antique, RobertUnmasked 1 страница

antique, RobertUnmasked

of ContentsPagePage1 - zodiac2 - robert hal starr3 - arthur leigh al en4 - arthur leigh al en5 - robert domingos and linda edwards6 - avery and the dark al ey7 - arthur leigh al en8 - arthur leigh al en9 - policeman and sailor10 - the devil11 - atascadero12 - witches13 - the voice of zodiac14 - suspects15 - arthur leigh al en16 - arthur leigh al en17 - zodiac suspects18 - arthur leigh al en19 - zodiac’s “dangerous game”20 - arthur leigh al en21 - zodiac at treasure island22 - arthur leigh al en23 - arthur leigh al en24 - zodiac I25 - arthur leigh al en26 - zodiac I returns27 - the big tip28 - the search29 - bel i30 - media starr31 - jack zodiac32 - the german hippie33 - zodiac34 - zodiac35 - the conference36 - zodiac I I37 - arthur leigh al en38 - the city at the bottom of the lake39 - unmaskedreferences

Berkley Bookby The Berkley Publishing Groupdivision of Penguin Putnam Inc.

Hudson StreetYork, New York 10014book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.© 2002 by Robert Graysmith.rights reserved.book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.our website at.penguinputnam.comof Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, Robert.unmasked: the identity of America’s most elusive serial killer revealed /Graysmith.. cm.bibliographical references and index.: 978-1-440-67746-5

. Starr, Robert Hall. 2. Serial murders—California—San Francisco Bay Area.

. Serial murderers—California—San Francisco Bay Area. 4. Serial murder—California—San Francisco Bay Area. I. Title..S3 G73 2002

.15’23’0979461—dc21

Berkley Books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fit specific needs.details, write: Special Markets, The Berkley Publishing Group, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.://us.penguingroup.comJANE the material in this book is derived from official records or interviews I’ve conducted over a thirty year period in my search for Zodiac. Mythanks to Inspector Dave Toschi, Detective George Bawart, and the editorial, legal, and production staff of this book: Gary Mailman, Liz, Hil ary Schupf, Heather Conner, Jil Boltin, Pauline Neuwirth, Esther Strauss, and especial y, Natalee Rosenstein, my editor.

in Costume by Robert Graysmith.’s line-cut il ustration of Zodiac in costume at Lake Berryessa.’s unmasked features first came into focus one blazing summer day upon the crystal face of a watch. The detectives inside the crampedstudied the large, expensive timepiece on the wrist of their prime suspect with dread. Such a commonplace object should not arouse fear—it did. It had taken them almost three years to winnow 2500 suspects down to a handful, among them a man named Starr. Now they saw Starr’s, smiling face reflected in that watch and they knew. The watch had been a catalyst for murder. Its stark black and white markings had inspiredunprecedented reign of terror. Its logo had given the kil er his symbol, a crossed circle, like a gun sight, and his name—Zodiac.Jack the Ripper and before Son of Sam there is only one name their equal in terror: the deadly, elusive, and mysterious Zodiac. Since 1968hooded murderer had terrified San Francisco and the Bay Area with a string of cold-blooded kil ings. He hid his true features beneath a blackexecutioner’s hood, emblazoned in white with his symbol. Zodiac, in taunting letters sent to newspapers, provided hidden clues to hiswith cunning codes. “This is the Zodiac speaking,” he began as always. “By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name—” His cryptograms defied the greatest code-breaking minds of the FBI, the CIA, and NSA.terrify the public, Zodiac employed arcane terminology and purposely misspel ed words. Sometimes he forgot himself and spel ed a wordwithin the same letter. He used mispunctuation and un-grammatical language in his letters, yet understood subtle grammatical usagesas “shal ” and “wil.” “I shal no longer announce to anyone when I comitt my murders,” Zodiac printed in blue felt-tip pen in November 1969.

“They shal look like routine robberies, kil ings of anger, & a few fake accidents, etc. The police shal never catch me, because I have been toofor them.” And Zodiac was clever, wearing glue on his fingertips to keep from leaving prints, and changing bizarre weapons with each attack.his weapons were a gun that projected a beam of light so he could hunt people at night, electronic bombs in his basement (targeted forchildren), a homemade knife in a decorated scabbard, and guns of every caliber. We were al afraid. Single-winged planes trailed schoolmanned by armed guards, a reaction to Zodiac’s threat to “pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.” With each whispered phone calcryptic message, each bloody scrap of victim’s clothing mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle, where I worked as a political cartoonist, agrew within me to uncover his true face.made Zodiac so irresistible to the human imagination was not only that he offered so many hints to his true identity, but that he was alwaysout of reach. Who could forget the phone receiver, stil damp with sweat and swinging from its cord, that Zodiac had used only moments? He had brazenly cal ed police from a booth four blocks from their headquarters. Directly after an attack, he was compel ed to gloat,cal ing his victims’ families, breathing silently into the phone—as if he were about to speak his name.knew Zodiac, whoever he was, as a man of many parts—cryptographer, criminologist, chemist, artist, engineer, bomb-builder, poet,master, and above al a practioneer of the rope, the gun, and the knife. The tension grew as Zodiac, unquenchable in his blood lust, hintedpreviously concealed murders. Had he made a past mistake that might reveal his true face? “They are only finding the easy ones,” he wrote.

“There are a hel of a lot more down there.” Zodiac may have been referring to the October 30, 1966 murder of a Riverside, California coed. Zodiacdrawn to attack or write on holidays—the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, Christmas, Hal oween, and Labor Day. In Southerna double murder on a beach on Whit Monday, a Virgin Island holiday, may have been his first, a rehearsal for a double stabbing at a lakeyears later. Zodiac had connections to the Virgin Islands, as did one of his victims.highly intel igent, Zodiac was not an original man. He had stolen his image and method of murder from a watch, movies, comic strips,a short story. His M.O. had been laid out in advance on the pages of his favorite adventure tale. Obsessed with the idea of hunting men as, Zodiac stalked young couples “because man is the most dangerous animal of al to kil.” His rampages occurred on weekends at dusk or atunder a new or ful moon. He cloaked himself in astrology (though that may have been a sham) and apparently cast his own horoscope towhen he struck. Or was Zodiac only “moon mad,” affected by the moon as the tides are?al the homicides attributed to him involved students kil ed in or around their cars near bodies of water and places named after water.always figured in his crimes somewhere. Possibly Zodiac was a swimmer, boatman, or sailor. Whatever he was, he knew Val ejo, a Navywhere the Northern California murders began, intimately. I was convinced Zodiac was a longtime Val ejo resident who knew his victims andstalked two for a period of time, one in particular.stil walked among us from the 1960s into the 1990s. He was not at work elsewhere. His massive ego and easily identifiable methodshave made him known instantly. He intended to play his game of “outdoor chess” to the death and on home turf. Surviving victims andwitnesses fled into hiding. Investigators themselves were fearful. In their hearts they knew there was no defense against the compulsive,kil er. Some eyewitnesses were never interviewed by the police or recontacted to be shown photos of suspects. I only found them decades. One had seen Zodiac unmasked and could identify him. Others had seen him cloaked in darkness, or in his hood, or at a distance. Al ofwitnesses had untapped and important information to give. The prime suspect had unique body language and, unbidden, the eyewitnesses alon Zodiac as “lumbering like a bear,” “clumsy,” “not very nimble.”in this book is an in-depth analysis of the two films that inspired Zodiac’s costume and M.O. and the short story that obsessed him.culture and the face of a watch may have inspired him, but Zodiac himself inspired not one, but three copycat murderers—in New York,ejo, and Japan. Beginning in 1986, I set out to tel the end of Zodiac’s chil ing story—using the complete FBI file on Zodiac, confidential statepolice files and internal and intradepartmental law enforcement memos, psychological and parole officer files, psychiatrists’ sessions with thesuspect, lie-detector tests, never-published newspaper stories, unused reporter’s notes, and outtakes from television interviews. I have triedmake this book as accurate an account as thirty years of research can provide.importantly, in this book, for the first time, are all the Zodiac letters and envelopes previously unreproduced. Quoted are copycat letters andZodiac letters mailed anonymously to me. Automatic writing done under hypnosis by Starr’s sister-in-law indicates she saw Zodiacin his hand before they appeared in the press. Starr had bragged to friends, long before there was such a person as Zodiac, that he wouldcouples with a gun that projected a beam of light, taunt the police in letters, and cal himself Zodiac. As one detective said, “If this story is true,he almost has to be Zodiac.” Recorded interviews with detectives and witnesses I conducted almost thirty years ago took on new meaning as Ihundreds of facts never revealed in print before.long pursuit and lure of the case, its mystery, tragedy, and loss, ruined marriages, derailed careers, and demolished the health of a bril iant. Zodiac’s story began with obsession, but its ending was a study in frustration. Police were beaten back time and again. Would the mostkil er in history, a cerebral, modern-day Jack the Ripper, escape them? Or would the dedicated teams of detectives and amateur sleuths althe world uncover the final secret of Zodiac? It was a toss-up whether or not police could ever prove that Starr, their bril iant and physical ychief suspect, was their man. Zodiac’s murders had taken place in different counties and, due to interdepartmental jealousy (Zodiac wasbiggest case of al), each police agency withheld vital information from the others. Not only that, but sexual sadists like Zodiac (who achievethrough the pain they cause others) become amazingly proficient at concealing their identities.begin unmasking Zodiac on a sultry July Fourth, and conclude on another, more lethal, Fourth of July. In between we learn of murders, a lonely man in his basement home, and a shadowy figure who might be Zodiac’s accomplice. But it had al begun with a watch. Instifling room on that summer day the cops kept reminding themselves, “It’s only a watch.” But they were stil afraid. That watch was the stuff of.

—Robert Graysmith San Francisco July 2001

, July 4, 1971’s face was everywhere. Across the il uminated showroom, his round face was reflected in the brass compass, duplicated in the shinysides of the Chris Craft, reflected in the deep and highly polished floor, mirrored in the brass work around him, and copied in a hundredshaft bearings. His stocky form was reproduced ful length in the floor-to-ceiling show window. Final y, the showroom closed, the holidayended, the lights were extinguished, and Robert Hal Starr departed. He lumbered toward the lot, an immense shape against the summer. As he went, he fished for keys to one of his many cars. Keys to cars he did not own jangled in his pocket.the end of the lot, Starr was a hazy blur—momentarily visible in the flash of the Volvo’s interior lights. He slid behind the wheel, gunned the, and expertly merged into freeway traffic. Soon, he reached Val ejo, a town typical of many other smal California towns baking in a sultrynight. Black skeletal derricks flashed by; battleships and three-tiered warehouses crouched in silhouette. Mare Island loomed as amass across the straits, and sailboats fleeted as oily smudges on San Pablo Bay. Skyrockets flared briefly above. The staccato pop-pop-of firecrackers was like gunfire. The smel of gunpowder was in the air. San Francisco towered thirty miles away, Oakland less than twenty, andthe north the fertile Wine Country stretched through sun-drenched Napa and Sonoma counties.town was ideal for a man with so many vehicles. Interstate 80, the main coast-to-coast route of the West, neatly bisected the suburb.29 and 37 and Interstate 680 twisted veinlike to its heart. Val ejo occupied a strategic position between San Francisco and the capital—where the river snaked down from Sacramento to greet the Bay Area—right where salt water embraced fresh. Here, a deepwater channel fortraffic linked the Sacramento and San Joaquin River ports. Surrounded by water on three sides, Val ejo was a water town—home for, a water-obsessed kil er—a sailor of the knife, a mariner of the gun and of the rope.braked at a chestnut-colored stucco two-story house slouching on the east side of Fresno Street. Spanish tiles traced the rooflines of thepitched dwel ing. At the rear, a modest chimney peeked over a field of weathered shingles. Left of the entrance stairs, a portico shrouded astile-and-rail door. From a bril iantly lit picture window, a woman’s lean shadow stretched to grotesque lengths across the sunburned. Bernice glowered at her son. Frequently, he stood for hours at the same Venetian window, motionless as if at the length of a chain.ago he had been a trim athlete, a potential Olympic swimmer, a former lifeguard at “The Plunge.” Now weight had swol en a face once leansun-bronzed from innumerable days of sailing and swimming. His light-colored hair, reddish in the summer, had thinned perceptibly, and apaunch disrupted the line of his athletic torso. Bernice considered his increasing girth a dreadful failing. Soon he would be nearly. She was a tal woman, almost as tal as her son. Starr’s health, splendidly robust in his youth, had perceptibly faltered. His hunter’shad dimmed. His flat feet and injured leg made any activity but swimming and trampolining difficult. Aimless hours spent guzzling Coors beerquart jars had taken their tol. He frequently parked in secluded rural areas, legs curled against the dash, until he cramped and could sit andand watch no more. His violent outbursts terrified Bernice. Squabbles between mother and son had always been fierce, but since his father’slast March their dinner table skirmishes had escalated. She often observed her son at the open trunk of his car, peering intently inside. Littlelooked back. “Damn chipmunks,” she thought.his spare time Starr, a crafty and silent Sagittarius, stalked chipmunks with a bow and arrow. Sometimes he used a.22, and at other times set. The tiny squirrels he snared alive were popular with the neighborhood children. On weekends kids circled him gleeful y, flags flying behindtwo-wheelers. Disregarding their parents’ warnings, the offspring flocked to see the “Chipmunk Man.” They adored feeding peanuts to his.Starr slammed the trunk lid shut and strode to the northeast side of the house. He trudged down a driveway to where a white Mercedesluminously in the dusk. The darker silhouette of a detached two-door garage skulked further back. A black shroud of ivy cascaded over the.creak at the side screen door alerted Bernice, and she hastened to fix supper. Wriggling chipmunks squealed, clinging to Starr’s broad’s shoulders. Giving his mother’s back a disdainful look, and stil wearing his living-fur wrap, Starr dropped down into his cel ar room.was most fearful of what her son stored in that basement. In that dreary tomb ticked something he had once cal ed his “death machine.”had been almost two years since Zodiac had murdered a taxi driver in San Francisco—longer than that since he shot and stabbed the others.in al that time Homicide Inspectors Bil Armstrong and Dave Toschi (pronounced Tahs-kee) had not forgotten the elusive Zodiac. Twenty-nineaway from the turbulent household on Fresno Street, past the lonely Emeryvil e mudflats and just across the Bay Bridge, they continued toat the Hal of Justice. On the street below, the red-neon “OK Bail Bonds” sign flashed twenty-four hours a day. “Zodiac actual y set out aenge,” Inspector Toschi recal ed. “‘I’m better than you,’ he taunted us. ‘Smarter than you,’ he said. ‘Catch me if you can.’ We intended to do just.”Zodiac terrorized the Bay Area, inundating local papers with his chil ing letters with bizarre references to popular culture, he invariably belittledSFPD for failing to halt his string of murders. Zodiac had made it personal, tantalizing them with masterly cryptograms—some so unbreakablethey baffled the brightest code-breakers the FBI, NSA, and CIA could field. Al but two homicides attributed to him involved couples—youngkil ed in or around their cars on weekends. He hinted at unknown murders, past and present.

“Zodiac struck out in savage rage,” speculated one psychiatrist, “against those who flaunted an intimacy he craved with an intensity only thefrustrated human can imagine.” Sex was never a factor in his motiveless attacks. Sadism was; the more pain he caused, the more pleasurefelt. Directly after an attack, Zodiac was compel ed to gloat, pitilessly writing or phoning his victims’ families, breathing silently into their ears—alike the rushing of wind. He used a different weapon each time, and when possible took something from each victim—car keys, a bloody, a wal et—trophies. He stil had them somewhere. Now if only Toschi and Armstrong could find them.’s rampages occurred at dusk (when he sometimes wore a grisly executioner’s costume) or at night under a new or ful moon. Bodies ofand places named after water drew him as metal to a lode-stone. Perhaps Zodiac was a sailor, swimmer, or boatman. Whatever he was, heVal ejo intimately—its back lanes and pebbled shortcuts, its black country roads and echoing quarries. Toschi was convinced he was aresident of Water Town.so Toschi and Armstrong developed new facts and shuffled yel ow sheets under the burning fluorescent lights of their fourth-floor office. Theythe minute hand of the big clock jerking intermittently, like a barely beating heart. At times it hardly seemed to move. Toschi leaned back inswivel chair, its springs complaining loudly. “What we need now,” said Toschi, looking across at Bil Armstrong, “is a good snitch.” Between theof that clock something happened—the detectives were about to come up with their most important lead yet in Zodiac’s seemingly endlessof terror. It would arrive by letter, the kil er’s chosen medium., July 15, 1971Beach is northernmost in a succession of al -American beach towns running south from LAX to the Palos Verde Peninsula. It rooststwenty miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles. Scores of wealthy white Angelenos inhabit the rows of pastel cottages hugging its shores.town’s main drag is Highland, and at 2:50 P.M. bronzed surfers were catching the best waves of the day as an unmarked cop car hurtled souththe broad avenue. Detective Richard Amos and his partner, Art Langstaff, were fol owing up a tip that had originated in Pomona. Twomen had information about Zodiac.skies were smog-tinged, the air muggy, but traffic was light. Amos sped east on Artesia, then spun onto lengthy Hawthorne Boulevard. A redhalted them. Impatiently, Amos drummed the wheel. The car idled, pumping exhaust onto the shimmering asphalt. He considered Zodiac—and insubstantial as vapor. Years of effort, and yet no one seemed able to lay a hand on him.informants were waiting in front of Science Dynamics, a computer bookkeeping business, as Amos pul ed to a stop. Santo Paul Panzarel a,

“Sandy” to his friends, was a Lawndale resident and owner of the company. His employee and col ege roommate, Donald Lee Cheney, was theanxious of the pair. The South Bay investigators had no sooner climbed out than Panzarel a and Cheney got to the point—they knew theof Zodiac.of the stifling heat, they named their man—Robert Hal Starr. They had known Starr almost ten years, since 1962, known him while attendingPoly in Pomona with Starr’s brother, Ron. Cheney had last seen Starr on a day as cold as today was blistering. Though Panzarel a had madecal that had summoned them, it was Cheney who told them the story.

“It was New Year’s Day afternoon,” Cheney said. “I was living in the Bay Area then—I drove to Starr’s home on Fresno Street in Val ejo. I’mmy visit was not later than January 1, 1969, because I moved to Southern California on that day. I remember specifical y it was the New’s after Starr was fired from Val ey Springs School up near the Mokelumne River. That had been in the early summer. As to Starr’s reason forVal ey Springs, he hemmed and hawed more than he said anything, and gave me some kind of lame excuse about it, but I never heard thestory. I helped him move back to Fresno Street. On New Year’s Day I came over to his house because my wife and I had been arguing and Ihad to get out of the house.

“We had gone to his apartment—at this time it was a one-car garage that had been converted into a room. You didn’t step down, the basementcame later. You just walked in at ground level. It had three exterior wal s—a window in the front, a window in the side, a smal window in the. There was a bathroom at the rear which had a window which let some light in there. The other part of the house was fairly wel isolated fromroom. I don’t remember ever hearing activity unless the mother was cooking. It was early afternoon.”read a lot of science fiction. On the table that day lay the August 1967 Fact and Amazing Science Fiction open to Jack Vance’s 15,000-story, “The Man from Zodiac.” On their last hunting trip Starr had talked about science fiction with Cheney. On several previous occasions heCheney had gone hiking and hunting in the woods northeast of San Francisco. In the twilight, rifles lowered, Starr had shared long, sometimes, discourses with him—talks about death. He was a huge silhouette in the dark, and his eyes glittered in the firelight as he expoundedtheories. “With Starr,” said Cheney, “you just get into conversations about ‘What if this?’ and ‘What if that?’ He had a way about him.”their final hunting trip Starr had abruptly changed the subject from science fiction to something total y unrelated. He first mentioned hunting,guided the conversation to an adventure story he had read in the eleventh grade—“The Most Dangerous Game.” Richard Connel ’s taut,tale concerned the hunting of men in a forest with bows and arrows and guns.

“Have you ever thought of hunting people?” said Starr.

“What?” said Cheney. Cheney recal ed other weird conversations with his friend before, and took this one in stride. He was wel acquainted with’s way of drawing people into his own interior fantasy world.

“It would be great sport to hunt people,” Starr elaborated in the night, using personalized expressions such as “If I did this” or “If I did that...” Athe cast his remarks in the form of a novel he intended to write someday. He was a powerful man, gesticulating in the dark.

“Beneath that fat,” said Cheney, “was steel.”day Starr’s eyes strayed to the unique watch he had gotten on his birthday only days before. “He showed me the watch first,” Cheney told the. “I remember the unusual logo symbol just above the pinion in the dial. When he showed the watch to me, it was pretty much like hean opinion about the quality of the watch. ‘I don’t think this is a very good watch,’ he said. ‘Wel, it’s a fine Swiss watch,’ I told him. ‘That’s awatch.’”began talking about his career. “It’s time to look for a new job,” he said. “I’m thinking about becoming a private eye, a private investigator‘Mike Hammer.’ That would be fun and interesting. I’m looking for something I can do on my own without having to be hired.”thought this was because he was having problems getting hired. “You don’t real y have the training,” said Cheney. “And you real y don’ta base of people who know who you are that you can get business from.” Cheney was not so much amazed at Starr’s idea, but honestlythat his frend was il -equipped for such a job. Starr seemed to read his thoughts.

“Wel, maybe I can create my own business by being a criminal,” said Starr, “And if I was, here’s what I’d do.”suggested he might go to a lovers’ lane area to seek out victims at night—attach a flashlight to a gun barrel and shoot them. “I would use theas an aiming device,” he said, “enabling me to walk up and gun down people in total darkness. As the shootings would be without motive,how difficult such murders would be for the police to solve. They would never catch you. You could then send confusing letters to the”—he might have said “authorities,” Cheney amended in an aside to Amos and Langstaff—“letters to harass and lead them astray.

“And I would sign them ‘Zodiac.’”

“‘Zodiac,’” said Cheney. “Why that? Why not something else? That’s stupid.” Cheney paused and said to the investigators, “I might have used the‘childish.’ I don’t remember exactly. Whichever word I spoke, it had a remarkable effect on him. He became emotional, very emotional, and Isorry I had said anything at al.”

“I don’t care what you think,” Starr had snapped. “I’ve thought about it a long time. I like the name ‘Zodiac’ and that’s the name I’m going to use., I would cal myself ‘Zodiac.’”Starr queried him about methods to disguise his handwriting and makeup to disguise himself, Cheney’s eyes roved over Starr’s room—to thepiles of papers and maps, and the rows of books on aviation and sailing lining the wal s, the stacks of Mad magazine. In the shadowy, among the clutter, he observed Starr’s Ruger single-six and Harrington Richards long-barrel. “The Harrington Richards was kind of old andand had the nine-shot cylinder,” he recal ed. “That was his arsenal as far as I knew, though he did come up with a rifle for deer hunting from, that and a pair of.22-caliber revolvers.”December 20, 1968, twelve days earlier, Zodiac had used a.22-caliber semiautomatic J. C. Higgins Model 80 to murder two teenagers outVal ejo’s lonely Lake Herman Road. These were his first known Northern California murders. The kil er utilized.22-caliber Super X copper-long-rifle Winchester Western ammo—the same brand used in double murders south of Lompoc in 1963. “Earlier in the day,” added, “he took me out Lake Herman Road and pointed out a roadside turnout. He didn’t signify its importance, but I think that’s where the twohad recently been kil ed.”discussed shooting the tire off a school bus and picking off “the little darlings.” He would shoot them as “they came bounding out” of the bus.doubted his friend would actual y be doing these things. “It was like we were talking about a plot for a book or something in that order,” hethe detectives. “It was not quite as if we were talking about real events. He kind of slipped in and out of the present. We were having that kind of. It gave me the shivers a little bit. Even then. That was the last time I ever saw him. I knew it was in my mind that I wasn’t going to seeagain.”Cheney got home that night, he told his wife, Ann, his friend was “acting strange.” “I moved quite shortly after that,” Cheney concluded. “Ithe opportunity for a job in Los Angeles. It didn’t have to do with him. It had to do with me finding work.”was silence. His words seemed to the detectives to be reasonable enough, the kind of things an honest man might say. The afternoon had. The detectives had spent over an hour with the men. Both Cheney and Panzarel a cautioned Amos and Langstaff as they left. “He is a veryigent man, but also a very impatient person. We think he carries a weapon at al times.”to their headquarters on 15th Street, the detectives asked Criminal Identification and Investigation (CI&I) in Sacramento to expedite’s “yel ow sheet,” a record of previous arrests, to them by Teletype. While they waited they had time to think. When Starr had made the remarksCheney was crucial. By Amos’s calculations those words were uttered only days after the first known Northern California Zodiac murders.y, al letters in which the murderer identified himself as Zodiac had been mailed after Starr and Cheney’s New Year’s Day discussion.until August 4, 1969 (though Toschi and Armstrong’s files said August 7) had Zodiac baptized himself in a three-page letter to Bay Area. Until then the phantom had no shape, no name, only a crossed circle scrawled at the bottom of three letters and ciphers delivered at theof July. There was no way around it. Panzarel a backed up Cheney’s story, and both seemed upstanding, astute, credible. Their words had theof Gospel. If what they said was true, then Robert Hal Starr had to be the notorious Zodiac.and Langstaff assessed what motives the two local men might have to lie. The length of time it had taken them to come forward puzzleddetectives. Zodiac had been a menace for years. A previous headline (“ZODIAC LINKED TO RIVERSIDE SLAYING”) spanning the LosTimes’s front page on November 16, 1970, had not flushed the friends out. For some reason a more recent letter had galvanized them.months before (March 13, 1971), the “Cipher Slayer” had written the Times from Pleasanton, a smal, sleepy town in Alameda Countythe Bay from San Francisco. As was his practice, Zodiac affixed excessive postage—two inverted six-cent Roosevelt stamps. As was his, he exhorted in block printing: “Please Rush to Editor.” The words “AIR Mail” took up a third of the envelope. Zodiac was a highly impatient. His letter covered most of the Times front page—big black headlines, bold as a declaration of war.

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