antique, RobertUnmasked 10 страница

“The thing that impressed me about the handwriting,” Detective Lynch recal ed, “every time I’d take a handwriting sample to Morril, he’d just sit atdesk and I’d hand it to him and ‘No good.’ He did that I don’t know how many times. Al I know is that when Zodiac was writing these letters, heeither drinking, smoking pot, or taking some kind of narcotics because it just seemed to me that as he wrote his handwriting would just.”Pascoe, a Department of Justice Document Examiner, reported to Armstrong. “If the writing had been a product of a mental state,” he said,

“the writing of a subject can be different when in a different mental state, or it could be a case of an intentional deception. With the talents that [Al en], writing with both hands, this could be done.” He later told Detective George Bawart that “a person of high intel igence could study the methodsto examine handwriting and fool a documents examiner.” Afterward Bawart reported, “Our handwriting expert, Cunningham, confirms that ifen had the ability to write with his left hand, this could explain the inability to match the handprinting to Arthur Leigh Al en.”listened intently to Pascoe. “Do not eliminate this subject because of handwriting,” he warned. But Morril, who had examined al thewritings of Zodiac, told Toschi and Armstrong that he did not feel a mental state would change a person’s handwriting. He was a rival of thePascoe and the two often differed on opinions. Armstrong was never able to reconcile this problem. It was not unprecedented. Peter, the Dusseldorf Ripper, wrote letters reproduced in the same newspaper his wife read each morning. She never recognized the writing ashusband’s. Kurten’s altered mental state while composing the notes made him a completely different person with a different handwriting. Iif Leigh had other personalities. “By the way, Robert,” Morril confided to me later (November 17, 1980), “I do now note that the printingAl en is doing is contrived and not natural to his own.”had thought they were real y going to find something. “As soon as we started getting information from the sister-in-law and the brother,” he, “I felt Al en was the one. It al sounded just perfect, but we just couldn’t find a way to prove that Leigh Al en was the Zodiac kil er. We had donebut stand Arthur Leigh Al en on his head. We found no physical evidence inside the trailer linking Al en to the Zodiac case. Everything he, according to his brother and sister-in-law, was in that trailer. We checked the Department of Motor Vehicles. He might have some otherand vehicles not registered. A very shrewd, very wily individual.”mistake lay in failing to obtain search warrants for Val ejo (in spite of Al en’s ailing elderly mother) and Santa Rosa. The detectives mighthad the misfortune to search the wrong place. From the inception of the murders, Zodiac had used the multiple-county strategy, striking insections of Val ejo or areas of confused jurisdiction between sheriffs’ and police departments. Benicia police actual y secured theHerman Road crime scene until Val ejo sheriff’s men could be brought in. And of course the VPD wanted part of the action. And so did theP.D.Arthur Leigh Al en was Zodiac, then after the trailer search, he had only to speed to his Val ejo basement and destroy al physical evidencehim with the crimes. And what of Al en’s other trailers? He might have caches in every county Zodiac kil ed in. “We were always,” said Toschi, “is there another vehicle nearby? We were just wondering if we could find the right one. The right piece of evidence that, ‘That’s him. Gotcha.’”

“When Armstrong met with Cheney and I in another meeting,” said Panzarel a, “that’s where I learned about the trailer search. Armstrong’s tel ingabout dead animals, al the vibrators Leigh had for having sex with himself, dildos and al that stuff. But they stil couldn’t get anything on him. TheI think, over the course of a lifetime, when I think of the most interesting people I’ve met in my life, Leigh certainly was one of them. And thewe know about him, the more we know he was certainly capable of doing something like that. You’ve got a smart guy who decides histo the culture is he’s going murder people in unincorporated areas mostly manned by smal police departments. You know it’s prettyto get away with that if you’re smart. It’s al circumstantial, but who else could it be but Leigh Al en. It frightens me, I’l tel you that.”thus the best Zodiac suspect of al had passed every one of the detectives’ tests and they went on to other suspects. So far Zodiac had sentpieces of the gray-and-white-striped sports shirt he had torn from Stine after shooting him. Toschi estimated, “That leaves about 120 squareof the shirt stil unaccounted for.” At the San Francisco Chronicle, we al awaited the next scrap of bloodied fabric and the horrifyingwrapped around it.

and sailor, November 13, 1972that blood-soaked letter did not arrive. Zodiac had apparently disappeared. But on the Southern California front, Zodiac’s shadow was notpresent, but looming larger. After sleuthing hundreds of hours, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department believed they had final y linkedto the deaths of Domingos and Edwards.July 1971, when Detective Baker of the Major Crimes Unit sent out a statewide Teletype, he’d asked for similars. “Both Bil Armstrong and Melgave me a cal,” he told me, “and expressed their suspicions that our case may be linked to Zodiac. Just on the basis of the description Ithem there was a good possibility Zodiac was responsible. I ended up traveling and talking to most of the investigators in most of thewhere the crimes were attributable to Zodiac. And just reviewing their cases and talking with them and they in turn reviewing what I had.

“Mel Nicolai, who I judged to be one of the single most knowledgeable people on al of the cases, told me he felt our case may wel be the work of. If it isn’t, it amazes me how someone could commit murders like those of Linda and Robert and not be heard from before or since. I’veon other serial-kil ing cases and the psychopathology involved in our case is no different. When the Lake Berryessa circumstances wereto me, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I’m sure you can discern the striking similarities.”as in the vicious Berryessa attack, the victims were students, a young couple reclining on a blanket by an isolated shore. A sexual sadistto target members of his own race, often chooses victims with specific occupations or similar characteristics. His apparently random victimschosen because they meet some psychological or symbolic need within the murderer’s system of delusions. A sadistic sociopathic kil er like, say FBI profiles, “selects his victims for the purpose of venting certain deeply rooted sexual and sadistic urges, such as the need to mutilateof the victim’s body to achieve sexual satisfaction.” Once he is captured, the kil er’s detailed and grisly confession itself is a brutal assaultin the face of the police.if Zodiac was choosing victims who were students like himself? Robert and Linda were targeted because their car on the road above hada roving kil er who fol owed their path down to the water. In both the Napa and Santa Barbara slayings the attacker brought along a knife, a, and precut lengths of clothesline. And why tie victims he intended to kil? So he could torture? A serial kil er’s pleasure springs from his abilityintimidate, command, and exert power over his captive. Terror and the power it brings are a sexual sadist’s trademarks because he feels terroris powerless. Such a man as Zodiac kil s those, young couples, who share an intimacy he is incapable of sharing. Gratified by the sight of a, whimpering hostage, he is al owed by the rope to prolong the kil ing as long as he wishes.

“Both victims were hit in the back (relatively close grouping considering they were running away when hit),” said Baker. That linked Baker’s caseZodiac’s Lake Herman Road shootings, also accomplished with accuracy and tight grouping. Zodiac had shot a fleeing woman with deadlywhile racing behind. He had done it in the pitch blackness of a country road.

“On the floor of the shack were two empty fifty-round boxes for Winchester Western Super-X.22 long-rifle cartridges,” said Baker. “Spent casingsbeen found along Robert and Linda’s flight path. They had six lands and grooves with a right-hand twist.” Zodiac had used Super X copper-.22 long-rifle ammo in the Lake Herman murders. The double murders had been committed on December 20, 1968, two days after Al en’sfifth birthday. The recovered slugs, in good condition, also had a right-hand (clockwise) twist with six lands and six grooves—a “six and six.”

“Stock numbers on the boxes found in the shack could be traced,” Baker explained. “The ammunition lot number was TL 21 or TL 22. Our W-Wwas probably purchased at Vandenberg Air Force Base Exchange based on the fact that it was the nearest source for that lot number. Thestore anywhere within a hundred miles that sold it was VAFB. It was determined to a degree of probability to have been purchased there., it could be that the same ammo lot number (metal urgical-common origin/batch) was available at other bases as wel. The usual clerk atbase exchange at the time was a man named Summers or Sumner. The SAC unit base near Lompoc is less than an hour’s drive from thescene. That was just one more thing that told us that there might be a connection to Zodiac—I was also considering March AFB or Travis.

“It’s not so much hard evidence that links Zodiac with the double murder here, but the pattern of the slaying. We don’t have any corroborating, bul et or casing marks, or eyewitness observations. If there had been any shoe prints, anything identifiable, I would have jumped on thatfor the possibility because I was aware of the Lake Berryessa case.” The shoes Zodiac wore at Lake Berryessa in September 1969 were soldbase exchanges only. “Military shoe prints would have been significant. And if there had been anything, I certainly would have remembered. Whether or not the Riverside case was a Zodiac kil ing, our case preceded the others by at least three years, far earlier than would be. There appears to be a high degree of probability that this subject is responsible for the double murder in our county. Several significantbetween our case and the others, as wel as other evidence, al tend to connect Zodiac with this crime.

“When I last talked to Bil Armstrong at a CHIA conference in San Francisco, he told me he’d never think of the Zodiac murders without includingcase as one of them. I never had contact with Dave Toschi after our initial meeting at their office in 1972. I’ve felt very strongly about it ever. It’s not something that goes away over time. It’s the kind of thing that sticks with you.” Baker was the kind of cop who would never give up.of Jack the Ripper, there had never been a greater uncaught or more elusive monster than Zodiac.

“The very real possibility of a connection of our case to the core Zodiac case,” said Baker, “is the impetus that has brought me to believe that myold suspicion of our case being the work of Zodiac was not misguided. Not to overstate the role of the Domingos/Edwards case in theof ultimately solving the Zodiac mystery, I wil emphasize again that I firmly believe, within the context of what is probably his first murderous, that within our case lies the solution.”himself had provided the link between himself and Baker’s case, and had done it in such a devious manner that I only recently tumbled to. It took an understanding of Zodiac’s mind-set of mirror images and transparencies to unravel his visual clue. In his letter of June 26, 1970, Zodiaccircled double-peaked Mount Diablo on a cut section of a Phil ips 66 road map. Apparently, Mount Diablo was important to him—its elevation3849 feet cal ing to mind that Stine died in front of 3898 Washington, an address Zodiac himself chose. The map, coupled with a two-line codethe bottom, supposedly told where his bomb was set. On July 24, he dropped another clue. “PS.,” he wrote. “The Mt. Diablo Code concerns[a mathematical term representing an angle of measure] &#inches along the radians.” Mt. Diablo is a bench mark used by the U.S.Survey to separate north, south, east, and west—the towns connected by a 57-degree radian. The map also mentioned something amight use—“magnetic north.” An “F”-shaped symbol coupled with a backward “7” appeared twice on his threatening Hal oween card to Avery.

“F” stood for wind speed and direction—north at fifteen to twenty miles an hour. The complete symbol was also an exact copy of a cattle brand usedFred Harmon’s Pagosa Springs, Colorado, ranch. Harmon’s comic strip cowboy hero, Red Ryder, was a highly recognizable salesman for airduring the 1940s and ’50s.

“Zodiac’s Mt. Diablo code is a binary spacing code,” an expert told me. “The top line is the alpha line, the bottom line is the beta line. This codeGreek letters, which are to be used as numbers. Example: Alpha=1, and Beta=2. Delta=4. The code operates by the key code letter, anddown Greek Gamma, Gamma=3. Therefore, to start this code, you ‘ask’ the code key questions, like: Who are you, what is your message?”the map said something entirely different, something visual., I knew that Leigh loved Mad magazine and that the Zodiac code of April 20, 1970 (“My name is—”) could read “ALFRED E NEU-MAN”deciphered. “By the way have cracked the last cipher I sent you?” he asked in the same letter. Cracked magazine was Mad’s chief. Since May 1964, Mad had featured a visual puzzle on its inside back cover, a “Fold-In.” The instructions read: “Fold this section over, then fold back so ‘A’ meets ‘B.’” I folded the map so that the ruled corners met at the right edge. Then held the map up to the light so that theshone through. The crossed circle with an arrow at the twelve o’clock position pointed to the exact site of the Domingos/ Edwards murders.Mount Diablo, Leigh began to sail again, losing himself in a seemingly endless thousand-mile maze, the Delta. The huge tideland marsh,by the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, was diked with countless levees for flood control. Yet Al en never real y lost himself in those twisting. A point of reference, Mount Diablo, constantly towered in the distance—the amount of acreage visible from its peak second only to thatfrom Mount Kilimanjaro. With his flat feet, Al en felt most at home on the water or in the air.

“Big” Dan Blocker, 350-pound star of the Bonanza television western, had died suddenly during the previous summer. Al en ceased wearing hiswhite cowboy hat. He could no longer be “Hoss.”, November 21, 1972anniversary of sorts—three years earlier, David Odel Martin came to the FBI’s attention when he slashed his wife and eleven-year-oldwith a broken bottle and knife. Just before police fatal y shot him, Martin shouted, “I’m the Zodiac kil er!” Armstrong immediately informedFBI: “Martin is definitely not identical with UNSUB in this matter.” Toschi told me, “In the first four years of the Zodiac case, I would say aboutmen have told cops throughout the country that they are Zodiac. Some of them were drunk at the time, some had obvious mental problems,rest were being booked on other charges and were seeking publicity.” When cranks weren’t confessing, rumors took the place of new leads ininvestigation. One such attributed an undertaker’s murder and theft of his embalming fluids to Zodiac.Santa Rosa, thirteen-year-old Lori Lee Kursa went shopping at the U-Save Market with her mother. Blue-eyed, long blond hair parted in the, she was distinctively dressed in polished-denim bel -bottoms, a brown leather jacket, and brown suede cowboy boots. Around 5:30 P.M.apparently wandered off. Half an hour later, Lori was observed briefly by a family friend, Barbara, in the same market, but after that nothingwas seen of her. Immediately, her mother reported her missing. The search dragged on through November and into the first week of, but police unearthed no leads. “You know what was strange about our victims?” Santa Rosa Sergeant Steve Brown later told me. “Theone he threw in the ditch was found by bike riders the next day, so he decided, ‘I better hide them a little bit better.’ Then he ended up throwingout by Franz Val ey and it’s pretty remote. You would need to know that area. You don’t just drive there. I recently re-drove it. Of course if theer lived here and drove around a lot he would know. I’m thinking about a guy who’s living in Lake County or Napa County who traveled that roadand forth and who worked over here. If you are going out of Santa Rosa, the dumps are al on the left side of the roadway. You wouldn’t pulcar over to the left side, facing the wrong way, to dump a body. He’s not going to park on the right side, drag the person across the road andthem. It doesn’t make sense. I was thinking, just like you, he goes out, there’s a shed, trailer or barn that he uses. And after they’re dead, whencomes back, he’s now on the right side of the roadway. That’s when he stops and dumps them and then goes back into Santa Rosa.”December 12, a hiker, Lex Moore, stumbled across Kursa’s body in a ravine, about fifty-five feet from Calistoga Road. She had beenat the scene completely nude and her body had frozen from the extreme cold. Police estimated she had been dead only a week, thoughhad been missing for three ful weeks. She had been kept alive “somewhere,” but they had no suspects.had broken her neck, dislocating her first and second cervical vertebra. “Strangulation,” Stanford’s Dr. Lunde explained to me, “is notshooting someone with a gun. It involves a kind of muscular tension... the sensations that come from that play a part in the sexual aspect ofpeople for which sex and aggression seem to be intertwined. It is also a way of proving to the person their power over the victim. Assertion ofpower, and since that is a big part of the enjoyment for these people, it is prolonged by strangulation.... I know one such person who very, more than one, at least two, have volunteered they would take twenty, thirty minutes to strangle victims to prolong the pleasure so to.”’s unusual clothes were missing. She had not been sexual y assaulted. Unsuspected by the police, the solution to another mystery lay onlyhundred yards away. There, a shal ow grave in a ravine near the roadway concealed Jeanette Kamahele’s corpse—her hands and anklesto her neck and white clothesline wrapped around her neck four times. But because the area was deeply wooded, police failed to find herwould not for many years—not until July 6, 1979., December 28, 1972four in the afternoon, twenty days after a freakish snow dusted Twin Peaks and Golden Gate Park, two men discovered the bones of MaureenSterling and Yvonne Weber. They were off a rural road 2.2 miles north of Porter Creek Road in the Franz Val ey Road area. A powerful, to avoid leaving tracks, had bodily lifted the corpses over shrubs and a ditch, then hurled them down a sixty-six-foot embankment., he considered his victims as rubbish to be dumped.of death and any sexual assault were impossible to determine, but patterns linked the homicides to the others. The kil er had murderedelsewhere and kept their clothes. And the kil er tied knots like a seaman. How would those knots match up with those in the Santa Barbara—granny knots and marline hitches? The victims had been abducted in this rotating order: on Friday, Saturday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday,Tuesday. Al vanished around 5:00 P.M. in a period of growing darkness. Al had been found in the rural, semi-isolated eastern section ofCounty near lakes, rivers, ditches, and streams. The Santa Rosa crimes were water-related by name: Mark Springs, Calistoga (Water),Val ey. The furthest point between discovery sites was sixteen miles. Sterling, Weber, and Carolyn Davis, with a seven-month gap, werein the exact same spot—2.2 miles north of Porter Creek Road on Franz Val ey Road. However, Kim Al en may have been sexual y assaultedthat did not fit Zodiac’s pattern.

“As far as the murders go,” continued Baker. “I was almost thinking a postman or PG&E guy just because of the places that they go. The last girlwas found was in a very remote creek. It’s not a place where you can dump them off the side of the road and they land there. The three on Franzey Road were found in the same location along the side of the road. You don’t have to throw far to get where they landed. The last one we had increek, I don’t know how the hel he got her in there.”months earlier, officers on the way to the Santa Rosa area that a kil er had used as a dumping ground for murdered Santa Rosa coedsstopped in their tracks. Walking down the road toward them and from the secluded murder area was Arthur Leigh Al en. “I travel this road to godiving,” he said. In the same direction Al en visited two friends at Clear Lake. “Leigh always picked up hitchhikers especial y while attendingRosa JC and Sonoma State University,” a source told me. “This always bothered my mother. He picked hikers up on the highways. Ithe two girls disappearing from the skating rink and the other murders. Those bodies discovered on Franz Val ey Road and in Calistoga’t far from my parents’ home.”, December 29, 1972August 4, 1971, when police questioned Leigh for what they erroneously believed was the first time, Zodiac had sent no letters. But weneeded more clues from the kil er. We already knew a lot about Zodiac. He could be caught if we put our minds to it. Al the early suspectssingled out because their handprinting was like Zodiac’s or they resembled the composite sketch. Few were as tal or heavy as the kil ery was; some were slender as a boy.had three qualities, had to have these qualities—he was strong and he was smart and he possessed specialized technical proficiency in, chemistry, firearms, engineering, electronics, and bomb-making. More tel ing, Zodiac knew forensics, leaving behind false clues and wearingon his fingertips. In fact his marksmanship skil s, knowledge of police I.D. techniques, and use of Highway Patrol cutoff maneuvers to box in hispointed to Zodiac being a policeman. Two victims had been reaching for their licenses when he blinded them with a flashlight anda fusil ade of bul ets.yet Zodiac was compel ed to deride police in his letters, the thril of baiting them becoming a powerful motive in his game of outdoor chess.taunted authority as if striking out against a control ing figure in his daily life—a boss, a father, or a policeman. Serial sadists, enraptured withvarious tools of police work and with policemen themselves, were frequently police groupies. Some sexual sociopaths dressed in uniform whenand torturing their victims, often applied for police work, or expressed a desire to work in some law enforcement capacity. Invariably theyoffer aid in the hunt for themselves. The known serial kil ers were remarkably alike.agent John Douglas’s psychological profile of the Atlanta child murderer spoke volumes. He said the kil er “would live in the area, sometimesas a police officer, show extreme interest in media coverage of the case, and have difficulty relating to members of the opposite sex. In fact,who lived near [the suspect Wayne] Wil iams thought he was a policeman because he drove cars that looked like police cars, showeda badge, and ordered them around.” Wil iams monitored police-band radio, just as California multiple murderer Ed Kemper did. Kempera local bar to become pals with off-duty policemen. “He showed me his gun and his handcuffs right here in the bar,” recal ed the. “He handcuffed a friend and shoved him up against the wal.... You see, Kemper always wanted to be a policeman. Al his friends were. He used to talk about it al the time... said he had been hired as a security guard somewhere in the Bay Area—but he was only a big guysometimes worked as a gas station attendant.” After slaying his mother, the Santa Cruz giant left a note behind, ridiculing his former friends onforce.Bundy used a gold badge and handcuffs to masquerade as “Officer Roseland” at a Salt Lake City shopping center. One of the “Hil side,” Kenneth Bianchi, had wanted to be an L.A. policeman, even taken a police science course at a Rochester community col ege. Whenapprehended Bianchi in Bel ingham, Washington, he was enrol ed as a deputy in the sheriff’s reserve training program. His white, late-modelwith silver spotlights mounted on both sides resembled a police car. Inside his black attaché case he carried a highway patrolman’s badgecuffs.Wayne Gacy, as a youth, dressed in the policelike uniform of his local civil defense squad. Fascinated by the trappings of law enforcement,obsessively fixed upon James Hanley, a detective with the hit-and-run unit. Gacy became “Jack” Hanley, a brutal, muscular homicide cop whoonly in his mind. Jack, “a devoted hater of homosexuals,” was the savage, sadistic cop that Gacy both admired and feared. When Gacydrunk or stoned, his alter ego assumed control and committed the acts a sober Gacy never could.2 Because Jack had been in charge, Gacythe details of his crimes. He forgot the acts he had committed on the boys he buried in the wal s of his house. Fantasy Detective Jacknightly forays into the seamy sections of town, cruising slowly in an old black Oldsmobile, radio scanner squawking, spotlight and red lights. Dressed in a leather jacket, trousers, and highway patrolman’s shoes, Gacy picked up boys and handcuffed them. Some psychiatristsZodiac as being at least “a latent homosexual to whom bul ets and knives afforded perverse satisfaction.”. Lunde warned to look for a suspect who had a col ection of guns and early interest in guns, knives, and various instruments of torture. “As an,” Lunde wrote in Murder and Madness, “a col ection of such instruments, proficiency in their use, and an emotional attraction to weapons mayseen which goes far beyond that of any ordinary col ector.” Serial kil ers wil become incredibly skil ful in their use. Whenever Zodiac’s lair wasand a search made, I was certain huge numbers of weapons would be present—guns, bombs, or the “Death Machine” Zodiac bragged. Had Arthur Leigh Al en—like Wil iams, Bianchi, Kemper, Bundy, and Gacy—once wanted to be a policeman?had.May 2, 1952, Al en, then nineteen, sought employment with the Val ejo Police Department. They turned him down. “He applied right out of highto be a Val ejo cop,” a source explained, “and they said no. Therefore he had a very good reason for hating the Val ejo Police Department—.” Al en offered his heart to the law again much later. On June 11, 1964, he was a non-certified personnel applicant at the Watsonvil eDepartment. Watsonvil e spurned him too. Sometimes it seemed everyone did. “Wel, there you go,” said Toschi. “A guy who is a ‘wannabe’and cannot make it, hates al cops. It’s been proven. They hate any authority figure after that because they couldn’t pass whatever tests were.”clairvoyant Joe DeLouise, who felt tuned into Zodiac’s mind, agreed. “The person who created Zodiac was somebody very familiar withenforcement,” he said. “I think he was an ex-cop. In his letters to the police he knew everything that was going on with the police. He knew his. I feel he wil kil until he is caught.” Had Leigh, like Kemper, gotten close to the police and learned about the impending search of his trailer?Highway Patrolman Lynn Lafferty had been Leigh’s childhood friend, and possibly Al en may have wanted to emulate him. Lafferty hadanxiously searching for Zodiac on his own.had been an occasional teacher at Travis AFB, where Wing Walker shoes were sold at the base exchange. He qualified for exchangeon several counts—as a dependent of a Navy commander, an employee, and as a former Navy man. Naval enlistments ran from four toyears (with thirty days leave each year), but Leigh served only from 1956 to 1958. I was told why. “Al en was in the military—in the Navy,” theof a woman Leigh once dated platonical y told me. “What led to his being discharged was his arrest by the Val ejo Police Department forthe peace [on June 15, 1958]. He had gotten into a fight with a friend [Ralph Spinel i]. He went into the Navy in 1956, was in there two, and less-than-honorably discharged—a cheap way to get rid of someone you don’t want. I think Leigh Al en was trying to become a frogmanthe Navy. For either psychological or physical reasons they would not accept him into the program for deep diving or being on the submarines forlengths of time. My mother remembers this as a very, very large disappointment for him. I believe he did have an intense dislike for his fatherof his militaristic attitude. I believe that when my mother was ever at his house, he had to address his father as ‘sir.’ Perhaps his father’shad something to do with this also. My mother felt this period of time had a great influence on his life.”civil charges were dismissed on July 8, 1958, Al en received a “less than honorable discharge” from the Navy late that year. One of theary reasons for his expulsion was that he had again left weapons in plain sight in his car. From 1959 on he listed his draft status as “Non-active duty and reserve time, USN.” Because of the police, Al en’s greatest ambitions would never be realized. He would never become aSeal or submarine commander or cop. By the end of 1972 Al en had at least five reasons for hating the police—his rejections by Val ejo ande P.D., VPD’s arrest of him and resulting Navy discharge, his firing from the refinery, and the humiliating search of his trailer. If he were, he had a sixth reason to despise cops—SFPD had nearly captured him.the Navy Al en had worked on a refrigerator ship, mostly scraping and painting hul s in the bright California light. “Leigh was also an excel entin the Navy,” my Val ejo source verified, “one of the best in his group. Additional y, he often wrote to my mother and used the signalsby the flags at the bottom of the letters [Zodiac symbols in the letter codes could be matched to various semaphore flags]. Yet she burned theafter her knowledge of Leigh later being sent to Atascadero.”had even taken training in code. Zodiac had a masterful knowledge of code. “He did know code, and not only sewed wel but was a sail,” said a source. The neat stitching on the hood worn by Zodiac at Berryessa suggested a man who could sew. It was doubtful Zodiac couldanyone else to sew him an executioner’s hood. Leigh not only learned aquatic scuba diving during his Navy stint, but briefly worked as a wire, third-class radioman. Napa Captain Narlow was convinced that whoever Zodiac was, he also had technical knowledge of a #15 Teletype—he had duplicated its circuitry on one of his bomb plans and an early note attributed to him had been on Teletype paper.

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