antique, RobertUnmasked 23 страница

starr, May 22, 1991Val ejo Times-Herald headlined: “Signs Point to Val ejo Man; Investigation into Bizarre Zodiac Murders Goes On.”

“VALLEJO—Val ejo police seized pipe bombs, an underwater Zodiac watch and other items earlier this year from the house of a Val ejowho was a prime suspect in the stil -unsolved 1969-70 Zodiac kil ings. No charges have been filed against Al en for possession of the, which he said belonged to an ex-convict who is now dead. And the police investigation remains a mystery. In 1971 San Franciscotargeted Al en as the prime suspect in at least six unsolved California murders and two attempted kil ings in the 1960s. The kil er wased Zodiac because of the cryptic messages he loaded with astrological symbols and sent to the news media and police investigatorsthe kil ing spree.

“A series of cryptic letters from the Zodiac came to a three-year halt after Al en’s Santa Rosa trailer was searched, Robert Graysmith notes his 1986 book ‘Zodiac.’ Similarly, in 1975, when Al en was committed to an institution on a child molesting conviction, Zodiac’sceased for two years until his release. The linked murders of hitchhikers around Santa Rosa also came to a halt, Graysmith. Val ejo police have refused to confirm or deny any motive for reopening the investigation.”

“Do I expect an imminent arrest in regards to Zodiac?” said Val ejo Police Chief Gerald Galvin. “No, I do not. It’s an ongoing and sensitive.”

“Al en looked very good,” Toschi told the press. “We searched a Santa Rosa trailer where he lived part-time in 1972. But an analysis of hisdid not match partial prints found on a Zodiac victim’s cab in 1969. We could not find enough evidence on which to convict Al en. I can’twhy Al en was dismissed as a suspect.”, May 29, 1991

“Let me tell you what’s happened here,” Pete Noyes told me. “Apparently this suspect [Al en] had a series of meetings with a psychologist inejo. The psychologist was afraid this guy might kil him. And relayed this information on to a friend and that’s where it al stands now. Thefeared for his life. He works for some institute up there and he gave al this information. The information is out there right now. Theseare trying to sel me the information down here in L.A.”

“Don’t pay a penny,” I cautioned.

“They’ve got a series of tapes and al that,” he concluded.

“Tapes?”, June 1, 1991same individuals tried to sel the tapes to Unsolved Mysteries and were turned down. But Noyes told me, “The cops are very interested. Theis there. There was some concern that an analyst should not reveal statements made during private sessions.”

“I think that under the law,” I said, “if a person is a danger to society, an analyst can turn session tapes over.”

“The psychiatrist’s brother is a San Francisco cop and they decided to solve the murder on their own,” said Noyes. “They went and staked outen’s home about eight or nine months ago. A woman went in posing as a real-estate agent. He got wise to her and started screaming and yel ingher and chased her out of the house. He got the license number of her car. It was registered to her mother. Two days later, there was a deathmade on her mother.

“The psychiatrist treated Al en in the late 1970s as a condition of his release. They have al this information. What they said to me is that this guythem more than anyone knows who’s not wel versed in the case. The guys who have been staking out his house got al this information from the. I just did a check to see if the informant is not a criminal or anything. He’s a fifty-three-year-old man with no criminal record.”didn’t correct him. “What’s your next step?” I asked.

“I want to listen to those tapes.” So did I, I thought.

“Are you going to pay the guy?” I asked. I never trusted the validity of information that was purchased.

“I’m not going to pay him anything.” He cal ed back soon after. “Wel, I’ve got Val ejo P.D. coming in here. They’re real excited. They say they’reclose to solving the case.”spoke with Jackie Ginley and the Val ejo P.D. because I had gotten a number of cal s from NBC and CBS television about Zodiac concerning

“some tapes.” “Do you think they do this periodical y, cal up with a hook on the story and try and sel it?” Jackie asked, referring to the tapes for. “I’m getting some cal s here from people who knew Mr. Al en back in high school. A lot of people. But you know how it is working on a daily, there’s not much time to devote to something like that.”, June 11, 1991and Conway studied Mulanax’s files from 1971, then went and talked to some of the same people he had. “A lot of what the informantstel ing Conway and Bawart in the early nineties,” a source told me, “they didn’t tel Mulanax. Maybe they were afraid back then to come, but now in 1991 they’re not so afraid anymore and just want to get the guy.”

“Captain Conway and I re-interviewed Phil Tucker,” Bawart told me. “Tucker worked for GVRD. He wasn’t real y a friend of Al en’s. He was an, as many other people were [who were] involved in any kind of athletics in that period of the time. This interview was in the infancy ofI was doing background work on Al en.”’s seven-page report, Circumstances Which Indicate Arthur Leigh Allen Is, In Fact, The Zodiac Killer, would grow to thirty items. 17

“During our interview Phil Tucker was unable to remember that Arthur Leigh Al en had told him that he [had] special [electronic gun] sights forin the dark. He did, however, indicate that Al en told him he was proficient in shooting and proficient in shooting in the dark. Arthur Leighen had told him he had read a book... about hunting people with a bow and arrow.”recal ed, “Al en was fascinated with the concept of stalking people rather than game. He indicated a number of times that it would besport to hunt people as they had intel igence. We were on our way to the beach to go scuba diving when he started discussing hunting tripsended up talking about hunting people with bows and arrows. I felt he wanted my reaction to these statements. I told him I would never considerpeople. He tried to make it seem like this was an idea for a book he was going to write. I got the idea that he was real y saying, ‘Is thisyou’d like to do with me?’ I just ignored him. I think he told me the name of the book he had read.”

“Was the name of the book The Most Dangerous Game?” asked Bawart.

“I don’t think so.” Possibly Al en had mentioned not a book, but a 1945 film, A Game of Death, a remake of The Most Dangerous Game. “Thistook place prior to September of 1966 as that’s the month and year I married my first wife. That is why I recal the time easily. I did notAl en to any great degree, nor go out on hunting and fishing trips with him, after my marriage.”

“Do you know Donald Cheney?” asked Bawart. Stalking people at night with a gun had been part of the conversation Cheney said Al en had withNew Year’s Day, 1969. Zodiac had also al uded to hunting people in his cryptogram.

“I do not,” said Tucker.

“Why didn’t you give this information to Toschi and Mulanax in 1971?”

“I only answered their questions. They did not ask me so I didn’t tel them. I was not asked about any fantasies Al en may have related to me.”also indicated that during the span of their conversation, he saw Al en had a Zodiac brand watch with a Zodiac symbol. Tucker alsothat he had seen Al en write with both hands. “He uses both hands equal y wel when handprinting, but his handprinting is not real good.”also mentioned that Al en had an interest in codes, and repeated that he had seen a handwritten Zodiac-type cryptogram at Al en’s house.

“This was prior to any cryptograms being published in the newspaper,” he said. “Al en was the kind of fel ow who loved to try and outsmart the other.”related, as he had for Mulanax and Toschi, that in 1969, he owned an older brown beat-up Corvair. Al en had driven this Corvair, butcould not specifical y indicate whether Al en drove this Corvair on July 4, 1969. Mike Mageau had described an older brown vehicle, “similara 1963 Corvair, older and bigger, old plates,” as being the kil er’s vehicle., July 25, 1991Allen became more than a name in the police files—he was the subject of the nightly news. “My first occasion to meet Arthur Leigh Al en wasJuly of 1991,” reporter Rita Wil iams recal ed. “We had gotten wind that Captain Conway and his folks had served a search warrant back on’s Day of that year and it was about to be unsealed. We first talked to the captain.”

“Why,” Wil iams asked Conway, “haven’t there been any charges brought against Al en when you found pipe bombs in his residence?”

“I’m not going to comment on an ongoing investigation,” replied Conway.

“Do you think you are close to getting the case solved... any closer than you were twenty years ago?”

“Honestly, I don’t think so,” he concluded.

“Then,” recal ed Wil iams “just on a lark, my cameraman and I went to Al en’s to see what we might get. It was late one evening. It was summerstil light outside, but beginning to get dark. My cameraman and I walked up to his door, and Nick sort of hid in the bush while I knocked onen’s door. Al en was not clothed. He had on his bathrobe and yel ed out the window, ‘Just a moment.’ Final y he came to the door. When I told himI was doing, he surprised me by saying I could come in.”iams had interviewed both the “Night Stalker” and the “Trailside Kil er.” “I was alone in their jail cel s,” she recal ed, “but of al the people I’veinterviewed, none had ever given me chil s like Arthur Leigh Al en. That was the thing that got me. He had this demeanor about him. He wasso big and so kind of apelike—just scary. It’s hard to describe, but you could see the strength. And that some of things he was accused of, you could see he could, in fact, accomplish. He was the kind of man that, even though he was very sick—at that time he was on kidneyand had high blood pressure, was taking al sorts of medication—he was stil a frightening presence.

“When he had agreed to my request for an interview, I paused. I had second thoughts. He had not seen my photographer some distance away,I was not going into that house alone. Final y, the photographer was al owed to enter too. At first Al en told us we couldn’t take any pictures. Hewanted to see what we were doing there. But over the course of the next hour and a half, we sat down and had a discussion with him.

“He had that sort of barrel chest, huge shoulders. He wasn’t al that heavy, because he was on dialysis then. Even though he was sick, everythinghim was ominous. He had on a housecoat and combat boots—big heavy boots—‘clomp, clomp, clomp!’ Then later, he changed clothes inmidst of the interview.” Al en donned a transparent blue sport shirt, vertical y ridged with two filigreed designs and unbuttoned to show his broad. His herringbone pants were old-fashioned, pleated and a grayish brown. On his right wrist a Band-Aid covered a needle mark made that.iams, blond, attractive, and long-legged, was dressed in a short red jacket over a black tailored suit, accented by gold jewelry. They made ancouple as Al en led her through a tangled, disorderly garden. A chain-link fence reinforced with wood and wire ran along the perimeter. Al enout where the police had retrieved bombs from beneath the house. “Al en talked about how the police had robbed him of stuff,” recal ediams, “harassed him and taken things he had never gotten back—sentimental stuff from his mother. He was quite upset.” A hot wind rosethe pearl-gray sky.descended into the dusty basement room. It was warmer there. Wil iams sat with her back to a rugged homemade bookshelf of unfinished. She studied the items on the wal. Was that a Boy Scout felt band with every badge they awarded? Was it Al en’s? A local child’s? Dustan audio device—sounding machinery used in diving; a few diving, swimming, and spear-fishing trophies lined a shelf. Varioussupplies were above her head. A Dustbuster (covered with dust) hung from the wal. On the floor a gal on container with a handle satto a smal table. On that table, captured in the glow of a swivel lamp, lay a clutter of electronic equipment—a stereo, a reel-to-reel tape, video games, a VCR, audio cassettes, and a black-and-white phone. A copy of Zodiac was under one of the audio cassettes. Near asat an almost empty stein of beer though Al en was not supposed to drink. There was a glass ashtray, though Al en did not smoke. An emptyplate had been tucked under one shelf. She returned her focus to Al en. Police had taken away many items; none of the things Wil iams wasinterested in were present—Zodiac watch, guns, bombs, clippings.they spoke, Al en sat rigidly upright, hands folded in his lap, like a reprimanded student, and perched on the edge of what Wil iams took to berumpled couch covered with a blue blanket and two white pil ows. Only later she realized, “That was where he slept.” His bald head was framed bycurtains painted with a design of bonsai trees and a blue sea stretching beyond. Al en’s elderly tan dog lay against his left hip, striking out withhind leg occasional y.

“I’ve lived in this house since I was eight,” said Al en. “My mother died three years ago and ever since I’ve lived here—alone—in this room. Itaking kidney dialysis in April of 1991. First two times a week, then three times. I blew up like a blimp. My weight shot up to maybe 280. Final y, I was taking ten injections of insulin a day. Eventual y I returned to my present weight of 220 pounds.”iams told me later, “Though he was an obviously il man, Al en was stil a powerful, frightening presence. In his prime he would have been. I had read the book and I knew some things to ask. I started out by acting as if I knew nothing about the case, and getting more specificthe interview, and just let him just talk. He said it was al circumstantial evidence, that there was never anything to pin him to be the kil er, or,fact, Captain Conway and the Val ejo police would have arrested him and charged him. He talked about some pipe bombs found under his.”

“I didn’t know the bombs were there,” Al en explained. “An ex-con friend, now dead, asked me to store some things more than a decade ago.must be his. They told me my fingerprints were on the bombs. I don’t believe that. I wouldn’t be sitting here if they were and there’s real y nothey could get on there.... I think there probably is a Zodiac stil out there and he’s just laughing himself to death.”

“Al en lived with his mother,” Wil iams said. “He never married. He was arrested once for molesting a smal boy and served time in Atascadero.broke down and choked up on that. ‘I realize now how horrible that was,’ he said, ‘and what an impact I may have had on that child. I’m not theof person to hurt anyone.’

“I asked for a response to the fel ow [Cheney] who had gone to authorities about his remarks about hunting people—but first I quoted Zodiac—‘Ikil ing people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than kil ing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of al to.... ’

“Al en tel s me that he read that story, ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’ back when he was in the eleventh grade, and it had such an impact on himhe then was shooting jackrabbits and that was the only thing he could ever kil, and that he indeed had not said that recently. ‘Wel, he built thissomething much, much grander,’ said Al en, ‘and remembered other conversations that we didn’t have and decided, wel, I must be the Zodiac.was something that we talked about back when we were in high school together and he’s mistaken. Everybody’s trying to get publicity. In fact Inever said that.’ Al en never went to high school with Cheney, and did not meet him until 1962.

“Al en has al sorts of explanations for everything,” Rita recal ed. “Three or four times throughout the interview, he mentioned that he had never Zodiac, yet he would mention things that are in that book that he would not have known simply from interviews that Captain Conway and othersdone with him. And then he would start back and say, ‘Wait a minute. No! I’ve never read that book. I heard that he said that.’ And he tookliberties with the truth there and that was not true. [ Zodiac is visible under papers on his desk in the filmed interview.]

“And I used the summation that was in the book—about Al en’s mother being very domineering and that he was not the favored one in the family,his brother, who looked more like his mother’s side of the family, was the favored son, and that Leigh had been under the dominance of hisal his life. Very crass—[Al en] said several things about bodily functions of his dog and other things, I think more for shock value and to seeI would respond. But certainly throughout the interview, he denied that he was the Zodiac. He said in fact that he was another victim of thebecause he was a victim of more than twenty years of police harassment for being an innocent man.

“‘They’ve offered me many opportunities,’ he said, ‘the most recent last Valentine’s Day, to confess because then I’d be at peace with myself., you don’t get peace with yourself by confessing a lie. And this is what it would have been.... The little kid who lives next door, fifth grade,’ve they’re studying the Constitution and she got ticked off. “Haven’t they ever heard of innocent until proven guilty?” she told me. Wel, bless her

... They haven’t arrested me because they can’t prove a thing, ’ concluded Al en, his voice quavering dramatical y. ‘I’m not the damn Zodiac.... excuse me.’ He lowered his head and seemed to weep. ‘Twenty-two years of this...’

“Having done this for almost twenty-five years of interviewing al sorts of kil ers, you just kind of get feelings. I can tel you my cameraman, as wein the car that night, turned to me and said, ‘Gosh, I think we just interviewed the Zodiac.’ He was so convinced.”iams’s interview ran that night: “For more than two decades,” said anchor Dennis Richmond on the Ten O’clock News, “police havea Val ejo man of the unsolved Zodiac serial kil ings. Tonight we’l hear from that man. It’s been more than two decades now since theZodiac shocked the Bay Area and the nation. Police are stil working to solve those crimes. On Monday, authorities in Val ejo wil unsealresults of one bit of that investigation. The search of the house of a man who’s been cal ed the number-one Zodiac suspect. Now for the firstthat man has told his side of the story in a television interview. He spoke with us on condition that we not show his face.” Al en’s face wasy concealed and shown in silhouette to mask his true features. It had to make viewers even more curious.

“Is this man the notorious kil er known as the Zodiac?” asked Rita Wil iams. “Or he is a victim of more than two decades of police harassment?name is Arthur Al en. He’s fifty-eight now, diabetic, and had just come back from kidney dialysis when talked with him at his Val ejo home last. Back in the late 1960s, when Zodiac terrorized California, Al en was in his late thirties, sixty pounds heavier, strong, a biology graduate. And in this book, considered the definitive study on the Zodiac [shows the book Zodiac], Arthur Al en, known fictional y in the book as Bob, is considered the investigators’ number-one suspect....

“One widely quoted letter from Zodiac said he likes kil ing people because it’s much more fun than kil ing wild game, because man is the mostanimal of al. And in the early seventies, a friend of Al en’s went to police, tel ing them Al en had told him virtual y the same thing justthe kil ings began,” said Wil iams. “From then on Al en was a suspect. In 1971, police searched two cars and a trailer he was living in inRosa. But for some reason they never searched the Val ejo house he shared with his mother until her death three years ago. ‘Every time, Iit was laid to rest, it would come screaming back,’ said Al en on camera. ‘The last time was St. Valentine’s Day. Happy Valentine’s Day!’

“Armed with a search warrant, police spent two days in February going through the house and garage. They dug up part of the yard, took Al en’sdiver’s watch, which he says his mother gave him, and pul ed pipe bombs out from under the house. Al en took a lie-detector test back in thewhile doing time for molesting a nine-year-old boy. He says he passed it, but authorities told him he was a sociopath and could cheat., he’s never been charged with any of the Zodiac crimes and he says he’s lost jobs, friends, even medical care now, because police imply he’skil er.”filmed interview ended with Al en col apsing and sobbing. Rita Wil iams told me later, “However, he didn’t real y cry. In looking at the tape, heof turned it on and turned it off. When Al en lifted his head his eyes were dry. I definitely felt he was pretending.”next showed up on KPIX, Channel 5, the local CBS affiliate.

“I’m not the Zodiac. I’ve never kil ed anyone,” he said. “They have me questioning myself. I search my memory for blanks—blank spaces—therenone. I was first questioned by police in late 1969. The cop said that someone thought I might be the Zodiac kil er and reported me. At the endthe interview he said, ‘Wel, Zodiac had curly hair and you obviously don’t.’ So that was it.

“I’ve been questioned at least five times over the last twenty years. I thought it would stop after a ten-hour lie-detector test I took and passed in

. I once got a letter from the Department of Justice certifying that I am not Zodiac. The letter said I was no longer considered by the state to besuspect in the Zodiac murders. I can’t show it to you now. The Val ejo police seized it when they raided my house in their latest attempt to prove Ithe Zodiac kil er. The only way I can clear myself is for the real Zodiac to confess—if he’s stil alive. Al I can do is suppose on that. The otherI can get peace for myself is when they find me dead and gone. I admit a large number of coincidences point to me.”en later told Harold Huffman, “They missed a few things—like the silencer I had hidden in my socks in the dresser.”reporter Lance Jackson rang me: “I heard about Ralph Spinel i, a career criminal, picked up somewhere around San Jose,” he told. “He got picked up and he’s been charged with nine robberies. And so he starts singing—Arthur Al en’s the Zodiac. He’s looking at a long term,maybe he was singing to try and get himself out of jail. Of course, the cops said now he’s backing off and he’s not sure he going to talk. Did thecal you? They told me [last week] they were trying to get in touch with you.”

“What do they want?”

“The Val ejo cops told me they were going to be getting in touch with you. They brought this guy back who used to be there... Barlow? [HeGeorge Bawart.] He’s going to be coming in a few days a week and working with Conway. They want to see you because they’re trying tointo it a little seriously again.”

“That’s good. If they come up with suspects none of us have ever heard of, that’s al right too. It doesn’t matter to me as long as they do it.”

“Right. Let’s get it done.”Zodiac’s favorite paper, the Chronicle, Lance Wil iams interviewed the perennial suspect. “I’m a disabled former schoolteacher,” said Al en.

“I was a teacher in the San Luis Obispo School District for a total of ten years, and spent seventeen years as a student. I once served three years instate mental hospital for molesting a child. And I used to wear a ‘Zodiac’-brand skin diver’s watch. I’ve passed every evidentiary test the copsthrown at me. I passed a polygraph. One policeman said, ‘You’re a sociopath—you can cheat a lie-detector test.’ Another said I’m a genius...

. I feel like I’m being messed over. The Justice Department wrote me a letter absolving me of guilt.

“As for the bombs and guns, they’re the property of a friend I met in the mental hospital years ago. This damned thing has been haunting me fortwo years. If I was prone to suicide, I’d have already done it.... The only thing in my favor is, I’ve never kil ed anyone. Since I was targeted asZodiac suspect in 1971, I’ve been fingerprinted, interrogated, made to give handwriting samples, and subjected to a ten-hour-long Justicelie-detector test. No way in hel could I go out and kil innocent teenyboppers—no way. But with them, I’m guilty until I’m proven innocent,I figure the case wil be around until I die. I did commit one crime, that was child molesting,” he concluded. “I deluded myself into thinking that I’t hurting anyone, but I realize now that isn’t true... and I’ve paid for it.”en told his friends and neighbors the police were hounding him unjustly. Some of them stuck with him. But onlookers would come into theand yel obscenities at him in the house., August 1, 1991told theFairfield Daily Republic that he had consulted with Mel Bel i about retaining him as defense council. Bel i had not spoken with Al en.afternoon, Judge Dacy, after five months of secrecy, unsealed a search warrant that contained only partial information. The return affidavitprecious little details about what police confiscated from Al en’s house. Court Administrator Nancy Piano later blamed the lack ofon a clerical error. She said clerks did not know that the search warrant findings also were required to be made public., August 7, 1991

“Over a Dozen Weapons Seized at Home of Local Zodiac Suspect,” headlined the Times-Herald.

“VALLEJO: Police seized more than a dozen weapons ranging from pipe bombs to a 20-gauge automatic shotgun from the Fresno Streetof Arthur Leigh Al en, a retired Val ejo man who is once again being investigated in connection with the stil unsolved 1969-70 Zodiacings.”

“I was amazed at how brazen Al en was,” Bawart told me after watching Al en on television. “It’s like he loved the attention al around him.”

“And in his mind, he became the victim,” I said.

“Oh, he did. He craved sympathy. He wanted to get some kind of stay-away order from the Val ejo P.D. and other departments, a restraining. And yet he was giving interviews.”had no further action been taken against Al en? Police turned up a cache of pipe bombs and guns, pornography, and tapes of childrenspanked. They had been looking for a manual typewriter linked to Zodiac correspondence and a 12-inch knife with rivets used in the Lakestabbings. They uncovered a Royal portable typewriter, clips of news articles about the Zodiac, and “a hunting knife with sheath and.” No one could explain the department’s reticence. “It’s unlikely charges wil be pressed against [Leigh Al en] in connection with thekil ings,” said District Attorney Mike Nail. “I real y suspect that nothing’s going to come of it.”wasn’t Al en arrested? “The reason they didn’t take further action after the 1991 search,” Toschi said, “is that they knew he was terminal.was the excuse. He was close to death when they found these items. Some officer said, ‘He’s terminal. It wouldn’t have meant anything.’ Youbelieve that or not believe it.”

“District attorneys want to be fairly sure of a successful prosecution when they charge anyone with anything,” Conway said, “and the most difficultcontroversial part of our suspect or any other suspect that’s ever existed, we’ve never been able to reconcile the handwriting. It’s a very, unique handwriting. George and I have a theory about how to reconcile it, but getting a district attorney to buy that theory is—if we get pasthandwriting, then everything else is fairly simple.”might be perverse enough to want to be captured; he left clues in his letters. However, experts thought differently. “No serial kil er wants tocaught,” said Vernon Geberth, author of Practical Homicide Investigation, “because then he loses the control and power that he has.”developed between the old-guard Zodiac detectives and new investigators. “Have I ever spoken to Conway?” said Toschi. “I never heardthe man. I first saw his name when Al en’s place was searched and he was quoted al over the place. And this real y annoyed some at SFPD.

‘You never heard of him,’ a detective told me. ‘Armstrong never heard of him. And he talks too much. He keeps cal ing us every other week.’ They’relittle disenchanted, a little hesitant to trust Val ejo at this point because when Val ejo searched Al en’s home they found enough evidence in theand where he lived that they should have charged him.”

“I find it kind of amazing,” said Bawart, “that the guys in San Francisco would in any way be upset with Conway. Conway has a raspy personality. Ialong good enough because I knew him. I was his boss at one point. Sometimes it was difficult for me to tolerate the way he said things, but Iit was Conway’s way of doing things and so I discounted it. He easily grates on people. But! But he was the only guy that was authorizing anyof investigation. He was the only guy getting any kind of money coming out of the city coffers to handle anything on the Zodiac case. Now thatcomes up that may turn the tables one way or the other, al of a sudden for a few to bad-mouth Conway in any way is a big mistake.”an event, unintentional y humorous and tragic at the same time, relegated departmental feuding to the back burner. At the end of June,criminal defense attorney Wil iam Steadman Beeman had presented a theory to retired Judge Bil Jensen. “I know who Zodiac is,” he toldjudge and, without giving a name, laid out his reasons why. Jensen was unconvinced. Al the judge could learn was that the suspect wasand may have been a former client of Beeman’s. Beeman also refused to share his suspect’s name with D.A. Nail. The D.A’s officeed Jensen shortly after his meeting to learn the specifics of their conversation. They spoke with Darlene Ferrin’s sister, Pam, to see if she hadideas about who it could be. She said she suspected Beeman had discovered new evidence in confidential files obtained from an ex-clientprobate.didn’t share his knowledge with Captain Conway and the Val ejo police either. “He didn’t present any information,” said Conway. “Heto save it for the news conference.” Within months Beeman would cal a press conference to reveal what he knew. The press, including Paul, and police officials had been invited. The announcement would be made in Val ejo on Hal oween.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04