This Is the Zodiac Speaking (2024) s01e02 Episode Script

[uneasy music playing]
[David] After that summer in '63,
Mr. Allen had been living
in a trailer in Atascadero.
He abruptly packed his trailer up,
and he moved up to Northern California.
He stayed close to our mother,
and so he would still show up on occasion,
take us places and stuff like that,
but not as much as before.
[Connie] I was really bummed
that he moved,
because when he'd show up,
we'd jump in the car and be gone.
At home, I felt like I was the maid,
the servant girl.
I was the Cinderella. [chuckles]
But when I was with Mr. Allen
[sighing]God, I didn't have to babysit,
I didn't have to clean.
I always got little extra treats.
I just couldn't wait
for Mr. Allen to come pick us up.
[David] And then one time in 1966,
Mr. Allen called my mother
and asked her if he could talk to Connie.
He told me he was coming out to get me,
and we were gonna go
for the whole weekend.
And I said, "Like overnight?"
[uneasy music building]
[tense music playing]
[Robert] At that time,
the Chronicle was an amazing place.
There's the newsroom,
tremendously large room.
And you had desks and desks and desks.
People would sleep in their cars,
these are the reporters,
and they'd get up and sort of wander.
I can remember nights,
I wouldn't even go home.
I'd come in on Sundays
because it was so much fun.
I get chills. I just I love newspapers.
One of the things I liked
about the newspaper was Paul Avery,
a major character in the movie.
This is Paul Avery
from the San Francisco Chronicle.
I'm looking for someone
to shed some light on a letter.
[Robert] Now, Paul Avery is tall, thin,
and he's a war hero.
And he's obsessed with the Zodiac case.
What kind of a person
do you think the Zodiac is?
Well, obviously a very sick person.
He's bragged of killing
up to possibly 14 people.
[Robert] Paul Avery,
who I admired immensely,
he began to dig.
You didn't just stay here.
You went to Southern California,
you went everywhere.
And he found something.
He found something really important.
Avery believed Zodiac
also struck in Riverside.
And I was intrigued.
This would've been 1966.
It would have happened
before the Zodiac murders.
The modus operandi of the killer
in Cheri Bates' case in Riverside
and the Zodiac killer,
there are many similarities.
This was received exactly one month
to the day after she was killed.
Inside was a typewritten confession,
and this is known to be
from the murderer of Cheri Bates
because of details
in the unsigned confession.
[clock ticking]
[man] She was young and beautiful.
But now she is battered and dead.
She's not the first,
and she will not be the last.
I waited for her in the library
and followed her out.
After about two minutes,
I said it was about time.
She asked me, "About time for what?"
I said it was about time for her to die.
I grabbed her around the neck,
with my hand over her mouth,
with a small knife at her throat.
She screamed once,
and I kicked her head to shut her up.
I plunged the knife into her
and I finished the job
by cutting her throat.
I am not sick. I am insane.
But that will not stop the game.
This letter should be published
for all to read.
Beware I am stalking your girls now.
[eerie music playing]
[Paul] Six months later, after her murder,
the Riverside police,
the local newspaper, The Press-Enterprise,
and the girl's father
each received a letter.
I looked at the handwriting,
and it's quite similar to Zodiac.
And inside of these,
it said, "Bates had to die."
"There will be more."
And right at the bottom
there's a Z.
[eerie musical sting]
[foreboding music playing]
[David] 28th October, 1966.
Just before Halloween.
I'm 16. I was just beginning
my sophomore year of high school.
Connie was a freshman.
It was a Friday night.
And Mr. Allen showed up at our house.
Mr. Allen was living
up in Northern California.
That night, he was heading
down to Southern California,
to the racetrack in Riverside.
He asked, would Connie like
to go with him that weekend?
I wasn't going to let him
take Connie anywhere by herself.
So I volunteered to go with her.
And a racetrack,
I figured, "What the hell?"
Our mother allowed us to go with him.
But she made Mr. Allen promise
to get us back by Halloween evening
so we could take
my youngest siblings trick-or-treating.
And Mr. Allen spent the night.
We took off at about 4:00 in the morning.
It was like a six-hour drive,
but he loved race-car driving.
When we got to Riverside,
it was still morning.
[exciting music playing]
[David] Mr. Allen, he had been
doing race-car-driving school.
So, he had a thing
that could get him into the pit area,
the middle of the racetrack.
So we got in there,
doing everything you can think of
from a racetrack.
[Connie] They were racing, you know,
revving motors and things all around us.
It was stinky. It was dusty.
I remember my ears hurt, it was so loud.
We're watching the race,
and this black Cobra goes zooming by,
and Mr. Allen goes,
"You know who that is? Steve McQueen."
It was incredible.
[exciting music continues playing]
[uneasy music playing]
[David] We hung out there
until about four or five o'clock,
and went and got something to eat
in Riverside.
And then Mr. Allen booked a hotel room
for a couple of nights,
for the three of us.
[Connie] We went to this little motel,
and we went to sleep real early.
The next morning, I'm waking up.
Mr. Allen said,
"Come on, we're gonna go for a ride."
David, still laying on the couch, asleep.
And I'm going, "Well, isn't he coming?"
And Mr. Allen's going,
"Oh, no, let him sleep."
So we left him there in the motel room.
We jumped in the car,
and I remember that he had his hand
down my pedal pushers.
It wasn't two minutes
before we were at the college.
It was a Riverside college.
It was just a college campus
that he wanted to show me.
I remember the cool archway walkways,
and they had pretty flowers everywhere.
I remember seeing
all the books in the library.
Then we went back to the motel.
Brother was still out like a light.
You know, and I'm shaking him
and telling him to wake up,
and he still wouldn't wake up.
Then I remember having something to eat.
I don't remember what it was.
And so then had some juice.
It was sometime in the afternoon
on that Sunday
that I blanked out.
I don't remember anything
until early, early in the morning.
I, sort of, halfway was awake.
I remember being rousted.
I remember being led outside
into Mr. Allen's car.
[car door opening]
[David] Monday morning,
I was still out of it.
He wanted to get out of there
as quick as possible.
[uneasy music continues playing]
When we left, like,
not even a minute or so later,
I remember seeing flashing cop lights
and a flashlight in my face.
[sirens wailing]
I remember hearing Mr. Allen say,
"I took my kids to the races."
And then I was out again.
I wouldn't see Mr. Allen
for like five years after that.
[tense musical sting]
[Robert] In 1971, Don Cheney,
who was Arthur Leigh Allen's friend,
went to the police.
He said that he had
this crazy conversation
with Arthur Leigh Allen
that was right after
the Lake Herman murder.
[man] Go ahead and say your name.
[Cheney] Don Cheney.
[man] When was the last time
you had contact with Leigh?
[Cheney] It was New Year's Day, 1969.
Leigh had spent some time in Riverside
taking a race-car-driving course.
I know that he went every year
for several years.
His brother, Ron, and I
had been living together,
and he stopped by to visit.
Did some fly fishing and hunting.
He had a couple of .22 pistols.
And he had some kind of a rifle
when we went deer hunting together.
He talked about the
Shooting the tires on the school bus,
and picking the little darlings off
as they come bouncing out of the bus.
[tense musical sting]
[Lee] "Just shoot out the front tire,
and then pick off the kiddies
as they come bouncing out."
[Cheney] That phrase
about "picking the little darlings off,"
I remembered that.
That's what forced me to go to the police.
He talked about hunting people,
and as far as hunting goes,
that would take the greatest skill.
The basis of that conversation,
I just thought, "Maybe I just don't want
to be around this guy."
I never talked to him
or had any contact
or communication after that day.
I thought it was a symptom
of a disturbed spirit.
[uneasy music playing]
With Cheney's interview,
we finally got good, solid information.
So Armstrong and Toschi
go to visit Allen at his work.
At the time, Arthur Leigh Allen was
working as a chemist outside of Vallejo.
He wasn't a teacher anymore.
What I thought was interesting is,
Toschi takes one look
at Arthur Leigh Allen.
He's got the round face.
He's got the height. He's got the weight.
He's got the shoes.
He's wearing those shoes.
[Toschi] The first time I saw him
with my partner,
I mean, face to face, where he was angry,
I felt hatred.
You could tell that he was very concerned
because he's going to get fired.
He was being embarrassed,
and that was not our purpose,
to embarrass him.
He looked bigger, much bigger in person.
That's what got my attention right away.
What really did it,
and especially for Armstrong,
he looks at Allen's watch.
And he says, "What's that watch?"
He says, "Zodiac watch, for diving."
[Toschi] Things were
kind of falling into place.
And you're thinking to yourself,
"This guy is pretty good."
[Robert] And so
San Francisco Police Department
got a search warrant for his trailer.
[faint police sirens]
[Toschi] He played very, very dumb.
But I said, "Leigh, we've met.
I'm Inspector Dave Toschi."
He just looked at me.
He kept staring and staring.
I'm getting,
what I would call, the evil eye.
You could feel the anger building in him.
I'm trying to be low-key
about the whole thing,
but knowing full well
we're staring at someone
that very likely is this killer.
And we're just trying to prove it.
They go to the refrigerator,
and they open it.
[Toschi] In the freezer, we've got
hamsters and squirrels and birds, frozen.
[Robert] Gizzards, guts,
insides of small animals.
The policemen
had never seen anything like it.
They got his handwriting
and prints and stuff.
And they found some other weird things.
But no hard evidence.
[Toschi] We came away a little depressed.
I thought we would find more.
But we got to keep trying.
[siren wailing]
[somber music playing]
I heard about the Zodiac killings.
But at that time, I was in New York.
In '68, I met Frank.
I thought he was great.
He lived 3,000 miles away, in New York.
And that seemed
like a nice distance to get gone to.
Six weeks after I turned 16,
I left with him to New York.
We moved to Canandaigua,
which is a straight road to Albany.
When the Zodiac murders happened,
it was 3,000 miles away from me.
So I didn't give it a whole lot of thought
one way or the other really.
[David] Don and Connie and I
had moved on with our lives.
As soon as I graduated from high school,
it was sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
So I joined a band
and went on the road, playing music.
I was trying to settle down.
So, I became a bouncer
at a big nightclub in San Luis Obispo.
[Connie] I got married, had kids.
Sometimes I would get
phone calls from Mr. Allen,
trying to convince me
to come back to California.
One time in '72,
I flew back to visit my mother.
She called Mr. Allen
and told him I really wanted to see him.
And he met us there.
Real happy to see me.
I told him I thought
he was traveling the world.
He said no.
We just sat on her porch and talked.
And I said, "Mr. Allen,
I named my daughter after you."
And he goes,
"Well, I sure hope you spelled it right."
And I said, "Yeah, L-E-E."
He goes, "No, it's spelled L-E-I-G-H."
He wished I'd stay.
But I said, you know,
"No, I have to go back."
You know, "I have a husband.
I have a house."
And I didn't hear from him
after that till '74.
One day, Mr. Allen sent me a letter
from Atascadero State Hospital.
I was really surprised
because it was the same hospital
where my father had been locked up.
He told me in the letter,
a detective came
to interview him at his house
and threw a stogie on his carpet.
So he punched him,
and that's why they arrested him.
[foreboding music playing]
[Robert] He's arrested,
not for the Zodiac crimes though.
Arthur Leigh Allen went to Atascadero
as a prisoner for molesting children.
Like most child molesters,
he'd get to know the mothers,
and through the mothers,
he would know the children.
Eventually, the mother found out,
and they turned him in.
[solemn music playing]
[Marlene Dodge] When I was growing up,
Mr. Allen was always around.
He'd been around our family
from before I was born.
My name is Marlene Dodge.
And I am, oh gosh,
let me think, the third youngest.
David, Connie, and Donnie had
already moved out when I was still little.
But then when I got a little older,
Mr. Allen was at the state hospital,
so we used to visit him,
like, every weekend.
What I had heard from my mother
was that he was in there
because of something violent.
I never saw Leigh, like, with
Around us, violent.
So, we kind of just felt
like, "Oh, he's been wronged."
"This is wrong. He shouldn't be here."
[reporter 1] Where has Zodiac been
all this time?
[Toschi] He could have been
out of the country.
He could have been in a hospital.
He could've been in prison.
It's a very difficult question to answer.
We just don't know.
[Robert] We know now, Arthur Leigh Allen
was put in Atascadero
for almost four years.
Oddly enough, for four years,
no Zodiac letters, no murders.
Everything stopped.
[reporter 2] Though the investigation
never really stopped
during Zodiac's long silence,
it merely sputtered along.
The leads were all dried up.
Police were hoping for some new break.
[Marlene] I remember
he came and stayed with us
after he got out of the state hospital.
He grabbed my mom
and danced with her in the living room.
He was singing something and
You know,
and danced around in the living room.
[Hily Greene] I believe
I was nine at the time.
I saw the two of them
go into my mother's bedroom,
close the door,
and they both slept there overnight.
What happened behind said door? No clue.
[Marlene] Then, Mr. Allen moved in
with his mom, in Vallejo, in her basement.
Zodiac, the boastful killer
who's eluded San Francisco police
for 12 years,
broke a four-year silence.
Daily San Francisco papers
received a letter
confirmed to be by the Zodiac.
Four years where nothing happens,
he's in prison.
And he comes out, well,
there's a Zodiac letter again.
[reporter 1] He's written again,
making no threats,
but simply saying, "I am back with you."
[reporter 2] Letter number 16 has breathed
new life into the investigation.
I was always hoping that he would
communicate and not commit an act.
A letter, I can handle.
[reporter 3] While this latest letter
isn't much,
it at least does open a new door.
But that was the last letter from Zodiac.
[reporter 4] For all the clues and hints
that the Zodiac killer left behind,
he managed somehow
never to give the police
the probable cause
they needed for his arrest.
[solemn music playing]
[Toschi] Every October 11th,
I would drive by Washington and Cherry
and just stop
and wonder, "What did we do wrong?"
"Which direction did we go
where we should not have gone?"
"Did we go in this direction
and maybe hold back?"
"We should've gone someplace else?"
At the beginning, I thought,
"They're going to solve this."
And no, that didn't happen. [chuckles]
They'd given up on Zodiac
by the early '80s.
Headlines said, "Who cares about Zodiac?"
I'm just like, "Oh, I don't think so.
I think I care."
My office was wall to wall,
three boxes deep.
Books, notes, tapes.
I had to move out of my apartment
and get another place
because I wrote myself
out of my apartment with Zodiac.
Eventually, I found out
that after he got out of Atascadero,
Arthur Leigh Allen worked
for an Ace Hardware in Vallejo.
So I parked across the street
in my orange VW,
and you can see the window.
He's decorating the window.
I'm watching him do stuff. I sketched him.
And then I look, and he's gone.
Where the heck did he go?
Well, around the corner
comes him in a car.
Comes right up to me and leans over.
You never saw such hatred in your life.
I go to visit his boss.
And I say, you know,
"We're looking into this guy,
and he's awfully interesting."
"Um, here's my phone number."
[phone ringing]
After that, every Friday, the phone rang.
And it would hang up.
The phone rang, and it would hang up.
[ominous music playing]
One night, I came home at night, late.
Somebody has climbed my balcony
to the second floor.
I swear it's him.
And then he's gone.
Next night, I go down.
Both my tires are slashed.
It just never really dawned on me
how dangerous it was.
I really get focused.
Once I start something,
you've got to finish it.
It took me 15 years
to write a book about it.
And the people at the Chronicle,
they had no idea.
I don't think they thought
I'd do anything.
I'm not even a writer.
But when the book's out in 1986,
it just set the city on fire.
Seven weeks, bestsellers.
With us this morning are Robert Graysmith,
author of the book Zodiac
The publisher called, he said did I have
any copies of my book I could give them.
Because they ran out.
[reporter] Robert Graysmith claims to know
who the Zodiac really is
and where he resides.
But he refuses to divulge
the killer's real name.
In the book,
the killer is referred to as Starr.
- [man] The police know his name?
- [Robert] Yes, absolutely.
From the early days of the case,
he was a suspect.
- Are they keeping him under surveillance?
- You bet. Absolutely.
And the police said I couldn't name him.
But I put all the information
that I have out there.
Somebody out there may know something.
They're going to get him.
That was my hope.
[uneasy music playing]
[Don Distefano] For Vallejo,
Arthur Leigh Allen
always has been the center of attention.
I joined the Vallejo Police Department
in 1990,
and had no idea that I would be working
on one of the most famous cold cases
in American history.
At that time,
I didn't know much about the Zodiac.
But I knew that Robert Graysmith's book
brought back public interest in the case.
There was the famous Zodiac box
in the office.
Any time the police department
received a letter
from some person somewhere in the world
saying that they know who the Zodiac was,
that letter went in that box.
I remember the detective at the time
walked to my desk
and brought that box over to me.
"Here you go. Good luck."
In 1991, Vallejo Police
received information from an informant.
[reporter] According to the affidavit
unsealed by a judge,
an armed robbery suspect
arrested in San Jose
told police there
that Arthur Allen is the infamous Zodiac.
[Distefano] The informant
knew Arthur Leigh Allen
and had conversations
with him in the past,
talking about plans
to kill a cab driver in San Francisco.
At this point, Arthur Leigh Allen
was still only known by law enforcement.
To have a second person after Don Cheney
come forward with his name,
it was enough to convince a judge
to issue a search warrant for his home.
That was a big deal in the office.
[tense music playing]
Because Arthur Leigh
was the focus so long,
one would think
that he would have disposed of any items
that could connect him to this case.
But what investigators found
was quite astounding.
This is what they took
out of his basement.
Four pipe bombs, one primer cord,
seven railroad torpedoes.
He's got all the clippings on the case.
[Distefano] They found designs or drawings
of how to make bombs
similar to the one in the Zodiac letter,
and a Royal manual typewriter
consistent with some of the typing
in the Zodiac letters.
The list goes on.
[Toschi] When Robert told me
what they found during the search,
I was in disbelief.
I thought, "Why didn't they arrest him?"
[Robert] Policemen had him at the stairs.
He's confronted.
This is terrifying to him.
One of the cops said,
"I could tell he was quivering."
Another one says,
"He was about to confess."
[Distefano] After search warrants
were served,
Arthur Leigh Allen came
into the detective bureau
to be interviewed.
This was the first time
I actually interacted
with someone who would've been considered
a thrill killer or a serial killer.
Didn't say anything to me.
Just waited patiently.
Just seemed quiet, reserved, cooperative.
The outcome of the search warrant
was that they did not find anything
that linked him directly
to any of the victims or the crime scenes.
But when you look at the list of items
found in his residence,
it just makes it that much more difficult
for law enforcement to move on from him.
Why would you have pipe bombs
in your crawl space?
All these strange things
that in some ways connect to the Zodiac.
It just added more mystery
to the entire case
surrounding Arthur Leigh Allen.
[Rita] I was in that first wave of women
to do hard news on television.
I covered every major story
in San Francisco.
And of course,
I had done a number of stories on Zodiac.
If there was any so-called break
in the case, I did those.
In 1991, I was doing a daily story
on a search warrant
that had been served at his house,
where they found pipe bombs
and explosives.
Why have there not been
any charges brought against Allen
when you found a bomb in his residence?
Again, I'm not going to comment
on an ongoing criminal investigation.
I had the address in Vallejo
for Arthur Leigh Allen.
So I told my cameraman,
"Let's give this a shot."
And we went to the house.
It was late in the afternoon.
Arthur Leigh Allen had not talked
with other networks.
I was on a wing and a prayer
of just hoping
that he would agree to talk to me.
My cameraman was with me,
and I remember telling him,
"Shoot me knocking on the door."
"Then I can at least say
we tried to contact the suspect,
but he didn't answer the door."
[doorbell ringing, knocking]
It took a few minutes,
but the door opened slightly.
And Arthur Leigh Allen was standing there
in his housecoat and pajamas.
He said, "What do you want?"
I said, "I'm Rita Williams
from Channel 2 News,
and I'm doing a story
about the search warrant,
and I'd like to talk to you
about how you feel about all of this."
And he said, "Hmm."
And he closed the door a little bit,
and then he opened the door back and said
"I'll talk to you, but not to him."
I didn't expect that.
And I said, "Well, he's got the camera."
And he said, "I know. Come on in."
So, I looked at my cameraman
and said, you know,
"If I don't come out
in the next hour or so,
knock on the door, please."
"Let the station know that I'm inside."
I must say, I've never really been scared
of doing my job as a journalist.
But I did get a little bit scared
when he led me in.
[wood creaks, door shuts]
The sun's beginning to go down.
It's a little eerie.
[uneasy music playing]
Allen was hulking.
He had on these big boots.
So he lumbered, kind of.
He sat on what was then his bed,
and I pulled up a chair next to it,
and we just started talking.
I made it as personal, as much as I could,
and I was giving him an opportunity
to tell his side of the story,
which had never been heard before.
He said his mother had died
about three years prior,
and he was on general assistance.
He didn't have a lot of money,
so he was renting out
the top part of the house,
and he lived below with his dog.
His bookshelf was orderly and nice.
Almost OCD kind of orderly.
He told me that police
had taken so many of his things
through the years in searches,
and that they always promised
to give them back.
But he never got any of them back,
and he was very angry about that.
I talked to him for almost an hour.
At the end, I said,
"You've got to make a decision here."
"I'm getting close to my deadline.
Will you talk on camera or not?"
And he said, "Okay, tell him to come in."
[uneasy music ends]
[Arthur] Every time
I thought it was laid to rest,
it would come screaming back.
The little kid who lives next door,
fifth grade, studying the Constitution,
and she got ticked off with the cops.
She said, "Haven't they ever heard
of innocent until proven guilty?"
Well, bless her.
[Rita] He was telling me
that he was weakened,
that he was on dialysis,
I believe two or three times
a week at that point.
His pills were all up on a counter.
He said, "Oh, I take all these meds."
And he took some.
I don't know
if it was really time to take one.
His one provision for doing the interview
was not to show his face.
He said he was hounded enough
without people knowing his face.
So we agreed to pixelate his picture there
so no one could
recognize him on the street.
But years later,
we stopped that and ran a new special.
[dramatic music playing]
They haven't arrested me
because they can't prove a thing.
I'm not the damn Zodiac.
[Rita] Allen says a friend of his brother
led police to him early on.
[Cheney] He talked about picking
the little darlings off
as they come bouncing out of the bus.
He built this into something, uh,
much, much grander
and remembered other conversations
that we didn't have,
and figured, well, I must be the Zodiac.
There would be nothing
farther from my mind.
No, I'm certainly,
most certainly not the Zodiac killer.
[Rita] At one point, he closed his eyes,
like he was crying.
And I just stayed on the camera
and let him go.
[sobbing] Twenty-two years of this.
He said, "I almost confessed
just so they would leave me alone."
On his birthday in 1968,
Allen's mother gave him
a Zodiac watch like this.
Two days later,
the Zodiac killed his first known victim.
He explained that his mother
had given him this watch on his birthday.
It was a first-class diver's watch.
There was a whole lot of heat
on the police
to to get this this this maniac,
this lunatic.
This has been so rotten
and miserable and terrible.
And, again, the bad thing about it
is that I haven't deserved any of it.
Then I asked to see the outdoors
where the pipe bombs were.
- In the house. I don't know where.
- Show me.
- You're not sure where?
- No.
[Rita] He swore
those pipe bombs were not his.
That an ex-con friend,
20 or 30 years before,
had asked to store some things
under the house,
and he never asked what they were.
Was totally surprised that they found
pipe bombs and explosives under the house.
The interview aired.
Then I received a letter at the station.
"Dear Rita, please pardon the informality,
but I consider you a friend."
He wanted to thank me
for what he called my "professionality,"
and then in parentheses next to it said,
"I don't know if you can find
that word in the dictionary or not."
Which was kind of funny
because the Zodiac always made up words.
I looked at the envelope,
and the envelope had this weird "Z."
Just a Z.
Arthur Leigh Allen
seemed to be playing a game.
We all know the Zodiac loved the game.
About the only way
the heat will stop is if
Well, if if I die,
that'll cure it for me.
Or if if Zodiac himself, uh, confesses.
After the interview,
when I got in the car,
my cameraman said,
"You just interviewed the Zodiac Killer."
I'd never uttered that out loud until now.
I said, "I think so too."
His name is Arthur Leigh Allen,
and more than 35 years
after the notorious Zodiac Killer
terrorized Northern California,
he's still considered the prime suspect.
[Distefano] This is the first time
that Arthur Leigh Allen
as a suspect in the Zodiac case
became public information.
[reporter 1] Thousands of people
have been interviewed.
Zodiac's bounced in and out of the news.
And through it all,
there's been one constant. Arthur Allen.
[reporter 2] Was Arthur Leigh Allen
the Zodiac Killer,
or a victim of years of police harassment?
My mother had become the manager
of the credit union
at the Atascadero State Hospital.
And Leigh Allen was sentenced there.
My mom sort of withheld that.
But when he was named
as one of the many suspects
of being the Zodiac Killer,
well, we couldn't hold that back anymore.
[Melody] We were out at night with him.
You know, we went to the movies.
Uh So yeah,
it kind of, like, freaked me out.
It was just hard to believe.
That was just a real shock.
[solemn music playing]
[Connie] It was '91. I was 40, I think.
Me and Frank, we ended up splitting up.
And I'd actually moved back to California
not long after that.
I saw him on the news
saying he wasn't the Zodiac.
I thought, "That's ridiculous."
"There's no way that that could be him."
You know, this probably isn't real,
and it's one of those false suspect things
where people are wrongly accused.
And quickly they would find out
that no way in hell it could be him.
And he'd be able to laugh about it.
And we'd talk in the future.
He was just a nice man.
He was my hero.
You know, I dearly loved him.
[Arthur] I think there probably is
a Zodiac still out there.
And he's just laughing his self to death.
[Connie] I got a hold of Mama
and got his phone number.
And I called him.
He didn't believe it was me calling him.
He said it had been years.
So, I drove down to Vallejo,
to his basement room.
And that's when we reconnected.
He was real happy to see me.
I gave him a big hug.
I told him, in no uncertain terms,
"I can't believe anyone would
ever think anything like that of you."
It just didn't make sense.
He told me he was on dialysis
three times a week.
And he goes,
"I need to ask you something."
And so I sat down.
And he said, uh
He said, "I just wanted
to know if you were okay."
And I said, "Oh, I'm as okay as I am.
You know, I'm getting along."
And he, uh, seemed
really surprised, maybe.
And he nods his head
and says, "Good drugs."
I just thought he was talking
about all the medicine
sitting next to him.
Uh, from his diabetes medicine.
And that's when he told me
he wanted to give me his sailboat.
So we hooked up his boat to the car
and towed it to Clearlake.
It was a beautiful day,
perfect amount of wind,
just right for sailing.
He was teaching me knots
and what everything was called,
you know, the mainsail
and the jib and the sheets,
'cause I had no clue.
When we were sailing,
it was just him and me.
We were sitting there, hanging out.
I don't know why,
but I asked him if he was the Zodiac.
[ominous music playing]
That's when he told me,
if he told me that,
he would have to kill me too.
And I laughed.
I thought it was, you know, a big joke.
You know, going,
"Oh, crap, I'm out here all by myself."
I really did.
It flashed just for a second, you know.
And I thought, "Oh, no. No, no."
[somber music playing]
[Marlene] It was in '91.
Someone came knocking at the door.
Investigators from San Francisco.
They pulled out a bunch of stuff,
and asked me if I could identify
Leigh Allen in these pictures.
I'm like, "Sure."
They asked me what I knew about him.
I told them
that he was in the state hospital,
that he had been arrested
for something violent.
And they said, "No, that was a lie."
They showed me the arrest record.
And it turns a little darker.
[foreboding music playing]
I was shocked.
After they all left,
I thought, "I need to call my mom."
"I need to tell her,
you know, what I just found out."
When I talked to my mother about it,
she didn't want to believe it.
I said, "I saw the police report.
I know that's what he was there for now."
She says, "That's not what he told me."
I'm like, "Well, I realize
that's not what he told you."
It was always not acknowledging
that he had actually been arrested
and actually been convicted
of the child molestation.
[Marlene] She was looking for evidence
for him not to be,
because she trusted her children with him.
And now she Now she was questioning it.
He's kept this secret all this time.
So what else could he be lying about now?
[David] Marlene had told me
about her conversation with the police.
I was blown away.
But my mother and Mr. Allen
were still talking and everything then,
even though he totally lied to her.
She didn't want to believe it.
And in 1992, she called me.
I said, "He could have done
all that stuff, Mama."
She just said, "Look, he's going
to dialysis three times a week."
"He's not doing good at all."
"It looks like he won't last much longer,
and he wants to talk to you. Call him."
[phone ringing]
[tense music playing]
Mr. Allen, it's David Seawater.
My mother told me
that you wanted to talk to me.
We started talking a little bit,
doing small talk.
I want to thank you
for being there for us when we were kids,
and treating us good.
He starts sobbing and blubbering
and trying to catch his breath.
And he goes, "I was not as good to you
as you think I was."
"I drugged you guys."
Knowing what kind
of a lying piece of shit he was,
I didn't know how to react.
I'm thinking in my mind,
"I can't deal with this anymore.
I can't hear this."
At that second,
I thought, "Okay, here we go."
Mr. Allen
"Were you the Zodiac?"
[dramatic music playing]