Hunted: The Zodiac Murders (The Zodiac Serial Killer Book 1)

by Mark Hewitt

  The police, the producers of Jim Dunbar’s show A.M. San Francisco, and Dunbar himself, the determined and inquisitive host of the program, scrambled to comply with the demand. Because Bailey was unavailable—he was already committed to an ongoing court case—Belli agreed to come to the studio. The programming at the station was rearranged so that the show could begin 30 minutes earlier than usual, and a phone line was appropriated for the caller.

  In everything, the authorities did what they could to appease their quarry. If he desired an attorney, they were more than happy to comply in the hopes of stopping his murderous spree. If he wanted to share information, they were eager to listen. As long as he was talking, he was not killing; as long as he was communicating, he might reveal enough about himself to be captured. The caller was demonstrating that he knew how to effectively manipulate the police and the press.

  By 1969, Dunbar was a well-known and popular personality. His show had graced the airwaves since 1965 and had boosted its station’s ratings, and enabled KGO to gain considerable market share. The media personality first drew public attention for his work in radio. In 2006, his skill was recognized when he was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame. Three years later, he received an even greater honor when he was added to the list of inductees in the National Radio Hall of Fame. He retired in 2000, but would forever be remembered for the part his acclaimed television show played in the Zodiac serial killer case.

  If the event had been set up on a pretext, a hoaxer wanting nothing more than to disrupt society and stage a big news story, he would be very successful. No one wanted to risk the chance, no matter how remote, that this actually was the infamous murderer, so the show was planned and orchestrated at the pleasure of the mysterious stranger. Everyone preparing for the show hoped he would call again.

  Melvin Belli—the caller’s second choice—was in 1969 a famed and flamboyant defense attorney who made the Bay Area his home. Chronicle reporter Paul Avery described him as the “world champion publicity hound.”

  He himself retorted, “I’m no ambulance chaser. I always get there before the ambulance arrives.”

  More than a minor celebrity, the lawyer had, with his shock of white hair and heavy black eyeglasses, defended Jack Ruby, the man convicted and sent to prison for killing Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy. He would later represent the British rock and roll group the Rolling Stones following a murder at their Altamont Speedway Concert of December 6, 1969.

  Belli’s national profile was nearly that of F. Lee Bailey, the East Coast defense attorney who gained fame for defending Sam Shepard—the trial and aftermath allegedly inspiring the television show the Fugitive. Bailey would later defend Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, who was killed on November 25, 1973 while serving a life sentence for a dozen murders committed between 1962 and 1964. Much later, he would be empaneled as a prominent member of OJ Simpson’s “dream team” defense at the star football player’s murder trial.

  As the extended television program commenced at 6:25 a.m., Dunbar and Belli made small talk. They pleaded with the audience to not call. Finally, the reserved line erupted 49 minutes into the show.

  A man who claimed to be the Zodiac spoke briefly, and then hung up the phone. He did this numerous times. He apparently feared that the police would try to trap the call to pinpoint his location, a process that at the time required several minutes of uninterrupted contact. He must have known that the police desperately wanted to catch the man who had wreaked so much havoc and caused so much pain.

  The man kept calling back, but never stayed on the line long enough for the call to be traced. He returned as many as 30 times, providing the name “Sam,” at Belli’s request, a less threatening name than the “Zodiac.” In one exchange, Dunbar commanded, “Tell us what’s going on inside you.” The caller identified headaches as part of his malady. Taking aspirin did not help him.

  The calls went on for three hours, longer than the usual running time of the show. Belli offered to meet with “Sam” at the Fairmont Hotel, a local landmark near where the Zodiac had entered Paul Stine’s cab. (The Chronicle reported that Belli suggested the steps of Old St. Mary’s church in Chinatown.) Instead, at the behest of the man phoning into the show, the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Shop, located at 2726 Mission Street in Daly City, became the agreed upon rendezvous point. The location was set over a private phone line. The arranged meeting time was 10:30 a.m.

  The attorney would never meet the Zodiac—or “Sam”—however. Numerous Paparazzi and more than a cadre of plain-clothed police agents were aware of the new location. Even if “Sam” had intended to meet Belli, he would have been scared off by the entourage. He never showed. A waitress at a candy fountain in the Fairmont Hotel told the police that she had served coffee to a man who resembled the composite picture. She retained the cup and saucer for a fingerprint check.

  A green Volkswagen circled the block at the thrift shop several times. It was leased to a former convict. Its driver was not the Zodiac.

  Later, at 1:00 p.m. that afternoon, the three living witnesses to the voice of the actual Zodiac serial killer—Nancy Slover, Bryan Hartnell, and Dave Slaight—were transported to the KGO studios by Detectives Narlow and Townsend. They convened around an audio replay of the show. None of them believed that the voice they heard on the tape was the same as that of the Zodiac. Hartnell, the lone survivor of the Berryessa attack, was the most vocal: not only was the pitch of the voice wrong, but the cadence did not match that of his attacker.

  Years later, he would explain that the killer’s cadence was so distinct that if he ever heard it again, he would recognize it immediately. Hartnell was certain that the Zodiac’s voice was older and deeper. “Sam” was not the Zodiac, Slaight and Slover agreed. The voice on the tape came from someone who was too young and too unsure of himself.

  It was concluded that the caller was not the killer; it was indeed a hoax. Initially, the police attempted to keep from the public the feedback that the three had provided. They hoped to use their knowledge to prod the real Zodiac out of hiding. Unfortunately for the case, a Napa investigator divulged to the press that the caller was not the Zodiac. The clever strategy the police was developing could never be implemented.

  The same caller, “Sam,” identifying himself as “Zodiac,” telephoned Melvin Belli at his San Francisco home on January 14. He was told that Belli was in Europe at the time, to which he replied, “I can’t wait. It’s my birthday.” He also called KGO TV again on February 5, staying on the line for 20 minutes. But it was still not enough time to trap the call. Nevertheless, the authorities soon learned the name of the hoaxer. On February 18, the FBI’s field office in San Francisco notified the Bureau in Washington, D.C. that Toschi had identified the anonymous phone caller who had made his calls from Oakland. The man was investigated, but his fingerprints did not match those in the Zodiac case file.

  The only question that remained was whether the original contact with the Oakland Police Department was initiated by the killer, by “Sam,” or by someone else. That call was in time identified as also having originated in Oakland, the police suspecting that “Sam” and not the Zodiac was behind it as well. One source reported that the resident to whom that line was registered was investigated and ultimately cleared of any involvement in the murders.

  The once-promising lead was a dead end for the case, but one which would resurface. “Sam” never reentered the investigation, but Melvin Belli would. The attorney received an authentic Zodiac letter in December 1969, and was referenced in another the following year. “Sam” or some other hoaxer introduced Belli into the case; the Zodiac meant to keep him there.

  An odd, and possibly unrelated, telephone call came into a relief switchboard operator on January 2, 1970, at one minute before 2:00 a.m. A man calling himself Zodiac called the Sacramento FBI Field Office stating that he had just killed someone or something. His voice trailed off so that his final words were unintelligible.
The Field Office passed the information on to agencies investigating the Zodiac, including the Napa County Sheriff’s Department and the SFPD. Because it was a local call that came directly into the switchboard, it was also shared with the Sacramento authorities as a possible local homicide.

  A man claiming to be the Zodiac called Oklahoma City radio station KTOK on October 22. He explained that he left the Bay Area because “it got too hot for me,” but it was not the real Zodiac. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on this hoax call on December 8. Many people over the ensuing decades made prank telephone calls claiming to be the Bay Area killer.

  Belli’s recollection of the Zodiac case, and his participation, differed slightly from the police record. In his 1976 book, Melvin Belli: My Life on Trial, the attorney steadfastly maintained that he had spoken with the actual Zodiac. Either he did not know about further developments in the case or he valued drama and book sales above factual accuracy. He counted only 13 short calls from the Zodiac during the Dunbar fiasco, and wrote that the initial call had come into the SFPD, not the Oakland Police Department.

  He described the Zodiac as a self-aware sufferer of Multiple Personality Disorder (sometimes designated Dissociative Identity Disorder), a man who due to his mental illness had more than one personality within a single body. He also claimed that before attempting to meet “Sam” at their pre-arranged location, he had made an agreement with San Francisco District Attorney John Jay Ferdon that the perpetrator of the crimes would not face the death penalty if he surrendered.

  Ferdon vehemently denied that he’d ever agreed to such a deal, or any deal, saying that he only promised the man a fair trial: he was unaware at the time whether Belli even represented the “voice” that claimed to be the Zodiac. Belli shot back at Ferdon, accusing him of sabotaging the meeting.

  The first reference the actual Zodiac made to Melvin Belli occurred in December with the arrival of a new mailing, the eponymous Belli letter. With it, the killer reached out to the attorney directly.

  The Belli letter

  In a murder case that contains many unusual pieces of correspondence, the Belli letter stands out. It is among the most curious of all the authenticated postings. Even today, researchers are not sure exactly how to interpret it. Some see in it a cry for help from a criminal whose psychological health is crumbling; others, the mocking taunt of an arrogant sociopath.

  Postmarked December 20, 1969, on the one-year anniversary of the Lake Herman Road double murder, the Belli letter was sent with six downward looking Thomas Jefferson stamps. Across the back of the envelope diagonally were the words, “Mery Christmass & New Year.” The greeting was missing an R, but had an additional S. It was only the second note to be sent to anyone other than the police or the press. It was also the last. Apart from the missive taunting Joseph Bates, the father of Riverside murder victim Cheri Jo, all previous letters had been specifically addressed to a police department or a newspaper outlet.

  This raised the question: why the change? Never before had the Zodiac sent a letter to an attorney or a national celebrity, and he never would again. This one, however, was aimed at the legal community and toward a lawyer who had at the time had achieved rare notoriety.

  In the one-page note that arrived on December 23, the Zodiac had written,

  Dear Melvin

  This is the Zodiac speaking I

  wish you a happy Christmass.

  The one thing I ask of you is

  this, please help me. I cannot

  reach out for help because of

  this thing in me wont let me.

  I am finding it extreamly dif-

  icult to hold it in check I am

  afraid I will loose control

  again and take my nineth &

  posibly tenth victom. Please

  help me I am drownding. At

  the moment the children are

  safe from the bomb because

  it is so massive to dig in & the

  triger mech requires much work

  to get it adjusted just right. But

  if I hold back too long from

  no nine I will loose complet(crossed out) all

  controol of my self & set the

  bomb up. Please help me I can

  not remain in control for much

  longer.

  [crosshair symbol]

  This newest mailing was furnished to the SFPD on October 29, and the FBI received its information in an airtel from San Francisco that same day. The letter was accompanied by a striped piece of cloth, which the SFPD lab determined came from the shirttail of the last known victim in the case, Paul Stine. The Zodiac had repeated his macabre act of sending a blood-stained swatch of Stine’s shirt.

  When it was noticed years later by amateur investigator Ricardo Gomez that the envelope containing the letter and shirt piece was carefully addressed in a font that matched the distinctive numbering at Belli’s residential address, “1228 Mtgy San Fran, Calif.,” grave speculation arose that the Zodiac had actually visited the home in person.

  The FBI Field Office in San Francisco requested an examination of the Belli letter on December 29, and a comparison to other Zodiac writing. The FBI crime lab received the material on the last day of 1969. The envelope, Qc43, and letter, Qc44, were found to have some distortion, and were not written as freely as threatening letters of the past. Nevertheless, characteristics indicated that all of the threatening letters in this case may have been prepared by one hand.

  The identification was bolstered by the letter’s reference to a bomb. By this time, no information had been released to the public on the Zodiac’s threat made in the 6-Page letter, not the bomb diagram, and not the list of the bomb’s components. In order to protect the public from a panic that might ensue from a likely hoax, the SFPD had urged The Chronicle keep the details under wraps.

  Apart from the presence of the bloody shirt piece and the reference to a bomb, the match was not an obvious one. The Belli letter stood apart from other Zodiac letters because it was composed with careful, meticulous hand printing. Considerably more time and effort were evident in its creation. The difference between this script and that used in earlier communications such as the 3-Part letters was stark enough to lead some to question its authenticity, despite the enclosed piece of Stine’s shirt.

  Absent was the hurried scrawl that epitomized most of the killer’s other notes. For instance, R’s were now carefully detailed, replacing the quick slashes that previously had approached check marks. The odd spaces within words were gone. The killer’s earlier writing had been messy and uneven, dashed off as though the writer was in a hurry, was uneducated, or was dealing with some deep-seated emotional problems. By contrast, the Belli letter was carefully printed with even letters and straight lines, the lettering you might expect of a detail-oriented adult who labored over each word.

  The font of the new letter appeared to be a copybook style, what someone learned in elementary school, having emulated it from a blackboard or a first grade primer. Of all the approximately 20 Zodiac letters, this one was by far the most neatly printed, resembling the accuracy and obvious care that was demonstrated in the two ciphers which had by this point been received, the 408 and the 340. Investigators wondered at the improved quality of the script.

  The Zodiac may have felt duty bound to impress the famed lawyer, either out of respect or out of a desire to court favor. By not a small measure, this letter is the easiest of all the Zodiac handwritten letters to read, and it demonstrated that the writer could print clean text when and if he chose to do so.

  He may instead have been responding to a November 12, 1969 article in The Chronicle in which reporter Paul Avery sarcastically speculated that the “tidy” printing of a previous letter was employed to thwart police investigation. The neatness of the Belli letter may have been a fervent attempt to demonstrate to Avery that his printing was indeed penned in his own handwriting.

  In contrast to the deliberate script, the note’s
message was anything but clear.

  The Belli letter was an enigma, its correct meaning open to interpretation. On the surface, the writer cried out for help, three times repeating the phrase, “[p]lease help me.” It was an entirely new tone for the killer. The earlier letters screamed with the inference that it was the police who needed help. Filling his letters with bravado and threat, the braggart portrayed himself as strong, intelligent, and brave. These new words by contrast meekly expressed humility and need. The police were left to wonder whether his request for help was a sincere plea or just another in a long line of taunts, now communicated in sarcastic barbs.

  In the Belli letter, for the first time, the Zodiac opened the door on the inner workings of his mind, if the letter was an honest appeal. The writer claimed that there was something in him that caused him to murder. It may have been self-revelatory and a cry for help from a victim of obsession, multiple personality disorder, or psychotic thinking. It was troubling to the killer, and an apparent expression of some kind of mental illness. Yet the truth may not be so simple.

  If the letter was an honest desire for assistance, it raised many thorny questions. Why, for instance, did he write to a lawyer? The type of help he was seeking, clearly psychological, was beyond the scope of Belli’s purview. The Zodiac did not reach out to a medical doctor or a psychiatrist, but to a high-profile trial attorney. If he was after legal assistance or criminal representation, he never requested it.

  The communication was also murky concerning what exactly Belli was supposed to do in response to the information. Considering that the Zodiac was not identified, the lawyer could not write or call him, any more than the police could find him and arrest him. Indeed, no further correspondence ever occurred between the Zodiac and Belli, despite the openness that the lawyer presented following the telephone call into the Oakland PD switchboard, and subsequent to the new letter’s publication. The attorney expressed willingness to meet with and aid the Zodiac in any way he could. He shared a genuine concern that was well-publicized.