TheZodiac Killerterrorized San Francisco from 1968 to 1974, taunting police and the public with cryptic letters and phone calls. He was officially credited with five murders that happened in California between 1968 and 1969, but in those letters headmits to 37 more. He was brazen, perhaps even cocky, daring the police to find him but knowing they never would. And they haven’t to this day, with the San Francisco Police Department still listing theZodiac murders as a cold case. There have been many suspects over the years, each of which has been dismissed for various reasons. Netflix, though, has released a docuseries about the case,This is the Zodiac Speaking, that claims to have identified the killer, and it’s a man who has been a suspect from the start.
Arthur Leigh Allen Was an Early Suspect in the Zodiac Killer Case
This is the Zodiac Speakingmakes the argument that a man namedArthur Leigh Allenis the Zodiac Killer. Allen isn’t just a random name; in fact, he was a suspect from the start. The seriesgoes into detailabout how Allen came to be a suspect in 1971, after a friend,Don Cheney, alerted authorities after Allen made remarks about “shooting tires on the school bus and picking the little darlings off as they come bouncing out of the bus.” Disturbing enough on its own, but what raised the red flag is how the line was similar to one in a letter from Zodiac, which threatened to “shoot out the front tire and then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.”
Hunting knives and a freezer filled with dead animals were found by police in Allen’s trailer, but nothing that linked Allen to the Zodiac murders. InspectorDavid Toschi, whoinspired Harry CallahaninDirty Harry, said, courtesy of audio in the documentary, “We came away a little depressed. I thought we would find more.” All they had was circumstantial evidence Allen wore a Zodiac Sea Wolf watch, and had the same shoe size as a print from a crime scene. Two survivors had identified Allen as their assailant, but because the killer wore a hood, the claims weren’t viable. However, his handwriting wasn’t even close to the Zodiac’s,his fingerprints didn’t match any left behind at the crime scenes, and in 2002 he was exonerated afterDNA evidence ruled him out. He maintained his innocence, perBusiness Insider, to the end of his life in 1992.
The Evidence Against Arthur Leigh Allen in Netflix’s ‘This is the Zodiac Speaking’
A year-long delayin getting a search warrant for Allen’s premises may have impacted the investigation, but it’s unlikely that his innocence would have been contested, given the amount of evidence to support it. So, what does Netflix know that the SFPD, and many armchair detectives, do not?The case against Allen inThis is the Zodiac Speakingrelies on the claims of three siblings—Connie, David, and Don Seawater—who knew Allen as a teacher and as a father figure. PerThe Independent, they recall accompanying Allen on field trips, where he may have been scoping out the area as a killing site, pointing to how close some of the murders happened to where they had been. It’s a memory jarred for Connie by the 2007 filmZodiac, saying that “[There was] so much in that movie that was scary familiar,” pointing to the murder sites revisited in the film.
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Others interviewed for the docuseries include former students, one of whom recounted how Allen taught them to decipher codes similar in complexity to the Zodiac Killer’s.But a claim made by David Seawater is jaw-dropping, asserting that he got a full confession out of Allen in 1992, before his passing. According to Seawater, Allen sobbed as he spoke on the phone, confessing to having drugged them as kids, molesting Connie, and admitting that he was the Zodiac Killer when asked directly.
The problem with the claims, and where Netflix’s docuseries fails, is that they are no more definitive and concrete than any other claims made about other suspects. We are expected to take the Seawater siblings and others in the series at their word, and that simply isn’t enough to support their claims. But, as mentioned in another Netflix docuseries,Casting JonBenet, the Zodiac killings are a “Schrödinger’s cat crime.” Because there are no conclusions, then every possibility, no matter how “out there” it may be, is plausible. They may be wrong, they may be right. While it may be unsettling that we’ll never know the truth, one thing’s for sure: it makes for one hell of a sensational show.
This Is the Zodiac Speaking
This is the Zodiac Speakingis available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.
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