His Name Was Arthur Leigh Allen

In the fall of 1958, I had been at a house party...

...held by one of my classmates.

And we were getting overly friendly.

But it was not a-- I don't wanna imply that there may--

That may have been sexual.

We were just, you know, dancing close and may have kissed or something.

But nothing more than that.

And she was going steady with someone else...

...who took exception to my behavior.

By the time I got home that night...

...my father had waited up for me to come home and it was quite late.

It was probably at 2 or 2:30 in the morning.

And he-- My dad told me, "There was a guy here looking for you."

And described the car that the guy was in.

And I knew it was the car driven by this woman's boyfriend.

And I said, "Don't worry about it. You know, it will pass. It's nothing."

And I lived in--

I stayed in what would be considered today an in-law apartment...

...aside from the house, it was separate from the main house.

So I was in bed, in my boxer shorts and there was a knock on the door.

I knew immediately who it was, you know, and it--

And I got up and I opened the door. And this guy came in.

This was the woman's boyfriend.

I shut the door. And then we had words.

And I don't know what those words were. Wouldn't even attempt to paraphrase them.

That they were exactly what you might expect that conversation to have been.

And a fight ensued.

And I don't remember if I punched him first or he swung at me, whatever.

But I punched him and he went down to his knees.

And when he did, he grabbed ahold of my genitalia.

And was holding on. And just...

...a minute amount of panic ran through my body...

...as I began to just start punching his head.

And at that moment, the door...

...the main door of that apartment I was in, just imploded.

It wasn't that the door came loose or opened.

It came right off the hinges. That door imploded...

...and came right down and a big man came through that door, carrying a knife.

And I could see in that man's face, in his eyes...

...that man was devoid of an immortal soul.

That man was on just a different plane than...

It was terrifying just to look at him.

I had never seen him before. Never met him.

I don't know that I've ever heard of him at that time.

His name was Arthur Leigh Allen.

I think it was in '62.

1962.

Sandy Panzarella and myself and Ron were renting a house together.

And Leigh...

...paid us a visit one time.

He came down and stayed at our place...

...a couple of occasions.

And I got to know him well enough to know I didn't like him.

And I thought he was reckless.

When he came in, he made a big entry...

...with knives and guns.

And a lot of hoopla.

When he wanted attention he would go to such extremes.

Like the story about the bug crawling across the table...

...and then him trying to hit it with a machete.

He'd startle you. He'd scare you.

He stuck a big knife into the middle of our kitchen table.

Got everybody's attention.

He told me that he got fired from the teaching job...

...because he carried a Magnum under the car seat of--

Under the front seat of his Austin Healey.

And later I found out he was really arrested for--

He really was fired for child molestation.

He was teaching trampoline to those little girls over there.

And I suspected it had to do with them.

He wanted to be a teacher.

He liked the children's world.

He liked kids. He liked to be a part of that world.

To what extent, I didn't appreciate at the time.

He went a little too far with it obviously.

But he enjoyed children and they loved him.

But he admitted to using the screams of a child as a sex toy.

Yup, yes he did. He did use those.

And he said he enjoyed listening to the screams of a child being beaten.

He told me once that he had been a victim of cryptorchidism...

...in his adolescence. Up until his adolescence.

And it hadn't-- It hadn't been diagnosed or treated until then.

The testes are undescended.

And what that does, of course, is it would...

...postpone the development of male secondary sex characteristics...

...until the testes are surgically brought down into the scrotum.

And I think that probably was also...

...a basis for...

...his feeling of otherness...

...into his early teenage years.

Leigh liked the attention he got from springboard diving.

Then, of course, as he got older, that was no longer, you know, a possibility.

And it-- That might have disappointed him a bit. Yeah.

And then, of course, when he could no longer teach...

...that, you know, knocked another leg off the stool.

His favorite thing was-- He thought he could talk about was red-fucking people...

...which we call RF.

And he had a real strong...

...hatred of authority.

He'd get even...

...if he thought he'd been slighted or, you know, something wrong.

He'd-- He was a very vindictive person.

Toschi told me these stories about Arthur Leigh Allen.

And as you know, the way that came about, I was visiting Toschi...

...and I said, "I'd read this book on criminology."

And they said, "You know what?

The guy who really did it will often try to help the police."

I said, "You know, Dave, you've got 2500 suspects.

Did one of them ever try to help you? Write you a letter?"

And Toschi says, "Yeah. I just got it and it's from prison.

And it's from Arthur Leigh Allen. It says, "I'm sorry it wasn't your man.

I wish I could help." I went, "That's certainly promising."

Well, eventually, Toschi starts talking about this trip to the oil refinery...

...where he'd met Allen.

And this had all been initiated by a man named Don Cheney...

...who was one of Allen's roommates...

...who was an engineer, who had been in the area...

...and left just before the series of murders had started.

Well, it was on that New Year's Day, 1969...

...when we had this conversation.

And I never saw him again after that.

The first thing we talked about when I arrived there...

...he showed me the watch...

...you know, he'd received at Christmas and it was in the box...

...with a card and everything was there.

And he asked me what I thought of it. Was it a good watch?

He had the attitude that maybe his mother had stiffed him...

...and given him a cheap watch.

But the watch was a Zodiac watch and it had that little symbol on the face.

He'd been fired from Valley Springs.

And I know that he really sent a lot of résumés to get that job.

And he liked it over there.

So he got fired and it looked like he wasn't gonna teach anymore.

And I was concerned about what he was gonna do and I, you know...

...went over there to kind of pep him up.

And talked to him about career choices and that sort of thing.

And started asking him what he was gonna do.

And through some conversation...

...we got up to a point where he was talking about...

...being a professional...

...criminal.

And he didn't need a good résumé for that. He could do it anyway.

He said he would give himself an identity and write letters to the editors...

...and he'd have a name and it would be Zodiac.

I told him I'd-- I thought, "Well, you could have a better name than that."

And he wasn't buying any of that, he was gonna be Zodiac.

So we got in the car and he drove me up...

...to Blue Rock Springs Country Club.

And we drove through the parking lot.

He'd talked earlier, when he talked about setting up this random killing situation...

...he said he knew some places where they parked...

...and he drove by there and showed me that place.

And then after we passed through there, we went back around to Lake Herman Road.

And came in past that side.

And we stopped there and Leigh seemed to want to linger there and look at the place.

And he described...

...what he would like to do to some girl at that place.

And it wasn't pretty.

When I was sitting there at that spot, he kind of kept slipping...

...from future tense into past tense on some of what he was saying to me there.

And I began to think, maybe this is something that was already history.

I went out there at midnight one time.

And the thing about Lake Herman Road, it's not just dark.

It's pitch-dark. This is a country road.

I mean, there are cows. I mean, I cannot see my hands.

And yet the bullets that were fired by Zodiac, at a run, are in a circle.

At some time while I knew him...

...he showed me a pistol...

...with a penlight attached to the barrel with masking tape.

And he says, "Point that at the wall and then look through the sight."

And I did and the spot was in line with the sight.

It was-- I could see that if you fired it...

...the bullet would go where that spot was.

Arthur Leigh Allen, according to his brother, Ron...

...was left-handed when he was born.

Back in those days, when he was born-- He was born in '36, I think.

Back in those days when you were born, it was kind of a scourge to be left-handed.

And his mother forced him to write right-handed.

Leigh was ambidextrous.

I never noticed...

...a preference for either hand.

Except I do know that he did a single twisting forward one and a half...

...the way a left-hander would.

And his double twister twisted in the right-hand direction.

Which, you know, to me is an impossible amount of confusion.

I can't imagine how he would accomplish that.

But it is an indication of a great deal of left-hand, right-hand confusion.

I always felt if he was actually the author of those letters...

...he wrote them with his right hand, you know.

And Toschi and Armstrong...

...from San Francisco Police Department felt the same.

They tried to get him to write right-handed.

When they did the search warrant, at the Sonoma trailer...

...and he just scribbled. He claimed he couldn't write with his right hand.

Earlier the same day, he used that phrase about...

...picking the little darlings off as they come bouncing off the bus.

He was into a rant about--

His feelings about the establishment and about the school system...

...and one thing or another.

So that was his part of blowing off steam.