
in general.
[Kris Chambers]
I was always thinking somebody was coming.
The kids were all scared.
Maybe he was somebody
that I did see that night.
[sinister music playing]
[man] I've had 11 years
patrolling this lake,
and I've seen a lot of people
cut up by boat accidents and this,
but this is one of the worst things
I ever witnessed.
For no reason at all.
Just a hooded man came up
with a pistol drawn on them,
tied them up,
and told him he had to kill them.
About the worst I ever seen,
kids chopped up,
real nice college kids
just stabbed for no reason at all.
I never witnessed anything like it before.
[reporter] Cecelia Shepard
and Bryan Hartnell,
both in their early twenties,
were sitting on this knoll of land
overlooking part of Lake Berryessa.
They thought they were alone.
But there was a third man on this knoll,
a man who wore
a medieval-style executioner's hood,
carried a knife and gun,
and intended to use them.
So, what happens is he stabbed
And I don't even want to talk about it,
but stabs them.
Astonishingly, Bryan survives.
At the beginning,
I did think I was going to die.
He had this black hood on,
just little slits in the eyes,
and these clip-on glasses,
they were clipped into those little loops.
[Robert] In my investigations,
I talked to Bryan.
He said his hands were trembling.
The lengths of rope,
it's actually nylon clothesline,
are pre-cut.
He's wearing these strange shoes,
military combat boots.
I saw that little sketch
that Bryan Hartnell did,
and I drew my own version.
He has a logo.
He's in this costume with the square hood.
This guy's deadly and scary.
[sinister music continues]
But before he leaves,
Zodiac goes to their car.
He goes to the side
that's away from the road,
and he writes the time
and the date and what happened.
He also writes the dates
of the other murders.
And then he draws the symbol.
We talked to a number of people
here in the Napa area,
and there's quite a bit of fear.
People are walking around
looking over their shoulder.
[Bryan] This is a man who you don't
None of us really understand,
and he might stop now,
and he might continue.
I'm not personally afraid of my life.
They've got such tight security
at this hospital.
There would be more chance
for the average person
walking down the street.
[tense music playing]
[Robert] Berryessa is isolated.
There were only ten people
on that entire 25-mile peninsula.
The day of the killing,
one particular man
was given a ticket for speeding.
The policeman says,
"Why is there blood on your seat?"
He says, "I used the knife
to kill a chicken."
"Oh, okay." That's it.
"I believe you." That's it.
So he drives off.
It's a guy who lives in Vallejo.
Arthur Leigh Allen.
He had been skin diving in the area
where that murder had taken place.
[somber music playing]
[Don] Mr. Allen was an amazing swimmer.
Whenever we would be with him,
he'd be around the water.
[David] Mr. Allen would dive for clams.
We'd sit there on the beach
and wait for him.
We'd follow him down there,
and he'd have a wetsuit on
that he made himself.
We'd watch him go out there. Incredible.
He'd go out there in these big waves
and just be bobbing.
He'd disappear.
And we'd wonder,
"Where'd you go?" You know?
I was in awe of his skills
with swimming and diving.
[diving board clatters]
[Don] Everybody at the pool knew that
he was a state champion platform diver.
And I felt lucky
that he was my swim coach.
He taught me how to dive.
He made me a Farmer John type of top
so that when I'd belly flop
or hit my back on the water,
it wouldn't sting.
He taught me
not to be afraid to do things.
For my siblings and I,
he was Mr. Allen, the teacher.
[somber music playing]
[David] It's hardwired
into my brain forever.
I remember one
of the first things Mr. Allen did.
He wrote the alphabet on the board
and then asked, you know,
"What kind of sign goes on A?"
And somebody would go,
"Oh, a circle. A circle."
"Oh, what sign do you want for B?"
"Oh, a squiggle."
[man] In the classroom,
he taught us how to take codes apart
and decipher letters and messages.
He started us with a grid,
by putting the letter A
in the upper-left corner
and then putting the letters
in order across rows.
You would create a matrix
where you could identify
one of the squares using two numbers.
And so, for the first half of the year,
I think it was every Friday,
we would be given a cipher,
and we would have to decode it.
[David] He was just trying to teach us
that there were other ways
to go about communicating.
He collected animals,
and then bring them back to the class.
Lizards, a frog that he called Forg.
That's the way he was.
He would just change the names of things
to just make you think outside the box.
And if we'd be doing studies,
there would be music in the background.
He was a music freak.
He'd play
"(Hang Down Your Head) Tom Dooley."
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley ♪
Stabbed her with my knife ♪
[Melody Barger] That's how we got to know
the Kingston Trio.
We didn't know that kind of music
until he was playing it for us at recess.
[David] And he would also play The Mikado.
As someday it may happen
That a victim must be found ♪
I've got a little list! ♪
I've got a little list! ♪
[David] He would dance and sing along
and just go all over the room.
["I've Got A Little List"
continues playing]
[sinister music playing]
[Robert] After the murder
at Lake Berryessa,
two weeks later,
the Zodiac came to San Francisco.
This wonderful cab driver,
Paul Stine, who's a student,
picks up this guy
standing in front of a smoke shop
next to a theater.
He gets in the cab,
and he tells him
exactly where to take him.
And he commits this terrible murder.
He's in the back seat,
gun against the head, whole thing.
[gunshot]
But he's not leaving.
He goes around,
he's pulling off pieces of a shirt.
He wipes the cab down with the shirt
to get blood on it.
Two witnesses
in the house across the street
saw him walking up the block.
And there's a police car coming.
He could have been caught any second.
[police siren wailing]
He goes up and he turns the corner.
The officers, they saw him.
They stop him.
"Did you see anybody do this?" they say.
"Yes, he's gone that way."
The police said, "Thank you for the help."
So he goes up and he turns the corner.
And he's gone.
A mere two days later,
I was in the Chronicle, drawing cartoons.
The publisher flings open the door.
"Oh, look, guys, letter."
My God. We didn't go to the Zodiac,
he came to us.
This is the Zodiac speaking.
I am the murderer of the taxi driver,
and did in the people
in the North Bay area.
[reporter 1] This bloody shirt belonged
to the latest victim, the cab driver.
Zodiac mailed a small piece of it
with his letter.
Handwriting analysis
of a foreboding letter
indicates the writer is the same man
who's committed five murders.
One here, three in Vallejo,
and one in Napa over the last ten months.
A composite drawing
sketched from witnesses' descriptions
has been widely publicized.
[reporter 1] Police Captain Martin Lee
read to reporters
the Zodiac's latest threat.
[sinister music continues]
"Schoolchildren make fine targets."
"I think I shall wipe out
a school bus some morning."
[all gasp] Oh!
"Just shoot out the front tire
and then pick off the kiddies
as they come bouncing out."
[all clamoring]
[reporter 1] At the bottom of the letter,
the killer's signature,
the sign of the Zodiac.
[reporter 2] Captain, what kind of a man
are we talking about?
He appears to have no conscience at all,
no remorse for anything that he does.
There is no one suspect
that we're focusing on at this time.
He made a threat against children.
"Schoolchildren make nice targets."
[scoffs]
Our kids are going to school.
Oh, I hate this part.
My son rode that bus. That was terrifying.
Police cars trailed the bus.
Airplanes flew overboard following it.
Of all the things that he threatened,
that's the one that people took.
And they took it seriously, everybody.
The case just took on a legendary status.
The next thing I know,
Dave Toschi and Bill Armstrong,
these are the two toughest,
most famous policemen in the city,
they're in my city room.
Dave Toschi with his bow tie.
He's got charisma, he's got good looks.
The movie Dirty Harry was based off him.
[gunshot]
So it just took on a legendary status.
[reporter 1] How far along are you?
Does this latest communication
do anything for you?
We are going under the assumption
that it is a communication
from the man known as Zodiac.
So, here's my office.
Well, it's technically the Art Department.
And we see all of this going on,
and I'm trying to listen.
At the present time,
my partner and I
are being literally swamped at our desk
with communications
from the entire Bay Area.
[Robert] Everyone was paranoid
at this point.
Over 1,000 suspects were looked into.
In a case of this magnitude,
we stay on top of it as much as we can.
[Robert] What I learned is that
these killers, they get comfortable,
and as they gradually believe
in their own skills
and outwitting the police,
they spread out.
Well, our guy spread out to San Francisco.
[reporter 2] The Zodiac Killer
seems to crave publicity.
When this guy hailed Paul Stine's cab,
he's in front of the theater
which was eventually playing The Mikado.
Well, here's the weird thing.
The Mikado is quoted
in a letter the Zodiac writes.
As someday it may happen
That a victim must be found ♪
I've got a little list! ♪
[Zodiac] I've got a little list
of society offenders
who might well be underground,
who would never be missed,
who would never be missed.
[Robert] He was trying to emulate
the Lord High Executioner.
He has this wicked sense of humor
and he's highly intellectual.
Coordinating the hunt
for a psychotic mass murderer.
San Francisco apparently has
a mad killer in its midst.
Unfortunately, the police believe
The Zodiac Killer will try and kill again.
His chilling allusions to future slayings
are being countered with an intense drive.
[reporter 1] You don't
walk around here at night?
[chuckles nervously] No, no, no.
I will not come out at night.
No, I'd be kind of afraid, really.
[reporter 2] In San Francisco,
two more communications
have been received.
[reporter 3] There was also
a greeting card.
It said, "Sorry I haven't written sooner.
I just washed my pen."
[reporter 4] The murderer said
he is so lonely he could do his thing.
[Zodiac] I thought you would need
a good laugh before you hear the bad news.
You won't get the news for a while yet.
P.S. Could you print this new cipher
on your front page?
[reporter 5] The new letters
from The Zodiac Killer
were sent to the city room
of the San Francisco Chronicle.
One of the letters is seven pages long,
and in it,
Zodiac brags he's killed seven people.
[Capt. Martin Lee] He has demonstrated
a hostility toward police.
Now we are "blue pigs."
[Zodiac] The death machine
is already made.
What you do not know is
whether the death machine is at the site
or whether it is being stored
in my basement for future use.
Have fun. By the way, it could be
rather messy if you try to bluff me.
So now he's talking about making bombs.
There was such a fear.
This case, it touched everybody I knew,
in a city I love.
[tense music playing]
The letter says, "You'll never catch me."
I'll show you, buddy. I'm gonna do that.
I wanted to see if there was anything
that the police might have missed.
I couldn't let go.
I spent ages
driving around to all the crime scenes,
trying to find something.
My friend once asked me, "What do you do
when you're through with work?"
Well, like everybody,
I go sit in front of a suspect's house.
[chuckling] You know, 10:00 at night.
I'm not good at puzzle solving,
but I don't give up.
They did something really unusual
at Vallejo Police Station.
They take me into this big room
with all the drawers,
and I'm facing the drawers.
And then the policeman says,
"Oh, I think I hear the phone."
Or, "I have to go somewhere.
You stay here."
I'm like, "Sure."
Clap my hands,
I'm just sitting there, waiting.
He comes back, looks sort of displeased.
"I have to go again."
And then I realize
I'm supposed to open the drawers. [laughs]
He's offering me everything.
So I would memorize, memorize,
and I'd run across the street,
and I'd buy a big chicken dinner,
and I'd eat it while I'm trying
to remember every single word.
Then I reversed,
and I started giving them stuff,
which is a major part
of the David Fincher movie.
I've been doing research
on the first cipher.
Everything an amateur would need
to create it can be found in these books.
[Robert] During my investigation,
I'd read this book on psychology.
It said almost any of these killers,
they wanna find out what's going on,
and they say things or they wanna help.
I went to Dave Toschi,
and I said, "All these suspects"
I mean, 2,500 at one point.
"Did any of these suspects
ever offer to catch Zodiac for you?"
"How can I help?"
And he goes, "Only one."
And he leans over,
pulls out the bottom drawer,
reaches in.
Up comes a white envelope.
He opens it.
"Sorry I couldn't help you catch your man.
Arthur Leigh Allen."
Exactly. And I said,
"He's your guy. He's gotta be."
[uneasy music playing]
[Don] The summer of '61,
Mr. Allen asked our mother
if he could take us for a field trip
in his blue Austin-Healey.
[Connie] I mean, she had a bunch of kids.
She was really overwhelmed.
I'm sure she was happy as heck
to get three of her monsters
off her hands for a while.
I was like nine or ten,
and we were thrilled.
He had several cars.
He used to let us steer the car.
[Connie] I sat on his lap.
I steered this big old car
while he's guzzling his beer.
He cheered me on every time I made it
past something without hitting it.
The gear shifter
was right in between my knees,
so I learned how to shift that way.
He took us on all kinds of trips
like that, that summer.
[Melody] That summer,
we would go to the movies.
Mr. Allen would take us
to see documentaries on whales,
different animals, mostly Disney.
Just had a good old time.
[school bell ringing]
[Darin Alvord] Even when
we were in Mr. Allen's class,
we got the sense that it was,
you know, an informal relationship.
He did everything he could to be gentle
because he was always so big,
and certainly towering
over fourth graders.
[Melody] The way I saw him,
he was soft-spoken
until you ticked him off. [chuckles]
Like maybe we didn't listen or do what
And then he would get a little loud,
but nothing out of the ordinary.
But Mr. Allen was really smitten
with David's sister, Connie.
He really liked her.
He was always showing around,
putting his arm around her,
giving her hugs
and trying to make light of it.
David, he would make comments like,
"Hmm. Mr. Allen really likes my sister."
[sinister music playing]
I realized, yeah, probably some
of the things he said and did
may have been improper.
Mr. Allen paid different attention
to the girls than the boys.
He would occasionally compliment girls
in a way I thought
was a little over the top.
He would address the prettier girls
as "My beautiful" then give the name.
[Melody] Somebody said,
"He was grooming you."
And I'm going,
"I know nothing about that kind of stuff."
I didn't even know what "grooming" meant.
But then that freaked me out.
That, "Oh my gosh,
did they really do that?"
And then thinking about it,
he'd put his arm around me
and give me a hug.
He used to take me home
from school sometimes.
Him and my dad were Navy vets,
so they talked about Navy all the time.
It's like, why else would he
come to your house all the time
and talk to your dad?
But that, to us, just seemed normal.
[sinister music continues]
This is the Zodiac speaking.
By the way, have you cracked
the last cipher I sent you?
My name is
I have killed ten people to date.
It would have been a lot more,
except that my bus bomb was a dud.
[reporter] Have the ciphers, the symbols,
and the letters themselves
been of any use to you to this point?
No, we haven't been too successful.
We've had them out with experts.
The latest one we had, oh, six months ago,
when he sent us a cryptogram,
was never broken.
But I see in his latest letter
that he has said he's killed ten,
but he didn't specifically state
that they happened in San Francisco.
[Robert] At the Chronicle,
we were working every day
on the Zodiac case.
We get this call one day.
This sheriff, he and his men believed
that a murder in 1963 was the Zodiac's.
I thought, "What are the odds on this?"
[school bell ringing]
[woman] It was senior ditch day.
My fiancé and I were supposed to go
with Linda and Bobby to the beach.
Linda was one of my best friends.
She was going to be my maid of honor.
She called me and said,
"Hey, it's ditch day,
why don't we just go to the beach?"
And we said, "Okay."
We were getting ready to go,
but then my fiancé,
who was older, couldn't get off work,
and so we didn't go.
And Linda and Bobby went by themselves.
In the morning,
my mother came in and woke me up.
Bobby's mom was on the phone.
They wanted to know
if I knew where Linda and Bobby were.
Told my mom, "I know where they went."
There was a beach that we always went to
between Gaviota State Park
and Refugio State Park.
Some people refer to it as Tajiguas.
It was a beautiful beach. It's secluded.
We drove to the location,
and there was Bobby's car.
The sheriff walked up the creek,
where there was a shack
that somebody had built,
and there was Linda and Bobby.
They found the shell casings.
They found twine.
It had been pre-cut to tie them up.
They were pulled to the shack.
He had laid Bobby's body down
and laid Linda's over the top of his.
Had cut her bathing suit open.
The sheriff told my dad,
"You don't want to see this."
[crying] All I could say was,
"But But she just helped me
pick out my wedding dress."
"How can this be? How can it
How can this be real?"
[Robert] When we all
started to go down there,
I thought, "Oh my God, this has to be"
"It's so similar, it's beyond belief."
Always students, always about to graduate,
usually near water,
usually it was a holiday.
He chases them, catches them.
It's every single piece.
They're tied, the pre-cut lengths of rope.
Like he's gone into the future
and read everything that happened
at Lake Berryessa.
He's got a .22.
The same as the Lake Herman Road case.
That's when I realized
this was a rehearsal.
This must be The Zodiac Killer.
[foreboding music playing]
[David] At the end
of the school year in 1963,
Mr. Allen showed up at the house
and wanted to know
if we wanted to go with him to the coast,
and he was gonna go diving.
We took off south on the 101.
He had this other car.
It was a big primer-black car
that just hauled ass.
It was just an incredible feeling.
When I got in that car,
I was happy as a clam.
[Connie] Beautiful sunny day,
and we were just cruising along,
looking at the ocean.
We went down the coast a ways,
and then we pulled
into Lompoc Military Commissary.
[David] Mr. Allen was in the Navy
before he was a teacher.
So he had PX privileges.
He goes into the PX
and comes out with a couple of bottles
of beer under one arm.
And in the other hand, he had two boxes
that looked like cardboard boxes
about that big,
and had metal configurations
on each corner
holding the boxes together.
Mr. Allen got back in the car,
went down through Gaviota Pass,
and stopped at a place
called Tajiguas Point.
[Connie] We had
been there before with him.
We had gone down and played on the beach.
But this time
he told us to stay in the car.
And he got out, opened the trunk.
I was looking through the back window,
and then he closed the trunk,
and whatever was in his hand,
he walked away with.
There's a trail that goes down the bluff.
He goes down the hill alone.
[Connie] He looked over his shoulder
to make sure we stayed in the car,
on his way.
As soon as he got out of sight,
we were out of the car.
[dramatic music playing]
We were messing around.
[Don] We got to play on the tracks
for a long time.
[Connie] My brother Donnie
was putting rocks on the railroad track.
And I'm telling him not to do it
because the train's gonna come
and derail and kill us all.
[train horn blowing]
Mr. Allen may have been gone
maybe an hour or less.
[tense music playing]
And then he comes
climbing back up the bank of the bluff.
[David] When he came up,
he was huffing and puffing,
in a big hurry.
When he got up where I could see him,
I saw something on his hands.
And I saw it was red.
So, being a little girl,
I ran over and grabbed a rag
and was trying to help,
but he actually shoved me over.
[Don] Shoves her away,
and he gets her away,
and he wipes himself off,
and puts something in the back of the car.
[Connie] He was in a hurry.
He got in the car really fast.
And I asked him why he was bleeding.
We took off like a bat out of hell.
[car engine roaring, tires squealing]
[dramatic music playing]