Doubt [10]

Michael Majau was the sole survivor from the Blue Rock Springs attack on July four, nine sixty nine. He was shown photos of potential suspects the morning after the shooting. As far as we know, according to those police reports, he never identified any of those individuals at the time. Alan wasn't in the photo lineup because he wasn't a suspect. Decades later, in Michael Magee was shown a set of photographs by retired detective George Bauert from the Leo Police Department.

One of the individuals in that photo lineup was Arthur Lee Allen. When shown this lineup, according to George Bowart, Michael Joe pointed to Arthur Lee Allen's photograph and said that's him that's the man who shot me. And George Bowart said, are you sure, and he said yes. It had been more than two decades since the Zodiac attacked Majeaux, and since that time, Robert Gray Smith's book had popularized the case against Arthur Lee Allen, which led to Allan's

name and face being widely circulated. It made sense for Majo to pick Allen in the lineup, but that wasn't the end of Michael Majoe's statement in It's what happened next that changed Michael Butterfield's opinion. And then he pointed to the photograph of another individual in that lineup and said he had a face like him, and the Valo Police Department did not consider his identification to be valid. Arthur Lee Allen at the time in ninety nine did

not match the description provided by Michael Michelle. And that's sort of when I woke up to that phenomenon that every time you're hearing about the Zodiac case, it's in the prism of someone's theory. It's not the facts, and they're tailoring those facts to suit their theory. It's also why Michael Butterfield began to doubt Gray Smith's account of events. There was a period of time where I was really impressed with that book and thought that was the whole story.

And then over a short period of time, I started to realize there's a lot more to that story than that book. Butterfield doesn't think Arthur Lee Allen is the killer. And so over a period of years I realized that the story that you hear about the Zodiac case is not the real story. And as you examine the facts, that story starts to disintegrate, and behind it is this other story which is much more interesting. It's the true story of what happened, but that's not often what you

hear in public. A man in a mask robbed, tied, and stabbed them, leaving them for dad. Subjects stated, I want to report a murder, no a double murder. I did it. A man who wore an evil style executioner's hood, carried a knife and gun and intended to use them. They haven't Arrestipe because they can't move it. I'm not damn Zodiac. Who is the Zodiac? And where is he? From my Heart Radio, How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV, this is Monster, the Zodiac Killer. It seemed as if

the odds were stacked against Arthur Lee Allen. His home had been searched over multiple occasions, over decades of time. He had been harassed by investigators and reporters nearly his entire life. But almost all the evidence against Arthur Lee Allen was Circumstan Danchiel, the timing of the last letters, the odd items found inside his home, his zodiac watch.

A lot of this was based on one book, Robert gray Smith's Zodiac, But many people began to notice issues in that book, including some people whose stories were in it. There's a lot of rumors around. Everybody said, oh, we paid cash for that house with drug money. Dean Farren is the former husband of Darlene Farren, the waitress killed

at Blue Rock Springs. The gray Smith book suggests Darlene had extra money from selling drugs, which perpetuated the rumor that Dean and Darlene bought their house with that money. If they would have done any research, they could have seen that, Okay, there was a mortgage on it. It's pretty much public record who owns the house and where it came from. And that wasn't the only issue Dean had with the gray Smith book. Then the night of

the shooting itself. He says that the Zodiac called the house, which, okay, that's probably true somebody did. But he says that from where he was he could look to the back window of the house and see who answered the phone. Well, that's impossible because it's like four blocks away and there's two big buildings with trees and everything around it, so you can tell he never came to town, and geographically

it couldn't be done. And there's quite a few quotes in the book that I've never spoken to the man. When we spoke with the retired Valeo PD detective at rust, he was also skeptical of the gray Smith book, the book that was written about the Zodiac by Robert Graysmith. Yeah, I never was even contacted by that person. He never asked me about it or anything, so I I don't know. He has my name and some comments I made in his book, but I never spoke with the man, forgot

with him or anything. The book was not the only source of stories that accused Arthur Lee Allen. There was also the testimony of Allen's former friend Don Cheney. Cheney's story heavily implicated Allan, but it's possible he had another motive. Remember the two men had a falling out because Alan allegedly tried to molest one of Cheney's children. Could this

be enough motive to try and frame Allan? So by nineteen seventy one, when the police were investigating, he didn't have much to go on or to prove that any of his accusations were true. They just had to basically accept what he was saying and then go investigate Allan. Now, in subsequent years, a lot of people, including myself, who have gotten access to the police reports, I've interviewed Arthur

Ly Allen's family. UM, I actually interviewed Don Cheney myself several times, and Don Cheney made statements to me which were demonstrably false. He embellished elements of his story, he added elements to his story, he changed elements of his story. He initially said that this conversation had taken place in December of nineteen sixty seven, but then he also claimed that our through Lee, Allen, had been talking about losing his job, a job that he didn't lose until March

of nineteen eight. So obviously there was something wrong there. And as soon as Cheney realized that timing didn't match up with the facts, he changed the date of that conversation. The date was always crucial because he was claiming this occurred before the Zodiac murders began. But later on he started claiming that Arthur Lee Allen took him to the scene of the murders on Lake Cremin Road, that he talked about disabling women's cars by removing the lug nuts

on their tires. Of course, an allusion to the Kathleen John's abduction. That doesn't match up with the Cheney's initial claim that he hadn't talked to Allen since they're falling out in nineteen sixty nine. Also, Cheney didn't add the detail about disabling cars until he spoke with police for the second time in nine years after Grace Smith's book came out. And what about the connection Cheney made between

Arthur Lee Allen and Darlene Farren. Remember, Allen had supposedly told Cheney he had become friendly with Darlene at the restaurant where she worked, but Cheney didn't remember Darlene when he spoke to police in nineteen seventy one and nineteen ninety one. It wasn't until he spoke with gray Smith, not the police, that he made the connection. This was shortly before gray Smith's second book was published in two thousand two. The discrepancy in Don Cheney's timelines is the

same with Arthur Lee Allen's watch. Cheney claimed Allen showed off his new watch on January one, nineteen sixty nine, but Allen's brother Ron said that's not true. Ron claimed their mother gave Allen that watch for Christmas in nineteen sixty seven, the year before. But Cheney originally didn't tell this to police. Again, it wasn't until years after the nineteen six Zodiac book was published that Cheney supposedly remembered

this story. So there's some serious, serious problems with Cheney and his credibility, and he's the foundation for all of this. I was forced to conclude that Don Cheney was not truthful, and that wasn't because I don't like Allen as a suspect, or because I just didn't want to believe him, because that's what the facts indicate. That coupled with the accumulated effect of years of misinformation and propaganda, combined into this

horrible situation for Arthur Lee Allen. Where now most people were convinced of his guilt, but the information used to convince them was usually not the truth. I've often thought about what must have happened when the book Zodiac came out and had said that Arthur Lee Allen's family believed that he was the Zodiac and had reported him to police. That was not true. Arthur Ly Allen's family never suspected that he was the Zodiac. They never reported him to police.

But can you imagine the problems that created in his family If you think about something like Occam's Razor, was the most logical explanation that the explanation with the least unnecessary parts, Then the most likely explanation is that Arthur Lee Allen was not the Zodiac, and that the reason most people think he is the Zodiac is because of that book and then the film adaptation by David Fincher in two thousand seven, which also altered some facts to

make Allen look more guilty than the facts would permit. So, at the end of the day, Arthur Lee Allen is probably the best known Zodiac suspect. He's probably someone that many people still believe is guilty, but the facts tell a very different story. One glaring irregularity in the case

against Arthur Lee Allen was the witness description. Arthur Lee Allen worked on a hardware store in the Leo and I had been in that hardware store, and I believe that contact with him, and he he was about six ft five light, you know, a big, hefty guy and probably wade two hundred and fifty pounds or more, big big man, and I might I dismissed him mainly because of my interview with Michael Majoe where he described the suspect as about five eight or five nine standing next

to that very low profile sports type vehicle that he was in when he was shot. In my mind, if Arthur Lee Allen, at six ft five two fifty plus pounds had walked up to that car, Michael Majoel would have said this guy was huge or something along that line, that he would described a very large man, tall, whatever like that. In his interview with me assistantly stuck to five a five nine, and the only thing fares being big and overweight would be the paunch from his belling.

In my mind, that start any anything other than might what you call gut feeling. There's a cop that Michael Majol would have given an entirely different description. At the large man has walked up next to the car too, But if it's been Arthur Lee Allen, I think it would have been u much different physical description is at least in height and weight. Alan's height and weight weren't

the only physical descriptions that didn't add up. Brian Hartnell, the survivor from Lake Berriessa, did say Alan could possibly be the Zodiac, but Hartnell also admits the zodiac size could have been dependent on whether or not the jacket he was wearing was lined or unlined. Hartnell said if the killer was wearing a lined jacket, he could have been a thin man. Again, Hartnell's description didn't match the six ft two hundred and fifty pound man that was Alan.

But there's a third factor that stands out here. Hartnell said, when the Zodiac turned his head, he saw some of the man's hair and it was brown. Arthur Lee Allen was balding. But it wasn't only victims who said that Allan didn't match the zodiac's description. It's also interesting to note that Don Falk, the police officer who reportedly saw the Zodiac at the scene of the last known murder, said that Arthur Lee Allen didn't match the description of

the man he saw. Don Falk described the Zodiac as a white male adult in his early forties, five ft eight, heavy billed, reddish, blonde, crew cut, and wearing glasses. Again, the description doesn't match Allan's height or weight, and in all three cases, not one witness mentioned the Zodiac as balding. Majau wasn't the only person in to be shown a

photographic lineup. Kathleen John's, the woman who claims the Zodiac attempted to kidnap her, was all so shown photos of possible suspects, but John's didn't pick Allen, she chose someone else. The eyewitness accounts of the Zodiac didn't match Arthur Lee Allen, but there was another major factor that also didn't add up his handwriting. My name is Susan Morton. I am retired from the San Francisco Police Crime Laboratory, whereas served

for some years as their forensic document examiner. A forensic document examiner uses scientific processes to study documents from crime scenes. Examiners not only compare handwriting, but they can also tell where the material came from, and if the document has been altered, I would usually start with the known writing. My method was to sketch it in my own effort, and that would make me pay attention to things like size.

Gray shows like if you have a T H combination, which is a pretty common combination of letters, which one is taller, and you'll find that a writer is very consistent about these ratios. I will figure all of those out and get fixed in my mind not only how this person forms letters and the ratios and things like that, but how they vary. People are not machines, and they're never going to write exactly the same way twice, but

they're going to vary within certain parameters. Susan worked at a Bay Area laboratory that had done most of the original work on the Zodiac case. At the time. The San Francisco Police Department used that lab because they didn't have a document examiner on staff. The first thing I would do is see if it was naturally written. When someone is attempting to copy someone else's signature, they're not actually right. They're drawing a picture. Drawing and writing are

completely different acts from the writing that is copied. Looks very different from normal writing. I'm not going to be able to tell who did create debt, but I can determine that the person whose signature it supposedly is did not write it, because nobody forges their own signature like that. That's a very laborious process. Susan inherited the Zodiac case from the San Francisco Police Department. She became what she

calls the custodian of the letters. Susan would do handwriting comparisons every time a new Zodiac suspect was offered up. The Zodiac letters were handprinted, and they were extremely fluently done very rapidly. When you're going fast, you don't have the ability to disguise your handwriting because you're going to do what your program tells you to do if you're going fast. And you can tell this by how the ends of the letters tail off into a little feathered

because them flying finishes. So I knew that the body of that writing was the way that person wrote. This wasn't some disguise that had been devised. The writing had a right right hand slant, and the D was consistently more slanted than any of the other letters, and that's very unusual characteristic and that was consistent throughout all of the Zodiac's writing. I was of the opinion that it was the natural writing of that person. Natural handwriting is

the way a person writes with their dominant hand. For example, if someone who was right handed tried to write with their left hand, that writing wouldn't be considered natural. Some people theorized Arthur Lee Allen was ambidextrous and he could have used his less dominant hand to help disguise his writing, but that wouldn't have worked because even if he used his other hand, it still would have been his natural handwriting.

Susan doesn't believe Arthur Lee Allen disguised his handwriting based on her findings, and there were numerous consistent differences with the writing of Arthur ly Allen. I had copious amounts of his writing contemporaneous to the Zodiac letters. Remember they were written back in the sixties and early seventies. But I had writing of arthurly Allen's from back then, and it was writing that he did and what we call

a normal course of business. It wasn't something he sat down and wrote to be used as a handwriting exemplar. It was application forms and things like that, so he was unaway or anybody would ever look at that when he wrote it, and there was just no match whatsoever. The lab also tried to develop fingerprints from the letters, but the only usable print developed was a palm print. It's called a writer's palm, the way a person's hand

rests on a page when they write. So we were virtually certain that those prints did belong to the writer of the letters. And also I believe that they did do a comparison of his palm print to these writer's palms, and there were several of those of different letters, and they did not match his palm print. So I don't think he did not write the Zodiac letters. There was no indication and much indication that he didn't write it.

Every investigation of him eventually cleared him, so it was not the Zodiac m h. When Arthur Lee Allen was first questioned in October of nineteen sixty nine, he thought it made him seem important for the first time. Maybe instead of being viewed as some pathetic child molester, now he was being viewed as one of the most brilliant master criminals in history. And it appears that he may have bragged about that and may have talked about that.

At least Arthur Lee. Allen's family thought that at first he enjoyed that kind of attention, and then it backfired. It took a lot of my tapes, they took a samples of my handwriting, and then it became permanent, and it became a cloud as shadow that followed him for the rest of his life. I've never been known through good luck, and I guess this is pretty much living proof of it. I couldn't murder anyone, but if you put yourself in his shoes, most people wouldn't want to

be accused of murder. And if they were going to be accused of murder, at least do it with the facts. Don't use fiction to accuse somebody. Two types of liars in the world fishermen and policeman, and not necessarily in that order. So it's got to be a really terrible place to be to know that there's a book out there that claims you're the Zodiac and people believe it.

And while at first you might be tempted to play along and say, you know, yeah, well maybe I am the Zodiac or whatever, then it becomes a ball of chain that you cannot escape. I'm not the Zodiac killer. I know that. I know that deep my soul. And by the time they were searching Allen's home and he's being interviewed by the police and his name is all over the place, it was all over. At that point, he had no choice anymore, and he is now going to forever be known as the man that was most

likely the Zodiac. I couldn't murder anyone. It's difficult as hell, and it can be ex it could be terribly depressing. And if I had deserved any of it, that would be something different, but I don't today. Ballejo police investigators said they never charged Allen because they couldn't explain discrepancies in the Zodiac's handwriting. Then you haven't arrested, maybe because they can't prove a pain. I'm not damn Zodiac, the Zodiac killer or victim of years at police harassment. Arthur

Lee Allen took the answer to his grave. Arthur Lee Allen died from natural causes in August of Valio Police Department officials found him unresponsive on the floor in his basement. A polygraph agreement was resting in his printer. The Valeo police had been pushing for Alan to take another polygraph test, and it seemed he had decided to give in. At fifty eight years old, he was still fighting to prove his innocence. He was one of the most unluckiest people

on the planet because it literally destroyed him. He ended up dying about a year after the first search of his home, and of course they might as well have carved onto his gravestone the man most people thought was the Zodiac. So what you're left with is a man who has been accused for almost fifty years on the basis of statements made by two very questionable witnesses. None

of the evidence implicates them in the crimes. Every single time they find some evidence, whether it's fingerprints, handwriting, DNA palm prints, or eyewitness descriptions, it doesn't match Allen, and his accusers will tell you that's because he's a master criminal who was brilliant and could fake evidence and get away with it. One of those people who clung to the belief it was Arthur Lee Allen was Inspector Dave Toski.

He was first brought onto the case during the cab driver murder in San Francisco, While Tski hunted for connections to prove alan was the Zodiac, others began to look elsewhere. In the late nineteen eighties, I began working for a company called Orchards Supply Hardware, and later I became a what's quota regional loss prevention est purity manager for the

hardware stores. I belonged to a couple of different security associations and one of them, at a luncheon that I attended at one of the security organizations, they had a guest speaker who was going to do a presentation on the Zodiac Killer. And it turned up to be a man named Harvey Hines Hi n e s who was actually a police officer, but he had never never worked

in any jurisdiction where any of the claimed Zodiac killings. Yeah, he gave a presentation and showed that he had identified a person named Larry Kine that he believed was the Zodiac. Next time on Monster the Zodiac Killer, and it was just so creepy again, just so freaked out. This woman is she just quit her job And Larry King was just a cree be odd char stories like that because he was part of the mom he may have turned

somebody in and they put him into protection program. For the last nine years, the Zodiac investigation has been headed by homicide Inspector David Tusky. I had rulishel de fating that he was not dead and that he was out there somewhere and that he would communicate. There is no official police clamp on Inspectatoski talking with the media. That matter is entirely up to him. It went off like a flash. Oh my goodness, that definitely looks like Zodiac.

So we want to just make some advancements, you know, and get something major. I think I've come up with something major. It's an interesting bit of information that nobody knew about before, and I think where fifty years into it, it's time to solve the case. Monster The Zodiac Killer is a fifteen episode podcast produced by I Heart Radio, How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. Donald Albright and I are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers

Meredith Stepman, Mason Lindsay, and Christina Dana. Jason Hope is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works, along with producers Trevor Young, Miranda Hawkins, ben Kybrick, and Josh Than Scott Benjamin provides additional voice talent. Matt Frederick is our host. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. If you haven't already, make sure to check out the first season of Monster called Atlanta Monster, about the Atlanta child murders

from the late seventies to the early eighties. Download the ten episode season right now. Have questions or comments, email us at Monster at how stuff works dot com, or you can call us at one eight three three eight five six six six seven. Thanks for listening.