Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
Speaker 1: those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
Speaker 1: and do not necessarily represent those of iHeartMedia, How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: or its employees.
Speaker 2: Robert Graysmith is the author of a book called Zodiac.
Speaker 2: Well what happens thirty three years later when you still
Speaker 2: don't have the killer? Are there still people working on
Speaker 2: this case? Are there still tips coming in anything to
Speaker 2: this investigation?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: You know, we were pretty certain we know who he was,
Speaker 4: and he died with bombs in his basement and the
Speaker 4: Zodiac bomb formula, a disc in his computer that said Zodiac.
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure that the cases solved. So much information
Speaker 4: and so much attention was focused on the prime suspect
Speaker 4: in the case, The man who actually was the first suspect,
Speaker 4: who knew all the victims, who stalk them, who had
Speaker 4: the skills and intelligence to write the letters and to
Speaker 4: commit the crimes, was literally stopped at in his tracks.
Speaker 4: He was watched, eventually sent to prison for child molesting,
Speaker 4: during which there were no more activities from the Zodiac.
Speaker 5: The suspect that was focused on and highlighted in the
Speaker 5: film and in Grace Smith's book, and to a certain
Speaker 5: extent even for Tusking Armstrong, Arthur Lee Allen was what
Speaker 5: they call a good suspect.
Speaker 6: It's probably Arthur Lee Allen.
Speaker 7: That was what all the main guys investigating it here thought.
Speaker 7: I think Arthur Lee Allen was the guy.
Speaker 8: I enjoy a good tussle. That Hey, there were coincidences
Speaker 8: that tended to point towards me and kill him just
Speaker 8: for the pleasure of it. Thank God for our constitution,
Speaker 8: because that says a person is innocent until proven guilty.
Speaker 8: A man in a mask robbed, tied, and stabbed him,
Speaker 8: leaving them for dad. Subject stated, I want to report
Speaker 8: a murder, no a double murder.
Speaker 7: I did it.
Speaker 9: The man who wore a medieval style executionershood, carried a
Speaker 9: knife and gun and intended.
Speaker 1: To use them.
Speaker 10: They haven't arrested me because they can't prove a thing.
Speaker 10: I'm not the damn Zodiac.
Speaker 9: Who is the Zodiac and.
Speaker 7: Where is he from?
Speaker 11: iHeartRadio, Houstuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. This is monster the
Speaker 11: Zodiac killer. The Zodiac case is rife with mystery, first
Speaker 11: and foremost the Zodiac's true identity. Up to this point,
Speaker 11: there'd only been vague glimpses of the man behind the moniker.
Speaker 11: Witness descriptions were cloudy. He was only ever seen in
Speaker 11: the dark of night or behind a terrifying costume. We
Speaker 11: heard a strange voice call into a TV show, but
Speaker 11: it wasn't actually the Zodiac. So who was this guy?
Speaker 11: For years it seemed like there would never be an answer,
Speaker 11: But then a name, a face, and a voice were
Speaker 11: finally attached to the zodiac publicly, one man became the
Speaker 11: most visible and likely suspect.
Speaker 12: One of the prime suspects in the Zodiac case over
Speaker 12: the years was a man who was initially identified for
Speaker 12: reasons we don't know, in October of nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: This is Zodiac expert Michael Buttererfield.
Speaker 12: Arthur Lee Allen was a former school teacher who was
Speaker 12: working as a janitor, largely because he had been caught
Speaker 12: molesting children and had lost his job for some reason.
Speaker 12: John Lynch of the Lao Police Department went and questioned
Speaker 12: Arthur Lee Allen and on October sixth, nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 12: regarding his whereabouts at the time of the stabbing at
Speaker 12: Lake barri Essa. Allan said that he was at Salt
Speaker 12: Point Ranch and he had killed some chickens, and that
Speaker 12: he didn't have any involved in the crime.
Speaker 1: Salt Point is about ninety miles west of Lake Veriessa.
Speaker 1: It's close but not close enough, and with no direct
Speaker 1: evidence linking him to the murder, Allan was let go.
Speaker 12: After that, the police forgot about Arthur Lee Allen, and
Speaker 12: then in nineteen seventy one, an estranged friend of Alan's
Speaker 12: went to police and said that prior to the Zodiac murders,
Speaker 12: Arthur Lee Allen had professed his desire to kill people
Speaker 12: and write letters to the media calling himself Zodiac. The
Speaker 12: police investigated. The Valeo Police and the San Francisco Police,
Speaker 12: including Bill Armstrong and Dave Toski, spent about two weeks
Speaker 12: investigating Arthur Lee Allen and gathering information, talking to people
Speaker 12: who knew him, including his brother and sister in law,
Speaker 12: and the individual who made this claim, Don Cheney. Don
Speaker 12: Cheney was first friends with Arthur Lee Allen's brother Ron,
Speaker 12: and that's how he got to know Arthur Lee Allen,
Speaker 12: or who was normally referred to as Lee. They became friends.
Speaker 12: They would hunt and fish and drink together and do things.
Speaker 12: But then at a certain point it appears that Arthur
Speaker 12: Lee Allen attempted to molest one of Don Cheney's children.
Speaker 12: Don Cheney complained to Lee's brother Ron, and was adamant
Speaker 12: that something had happened and he was very upset about it,
Speaker 12: and he apparently severed his relationship with Arthur Lee Allen
Speaker 12: at that time. According to Cheney's timing of events, this
Speaker 12: occurred sometime in nineteen sixty eight, the last time he
Speaker 12: had ever talked to Arthur Lee Allen.
Speaker 1: According to Vallejo PD Detective George Bowert, Alan told Cheney
Speaker 1: he wanted to write a novel, and in this novel,
Speaker 1: a character would do the following things, kill random couples,
Speaker 1: taunt police with letters, recounting his crimes, to disguise himself,
Speaker 1: secure a flashlight to his gun so he could shoot
Speaker 1: in the dark, call himself Zodiac. Cheney was questioned again
Speaker 1: about this story years later, and these new details were
Speaker 1: recorded by Detective Bowart. Cheney recalled that Alan was gifted
Speaker 1: a Zodiac brand watch by his mother, and on the
Speaker 1: face of this watch there was a symbol a circle
Speaker 1: with a cross through it. Cheney said Alan wanted to
Speaker 1: sign letters with the same cross circle symbol from his watch.
Speaker 1: Cheney also claims that Alan wanted to fool women into
Speaker 1: stopping their cars in isolated areas. He would claim they
Speaker 1: had problems with their tires, then loosen their lug nuts
Speaker 1: and take them captive. Shortly after this, investigators learned of
Speaker 1: a connection to Darlene Ferron, who was shot and killed
Speaker 1: by the Zodiac at Blue Rock Springs. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: Alan's family home was just a fraction of a mile
Speaker 1: away from the restaurant where Darlene worked, and Alan supposedly
Speaker 1: said he had become friendly with a waitress at that restaurant.
Speaker 1: Police records say an unidentified man named Lee often visited Darlene,
Speaker 1: so it's possible Alan was stalking Darlene.
Speaker 12: There was also a story that Arthur Lee Allen may
Speaker 12: have used a friend's car to commit the murder at
Speaker 12: Blue Rock Springs, because the surviving victims said that the
Speaker 12: killer was driving a car similar to Darlene's brown cordare
Speaker 12: Alan was working at a gas station where a friend
Speaker 12: of his had apparently put a car up for sale,
Speaker 12: and the theory was that he had taken the car
Speaker 12: and committed the crime. Because Alan did not own a
Speaker 12: Corbert or any vehicle similar to one, and eventually, in
Speaker 12: nineteen seventy two, the San Francisco Police Department obtained a
Speaker 12: warrant to search Arthur Lee Allen's trailer in Santa Rosa, California.
Speaker 1: On September fourteenth, nineteen seventy two, San Francisco Police obtained
Speaker 1: a warrant and searched Allan's trailer. Here's a partial list
Speaker 1: of what police were looking for. Writings, letters, and cryptograms
Speaker 1: in the same handwriting as suspect letters. Any pistol with
Speaker 1: a flashlight attached to the barrel, a blood stained portion
Speaker 1: of cloth from a striped gray and white shirt, the
Speaker 1: wallet or identification of Paul Stein taxi keys from a
Speaker 1: yellow cab, a black executioner type hood with a circle
Speaker 1: and cross on it, a large knife with a wooden handle.
Speaker 12: They did find some oddities in his home, like dead
Speaker 12: squirrels and his refrigerator that he was using for his
Speaker 12: biology is, some sex toys, guns, things like that.
Speaker 1: Investigators found many bizarre things, but they didn't find any
Speaker 1: of the materials they were looking for, so they had
Speaker 1: no hard evidence to use against Allan. They did, however,
Speaker 1: obtain his fingerprints and samples of his writing. Those were
Speaker 1: thoroughly cross examined with the Zodiac letters, and.
Speaker 12: That's when they learned that his fingerprints in handwriting didn't match.
Speaker 12: And so essentially Arthur Lee Allen was abandoned as a suspect.
Speaker 1: Yet again, Arthur Lee Allen was let off the hook.
Speaker 1: Despite some suspicious activity, Allan was in the clear until.
Speaker 12: Years later a best selling book came out called Zodiac,
Speaker 12: written by Robert Graysmith.
Speaker 4: I still talk to the investigators on the case. Inspector
Speaker 4: David Toski, who was the main man on the case.
Speaker 4: He believes it was Arthur Lee Allen. The main man
Speaker 4: in Wallejo, George bauerd who's retired now, he thinks it
Speaker 4: was Arthur Lee.
Speaker 7: Virtually all the top.
Speaker 4: Investigators, men who I really respect, believe that this was
Speaker 4: the man.
Speaker 1: That was Robert Graysmith. In the early seventies, he was
Speaker 1: a political cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle. Gray Smith
Speaker 1: developed an obsession with the Zodiac case and so he
Speaker 1: was doing his own private investigation. In nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: gray Smith published a book containing his complete findings on
Speaker 1: the case. It was simply titled Zodiac and It went
Speaker 1: on to sell over three million copies.
Speaker 12: And in that book, gray Smith had given Arthur Lee
Speaker 12: Allen the pseudonym Bob hall Star. A lot of people
Speaker 12: started to figure out that Arthur Lee Allen was Bob
Speaker 12: hall Star. People in the Bay Area realized he was
Speaker 12: the person they were talking about, and that book, of course,
Speaker 12: because it was a best selling book, had a tremendous
Speaker 12: influence on the public and the media.
Speaker 9: Arthur Lee Allen, a long time the Lahoe resident and
Speaker 9: former professional student, is the man many still believed to
Speaker 9: be the dreaded Zodiac. In Robert grace Mis's best selling
Speaker 9: book Zodiac, the suspect's brother and sister in law say
Speaker 9: that Allan often spoke of man as the most dangerous game.
Speaker 9: His own family at one time found him terrifying.
Speaker 1: Grey Smith connected many dots between Arthur Lee Allen and
Speaker 1: the Zodiac, one of which is that Alan was allegedly
Speaker 1: in Riverside when Sherry Joe Bates was murdered in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six. The Valeo Police Department had placed him in
Speaker 1: the area, and when questioned, Alan said he was in
Speaker 1: nearby Pomona during the Bates murder. He also called in
Speaker 1: sick from his job on November one, the day after
Speaker 1: Bates was found dead. It's possible Allan missed work to
Speaker 1: hide facial wounds inflicted by his victim. You may also
Speaker 1: remember that Zodiac left behind a footprint at Lake Barriessa.
Speaker 1: That footprint was made by a military boot. This suggested
Speaker 1: the Zodiac had some military experience. Arthur Lee Allen had
Speaker 1: numerous connections to the military. His father was the commander
Speaker 1: of a nuclear submarine at nearby Mare Island. Allan himself
Speaker 1: was in the Navy for less than two years before
Speaker 1: being discharged other than honorably. While there, Graysmith believes Allan
Speaker 1: developed an interest in codes and ciphers. Much of this
Speaker 1: is hearsay. The Zodiac book laid out one undeniable mark
Speaker 1: against Alan. Gray Smith points out that the last official
Speaker 1: Zodiac letter came on July eighth, nineteen seventy four. Only
Speaker 1: a few months later Allan would go to prison on
Speaker 1: child molestation charges. During Allen's time in prison, there were
Speaker 1: no Zodiac letters. Then, in nineteen seventy eight, just months
Speaker 1: after Alan was released, a new letter showed up at
Speaker 1: the San Francisco Chronicle.
Speaker 13: Dear editor, this is the Zodiac speaking, I am back
Speaker 13: with you. I am waiting for a good movie about me.
Speaker 13: Who will play me? I am now in control of
Speaker 13: all things yours truly, Zodiac Guess, San Francisco Police Department zero.
Speaker 1: It's important to note here that this letter was never authenticated.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that in a later episode. Still, many
Speaker 1: investigators found this coincidence to be striking. Gray Smith built
Speaker 1: a massive case of circumstantial evidence against Arthur Lee Allen,
Speaker 1: and it was enough to convince a lot of readers
Speaker 1: of his guilt. Was Alan truly the villain gray Smith
Speaker 1: made him out to be, or was Alan just an
Speaker 1: incredibly strange individual. We asked someone who knew Alan personally.
Speaker 6: He had him a few chipmunks at his house. One
Speaker 6: time he came in the shop and after he had
Speaker 6: a job up in the foothills, and he carried one
Speaker 6: around on his shoulder, and I think that was from
Speaker 6: when he worked up in the up in the hills
Speaker 6: where he you know, he said, come on up and
Speaker 6: I'll show your kids how to sail.
Speaker 1: This is Carl Eubner. He ran a blacksmith shop in
Speaker 1: downtown Valeo. Arthur Lee Allen came by frequently.
Speaker 6: He came down to the Leo and came into the
Speaker 6: shop and said, you know, why don't you bring him
Speaker 6: several times? In fact, why don't you bring the kids
Speaker 6: up and I'll, you know, teach him the sailing. And
Speaker 6: I said to him, I wife, well, are going to
Speaker 6: do that sometime, you know. But we never did, and
Speaker 6: I found out he was canned anyway, and that ended that,
Speaker 6: so I never did go up there.
Speaker 1: We also talked with Mark Eubner carl Son at the time,
Speaker 1: he was just a kid.
Speaker 14: When I heard that story, my first reaction was he
Speaker 14: certainly wouldn't mess with the kids of a friend of his.
Speaker 14: I'd be surprised.
Speaker 6: I knew Arthur Lee Allen in school. He was half
Speaker 6: a grade behind me, but we knew each other. And
Speaker 6: then later on he would come in his shop once
Speaker 6: in a while. He worked on his car, so he
Speaker 6: did blocksmith's work. We made things like gates, railings, and
Speaker 6: we'd weld something up for him. Lee Allen at a
Speaker 6: time worked at Ace Hardware, down half a dozen blocks
Speaker 6: in the shop on Tennessee Street.
Speaker 1: Eventually, Mark and Carl started interviewing each other, and Mark
Speaker 1: had a lot of questions for his dad.
Speaker 14: What about then he had the rear end done though.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, well he was one instant. He had the
Speaker 6: you know whatever ranz on the car and the old cars,
Speaker 6: they they're pretty heavy, and so we did some work
Speaker 6: on it. He came and picked it up and and
Speaker 6: he just grabbed it and put it up over his
Speaker 6: head and walked out. And one of the guys kind
Speaker 6: of shook. He said, what the heck?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 6: But I don't think it was that so much that
Speaker 6: he was so strong. It was just odd that he
Speaker 6: did it that way. But most guys wouldn't do that.
Speaker 6: But he was pretty strong guy. He came in one
Speaker 6: time and and said, hey, I have this letter. He
Speaker 6: just said that he was no longer a suspect in
Speaker 6: the Zodiac case.
Speaker 14: I was thinking about this earlier. So like when he
Speaker 14: came in with the with the letter. Was he just saying,
Speaker 14: here's the letter, I'm exonerary. It was like, Carl'll trust me, man,
Speaker 14: this isn't me. I mean, I'm wondering how if he
Speaker 14: was emphatic at all or just about no.
Speaker 6: He he was just I wouldn't say blase, but he
Speaker 6: just came in. I said, hey, I got you something
Speaker 6: to show or whatever he said. And then here's a
Speaker 6: letter from the Sonoma County Sheriff that says that I'm
Speaker 6: not a suspect.
Speaker 14: Or any more.
Speaker 6: Yeah, whatever the wording was, that I'm not a suspect anymore.
Speaker 14: Because I think you also told me once that he
Speaker 14: needed that letter because he kind of couldn't get a job.
Speaker 14: He had to have that letter so he could go
Speaker 14: apply for a.
Speaker 6: H He didn't have to show the letter, but he
Speaker 6: did if it ever came up and said, hey, look,
Speaker 6: I think a lot of people were a little bit
Speaker 6: leery of him probably after that. As far as I know,
Speaker 6: he did not have a girlfriend, never mentioned it, and
Speaker 6: never seen him with one. He was kind of a
Speaker 6: loner in that respect. I don't want to describe him
Speaker 6: as a loaner, but I don't know. But he did
Speaker 6: have friends, I guess. I never really seen him with anybody.
Speaker 6: It was always by himself.
Speaker 14: But let me just I'm curious, so, like, if you
Speaker 14: saw his name in the paper or saw his name
Speaker 14: in the news, what did you think, Like, Hey, that's
Speaker 14: my friend, did.
Speaker 6: You Yeah, we weren't qualified, We weren't Yeah, buddies. I
Speaker 6: knew him from school and a little bit after school
Speaker 6: and were yeah, we were friendly one good time And
Speaker 6: did you.
Speaker 14: Ever think he did it?
Speaker 6: It ran through my mind, of course, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 14: It was just weird to think that I knew the
Speaker 14: guy as a kid. I knew my dad knew him.
Speaker 14: It's one of those things that I would love to
Speaker 14: know what the real answer is. I would love to
Speaker 14: know if it was him. I've seen other suspects name,
Speaker 14: but obviously the only one that is in my head
Speaker 14: is Lee Allen. I certainly believe he could have been.
Speaker 14: I mean again, I didn't know him like my dad,
Speaker 14: but just all the stuff I've read and seen about him,
Speaker 14: it seems plausible. I'd say that it certainly seems plausible
Speaker 14: that he could have been the guy.
Speaker 12: In December of nineteen ninety, another individual from Arthur Lee
Speaker 12: Allen's past, another person who he had a falling out with,
Speaker 12: came forward and claimed that shortly before the Zodiac murdered
Speaker 12: cab driver Paul Stein, Arthur Lee Allen had professed his
Speaker 12: desire to kill a cab driver and claimed that he
Speaker 12: was the Zodiac. This was Ralph Spinelli, who was a
Speaker 12: career criminal. He had been arrested for several charges. Of
Speaker 12: armed robbery and was probably facing the rest of his
Speaker 12: life in prison, and he approached authorities asking to make
Speaker 12: a deal. He didn't want to go to prison. In
Speaker 12: an exchange, he would name Alan as the Zodiac.
Speaker 1: By the time Spinelli came forward, the Gray Smith book
Speaker 1: had been out for years. Allan's involvement in the Zodiac
Speaker 1: case was now public, and with this new testimony pointing
Speaker 1: in Allan, investigators once again took him seriously as a suspect.
Speaker 12: The Valeo Police Department relaunched their investigation of Arthur Lee Allen.
Speaker 12: In nineteen ninety one. The Valeo Police Department consulted the FBI,
Speaker 12: and a profiler told them that if Allan was indeed
Speaker 12: the Zodiac, it was likely he still had some trophies
Speaker 12: or belongings from the victims and the crimes. They got
Speaker 12: another search warrant for his home, and the news broke
Speaker 12: into media.
Speaker 1: Here's a partial list of what police found in Allen's
Speaker 1: home in nineteen ninety one. Four pipe bombs, a Ruger
Speaker 1: twenty two caliber revolver, a Zodiac brand watch, news clippings
Speaker 1: about the Zodiac case, a large hunting knife, a small flashlight,
Speaker 1: a royal manual typewriter. This typewriter had an important connection.
Speaker 1: The letter's claiming responsibility for the murder of Sherry Joe
Speaker 1: Bates were made by a Royal model typewriter. There were
Speaker 1: some things the police were able to determine at this point.
Speaker 1: Alan's shoe size matched the Zodiac's bootprint from Lake Barriessa.
Speaker 1: Both used large knives, and both used the same guns
Speaker 1: and the same type of ammunition. Alan's home was searched
Speaker 1: several more times after this, and they found even more
Speaker 1: suspicious objects, but they never found anything that directly linked
Speaker 1: him to the Zodiac murders. For the third time, Arthur
Speaker 1: Lee Allen was exonerated, at least officially.
Speaker 7: Well, good cops have instincts, and when Toski talked to Alan,
Speaker 7: he creeped him out, you know, he thought he had
Speaker 7: a live one that counts for a lot in an investigation.
Speaker 1: This is San Francisco Chronicle journalist Kevin Fagan. He's the
Speaker 1: current reporter signed to the Zodiac case. As part of
Speaker 1: that role, he's talked with all the lead investigators and
Speaker 1: journalists involved in the story, and he knows more about
Speaker 1: the prime suspect than just about anybody else. We went
Speaker 1: to Kevin Fagan to understand what investigators finally concluded about Alan.
Speaker 7: Everyone who went to that house came away feeling, wow,
Speaker 7: this might well be the guy. He was a little
Speaker 7: shaky in his denials that he was the Zodiac. He
Speaker 7: was eager to talk a lot.
Speaker 2: This is the Vallejo man many investigators considered to be
Speaker 2: the notorious Zodiac Killer, and this is the first time
Speaker 2: his picture has been revealed. His name is Arthur Lee Allen.
Speaker 8: Are you the Zodiac Killer? There would be nothing farther
Speaker 8: from my mind.
Speaker 10: No, I'm certainly, most certainly not the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 7: He just came off like a possible guy. He get
Speaker 7: a tingle and that's what I heard from everyone who
Speaker 7: talked to him back in the day. Allen has been
Speaker 7: the only one named directly as a suspect by any
Speaker 7: of the investigators, and he cropped up through Dave Toski,
Speaker 7: who was the main homicide inspector in San Francisco who
Speaker 7: was working the case actively during the height of the
Speaker 7: Zodiac craze. He kept going back to Alan year after
Speaker 7: year after year. But he's been the guy for a
Speaker 7: lot of investigators.
Speaker 12: There's so many lies I caught him man his denying
Speaker 12: things didn't have any relevance anymore.
Speaker 1: That was the LAOPD Captain Roy Conway talking about Alan.
Speaker 1: The LAYOPD Detective George Bauert also spoke about Allan's guilt.
Speaker 8: I feel that there are so many areas that point
Speaker 8: directly at Arthur Lee Allen that I feel that he
Speaker 8: is a viable suspect in all probability of the Zodiac.
Speaker 7: Alan had a lot of aspects that tied him to
Speaker 7: the crimes. He owned boots identical to those worn by
Speaker 7: the Zodiac. According to the Prince taking it the scenes.
Speaker 7: His favorite short story was The Most Dangerous Game and
Speaker 7: the Zodiac. In one of his letters, talked about how
Speaker 7: he loved to hunt humans because they're the most dangerous game.
Speaker 7: It wasn't that obscure a story at the time, but
Speaker 7: it wasn't on everyone's mind. The fact that Alan mentioned that,
Speaker 7: and the fact that that got mentioned in the letter
Speaker 7: raises your eyebrows pretty high. He was picked out in
Speaker 7: a photo lineup by one of the victims, and he
Speaker 7: wore a watch that had Zodiac crosshairs on it. A
Speaker 7: lot of things matched. He looked like the.
Speaker 1: Sketch and remember, investigators also had the testimony of Don Cheney,
Speaker 1: an old friend of Alan's.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Cheney had conversations with Alan that disturbed him. He
Speaker 7: thought Allan was making statements that fingered himself as the Zodiac.
Speaker 7: Now I have to say that there are quite a
Speaker 7: few people who have gone to the police with similar
Speaker 7: accounts on different people. So yeah, yeah, I just have
Speaker 7: to throw it into the mix and make what you
Speaker 7: can make of it.
Speaker 1: Alan later retold his story about killing chickens during the
Speaker 1: Lake Buriesa attack. On this occasion, he told Tosky he
Speaker 1: kept large, bloody knives in his trunk.
Speaker 7: Bloody knives in the trunk. Yeah, that just came off creepy.
Speaker 7: You start building up things like that, and the boots
Speaker 7: and the watch that he had, and the statements to
Speaker 7: his friend, it stacks up pretty high. There was enough
Speaker 7: there that my colleague at the Chronicle, Robert Graysmith, wrote
Speaker 7: a whole book naming Alan as the guy.
Speaker 4: As far as I can tell, Alan seems to be
Speaker 4: the best suspect that come up with.
Speaker 7: And the last time I talked to Robert, which wasn't
Speaker 7: that long ago, he was convinced that Alan was still
Speaker 7: the Zodiac. It's one of those things that you know
Speaker 7: until it's over, it's never over. But a lot of
Speaker 7: things point to this guy. The fact that he was
Speaker 7: never charged, never convicted, leaves it an open question. He
Speaker 7: seemed to have a somewhat sad life. He was hounded
Speaker 7: by people who thought he was this killer. At least
Speaker 7: that's how he put it. He didn't like being named,
Speaker 7: he didn't like getting the visits from police.
Speaker 8: Not the only way that heat will stop is well,
Speaker 8: if I die, that'll cure it for me, or a
Speaker 8: Zodiac himself confesses.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's difficult to say. If he really was the Zodiac,
Speaker 7: then he deserved all the attention he got. If he wasn't,
Speaker 7: then that's unfortunate because even a criminal should have a
Speaker 7: chance to rehab his life and move on. I don't know.
Speaker 7: I never met Allen. The people I know who did,
Speaker 7: I thought he was disturbing, a low life, not a
Speaker 7: good guy. My impression is he did not live a
Speaker 7: joy ass life leading up to his death in nineteen
Speaker 7: ninety two. He had this cloud over him the whole time.
Speaker 10: They you haven't arrested me because they can't prove a thing.
Speaker 10: I'm not the damn Zodiac, the.
Speaker 2: Zodiac Killer or victim of years of police harassment, Arthur
Speaker 2: Lee Allen took the answer to his grave.
Speaker 11: Next time on Monster the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 12: There's some serious, serious problems with Don Cheney and his credibility,
Speaker 12: and he's the foundation for all of this.
Speaker 15: The Zodiac writing was very quickly and rapidly written, and
Speaker 15: that was of the opinion that it was the natural
Speaker 15: writing of that person. And there were numerous consistent differences
Speaker 15: with the writing of Arthur Lee Alley.
Speaker 12: The idea that Michael Michau could have accurately identified anyone
Speaker 12: was questionable even in nineteen sixty nine, so much so
Speaker 12: that Ed Rust actually wrote that.
Speaker 1: Into the report.
Speaker 3: In my mind article we ou out of six foot five,
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty plus pounds had walked up to
Speaker 3: the car, Michael Micheau would have said this guy was huge,
Speaker 3: or something along that line.
Speaker 12: It's got to be a really terrible place to be
Speaker 12: to know that there's a book out there that claims
Speaker 12: you're the Zodiac and people believe it.
Speaker 8: I've never been known for good luck. I guess this
Speaker 8: is pretty much living proof of it.
Speaker 10: I couldn't murder anyone.
Speaker 11: Monster The Zodiac Killer is a fifteen episode podcast produced
Speaker 11: by iHeartRadio, House stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. Donald Albright
Speaker 11: and I are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV,
Speaker 11: alongside producers Meredith Steedman, Mason Lindsay, and Christina Dana. Jason
Speaker 11: Hope is executive producer on behalf of House stuff Works,
Speaker 11: along with producers Trevor Young, Miranda Hawkins, ben Keebrick, and
Speaker 11: Josh Thain. Scott Benjamin provides additional voice talent. Matt Frederick
Speaker 11: is our host. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Speaker 11: If you haven't already, make sure to check out the
Speaker 11: first season of Monster called Atlanta Monster, about the Atlanta
Speaker 11: child murders from the late seventies to the early eighties.
Speaker 11: Download the ten episode season right now. Have questions or comments,
Speaker 11: email us at Monster at houstuffworks dot com, or you
Speaker 11: can call us at one eight three, three two eight
Speaker 11: five six six sixty seven. Thanks for listening.