The Crime Book

288

THIS IS

THE ZODIAC

SPEAKING

THE ZODIAC KILLER, 1968–69

T

he 4 July 1969 should have

been a wonderful night for

Michael Mageau. Fireworks

were exploding over San Francisco

Bay, and he had a date with

beautiful 22-year-old Darlene Ferrin.

The two were sitting in Darlene’s

car at Blue Rock Springs in Vallejo,

when a vehicle pulled up. The driver

got out, shone a torch into their car,

and began to fire a pistol at them.

Ferrin died but Mageau survived.

Soon after, a man phoned the Vallejo

police department saying, “I want to

report a murder. If you will go 1 mile

east on Columbus Parkway, you will

find kids in a brown car. They were

shot with a 9-mm Luger. I also killed

those kids last year. Goodbye.”

Coded messages

On 31 July letters and coded

messages arrived at the San

Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco

Examiner, and Vallejo Times-

Herald. They contained a sinister

threat: if the ciphers did not appear

on the newspapers’ front pages by

the following afternoon, the author

would go on a killing rampage. The

letters claimed responsibility for

Ferrin’s murder and another double

IN CONTEXT

LOCATION

San Francisco, California,

US

THEME

Expressive/transformative

serial homicide

BEFORE

1945–46 William Heirens,

the so-called “Lipstick Killer”,

leaves messages in lipstick

at the scenes of his crimes

in Chicago.

AFTER

1976–77 Serial killer David

Berkowitz leaves handwritten

letters signed “Son of Sam”

near the bodies of his victims

in the Bronx, New York.

1990–93 Heriberto Seda,

a copycat Zodiac Killer, kills

three people in New York.

Expressive/transformative violence

Drawing upon social psychology,

criminologist Lee Mellor’s

expressive/transformative

theory of violence proposes that

offenders who communicate

with the police – whether

through sending letters, leaving

messages at a crime scene, or by

symbolically posing a victim’s

body – are engaged in a process

of identity negotiation. Due to

social inadequacies, the offender

cannot establish an acceptable

sense of self and therefore

suffers from a perpetual crisis

of identity. He seeks to unite his

fragmented personality in the

guise of a murderer, even going

so far as to wear a costume and

use a moniker such as “Zodiac”.

In his sample of 10 expressive/

transformative offenders, Mellor

found that 90 per cent were

single at the time of their

offences, and that a majority

felt that they had never really

grown up, were unstable in

their masculinity and vocation,

and obsessed with police and/or

military culture.

288-289_Zodiac_Killer.indd 288 02/12/2016 15:04

289

San Francisco police circulated this

composite of the “Zodiac” killer based

on the accounts of three witnesses

interviewed shortly after the murder of

Paul Stine in October 1969.

See also: The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping 178–85 ■ The Black Dahlia Murder 218–23 ■ Ted Bundy 276–83

SERIAL KILLERS

homicide committed in Vallejo in

December 1968, which had an

identical modus operandi.

After some hesitation, the papers

printed their portions of the cipher.

A second letter arrived at the Herald

on 4 August, in which the author

referred to himself as “the Zodiac”.

Fatal finale

By 8 August 1969, a couple living in

Salinas decoded the 408 symbol

cryptogram, in which the author

said that he hunted people. The

Zodiac described killing as a

thrilling experience and claimed

that after his death, the victims

would be his slaves in the afterlife.

On the afternoon of 27 August,

Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard

were relaxing at Lake Berryessa in

Napa when they were approached

by a gunman in a strange black

mask and costume. He bound

them with rope and stabbed them

repeatedly. Hartnell survived to

recount the details but Shepard

died. Before leaving, the killer drew

the Zodiac symbol on their car door.

The final murder definitively linked

to the Zodiac occurred in San

Francisco on 11 October 1969. That

night, cabbie Paul Stine was shot in

the head by a passenger with a

pistol. The killer ripped away a

bloodstained section of Stine’s shirt,

stole his wallet and keys, and wiped

the car down. He was spotted by

three witnesses, but their differing

accounts of his appearance and

colour ensured that he was never

arrested. Although police recovered

a bloody fingerprint and black gloves

from the taxi, the killer remained

unidentified. The killer sent a letter

to the Chronicle two days later with

a bloody piece of Stine’s shirt. The

letters continued until 1978, but the

Zodiac killer was never caught.

Prime suspect

Of all the names to surface in the

hunt for the killer, that of Arthur

Leigh Allen has been the most

mentioned. When questioned in

1969, Allen admitted that his mother

had recently given him a Zodiac

brand watch, featuring a crossed

circle symbol. A friend of Allen’s

claimed that after he received the

watch, Allen mentioned a desire to

murder random couples and taunt

police with letters signed with the

Zodiac symbol. Allen lived within

minutes of the 1968–69 murders and

owned the same ammunition that

was used in the 1968 attack.

In 2002, 10 years after his death,

Allen’s DNA was compared to a

saliva sample taken from a Zodiac

envelope. They did not match, so he

was excluded by police. However, it

later emerged that Allen asked

others to lick envelopes for him,

because he claimed that the taste

made him feel nauseous. ■

Was given a Zodiac

brand wristwatch by his

mother, which featured the

cross-in-the-circle symbol

Told friends he would

like to murder random

couples and taunt police

with coded letters

Lived only a few

minutes from the

scenes of the crimes

Owned the same brand

of ammunition as those

used by the Zodiac

The case against Arthur Leigh Allen

288-289_Zodiac_Killer.indd 289 13/01/2017 15:20