The 3-part Netflix documentary, This is the Zodiac Speaking, makes us privy to one of the most talked about, sensationalized, and mysterious serial murders that happened in the United States in the late 1960s. The real killer is still unidentified as of today, and due to the emergence of new evidence, after every couple of years the law enforcement authorities have no option but to keep the investigation going. The documentary also introduces us to one of the prime suspects in the case, named Arthur Leigh Allen, who many believed was the real Zodiac Killer. So, let’s find out what happened in the documentary and whether it revealed any significant detail that we were unaware of.
What was the Zodiac killer’s motive?
Around 1968, the city of Vallejo was shaken by a series of murders committed by a man who referred to himself as the Zodiac Killer. The weirdest and probably the scariest thing was that the killer left clues for the law enforcement authorities and made sure that they knew that he was behind the gruesome murders of innocent people. This man did not have any motive to murder them, and it felt like he was doing it for fun. It was all a game for him, and it was almost as if he felt an adrenaline rush by challenging the authorities. Betty Lou Jenson, David Arthur Faraday, and Michael Renault were among the few unfortunate people who lost their lives between 1968 and ’69. Bryan Hartnell was probably the only victim who somehow managed to survive the attack. He told the authorities that the assailant wore a mask, and he could only see his dreadful eyes while he committed the crime. We are talking about a time when there were no CCTV cameras, the technology wasn’t so advanced, and so tracking down a culprit was not such an easy task. The case got a lot of media coverage, and it became impossible for the local police force to deal with the issue. That’s when Dave Toschi and Bill Amstrong, two celebrated San Francisco PD, were looped into the matter and given charge of the investigation. After investigating the matter, the police officers found out that the Zodiac killer had probably killed a couple of people back in 1963. They speculated that it was a test run for the sociopath, and he wanted to check if he was capable of committing the perfect crime. The police officers tried to break the codes that he sent and decipher whatever they could from it. However, due to a lack of evidence, they weren’t able to make any formal arrests. They had a few suspects on their radar, but they weren’t able to link the crime to those people. It felt as if the Zodiac killer would never be found, and the people would always have to live in fear of a sociopath being on the loose.
In the mid-1980s, a journalist named Robert Graysmith published his book called The Zodiac Killer, and he mentioned each and every detail that he had come through during his years of research. According to Graysmith, a schoolteacher named Arthur Leigh Allen was the man behind the mask, but again, he didn’t have solid evidence to prove his claims.
Why did Arthur Leigh Allen go to prison?
Arthur Leigh Allen was an obscure man, and in This is the Zodiac Speaking we saw that he became very close to the Seawater family. He was the teacher of the Seawater siblings, i.e., Connie, David, and Don, and eventually, he became close to their mother, Phyllis, too. From the onset, it felt as if the man had some ulterior motives behind being so loving and affectionate towards the kids. Though he was the prime suspect in the Zodiac murder case, he was sent to Atascadero State Hospital on charges of sexually abusing minors. It came to be known that he used to drug the Seawater siblings and take advantage of them. Surprisingly, Phyllis never noticed anything, and she let her kids spend time with Arthur. It was even more shocking when it came to be known that Arthur used to write letters to Phyllis from the Atascadero State Hospital, and she chose to hide that fact even from her children for the longest time. Connie was too naive to understand what was happening to her, and probably that is why she didn’t have any bad memories of Arthur till the time he passed away in 1992. A man named Don Cheney also came to the forefront, and he informed the law enforcement authorities that he didn’t trust Arthur’s sensibilities and that there was something really wrong with him. The police even searched Arthur’s house, and they found certain suspicious things, like pipe bombs and impact devices from there. The biggest hint, I believe, was that no killings happened during the time Arthur was in prison, and the moment he was released, the police once again started getting letters from the Zodiac Killer. But still, in court, a person cannot be accused of a crime if the prosecution wasn’t able to prove beyond doubt that they are guilty. In Arthur’s case, the police only had circumstantial evidence. They probably knew in their hearts that he was the killer, but then that was never enough. During an interview with Channel 2’s journalist, Rita Williams, Arthur spoke about how he was being framed by the authorities and how they just wanted to make him the scapegoat.
Was Arthur Leigh the real Zodiac Killer?
The biggest revelation was made in This is the Zodiac Speaking when Arthur called David Seawater and told him that he was the Zodiac Killer. He confessed that he did drug them when they were kids and that he was behind all the killings that happened between 1968 and 1969. Phyllis apparently had a box in which she had kept every letter that she got from Arthur. She also had a VCR where the man was behaving in the most obnoxious way possible. He was a sociopath, and at least David had no doubts about that fact. But still, everything needed to be proved in a court of law, and that’s where the law enforcement authorities failed. Arthur died of natural causes in the year 1992, and the authorities shut down the case after that. He had written a letter in his last moments where he had spoken about how he had nothing to do with the murders and that he was not the Zodiac Killer. David was livid when he heard about it because Arthur had literally confessed to his crimes on the phone call. Nobody knew what to believe and who to trust, primarily because of a lack of evidence.
However, new evidence started to emerge with time as technology advanced, and forensic experts could find hidden details that were earlier impossible for the police to find. By using a supercomputer, even many of the codes that the Zodiac Killer had sent were cracked. The Zodiac Killer case is still unsolved today, but due to new evidence being found every couple of years, the authorities have decided not to shut it down. A very important breakthrough was made by the police officers when they found out that just a day after Cheri Jo Bates was murdered in Riverside, Arthur had submitted an absence slip to his school. That meant that the man was missing from school on the day the murder happened. Also, Connie’s son had taken Arthur’s knife back in the day, which he found in the latter’s car trunk. That knife was sent to the forensics lab, and the results were still awaited till the time the Netflix documentary was being shot. I hope that the investigative authorities are able to make some breakthroughs in the future because that is the only way through which the families of the victims would get some sort of closure.
