Killers_ The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time - Cawthorne, Nigel [39]
The letters continued, demanding that people in the San Francisco area wear lapel badges with the Zodiac symbol on it. When they did not, he threatened to kill Paul Avery, the Chronicle’s crime writer who had been investigating the story. Journalists, including Paul Avery, began wearing badges saying ‘I am not Paul Avery’. But Avery, who was a licensed private eye and a former war correspondent in Vietnam, took to carrying a .38 and put in regular practice at the police firing range.
An anonymous correspondent tied the Zodiac slayings to the unsolved murder of Cheri Jo Bates, a college girl in Riverside, California, on Hallowe’en 1966. The police could not rule out a connection, but could not prove a concrete link either. But when Paul Avery checked it out he discovered that the police had received what they considered to be a crank letter about the murder, five months after the killing. It was signed with the letter Z.
Cheri Jo Bates was an 18-year-old freshman, who had been stabbed to death after leaving the college library one evening. In a series of typewritten letters, the killer gave details of the murder only he could have known. He also said that there would be more and talked of a ‘game’ he was playing. But there were also hand-written letters, where the handwriting matched the Zodiac’s and Avery managed to persuade the police to re-open the Bates case in the light of the Zodiac murders.
During 1971, there were a number of murders that could have been committed by the Zodiac. Letters purporting to come from him confessed to them. But he could easily have been claiming credit for other people’s handiwork. However, on 7 April 1972, 33-year-old Isobel Watson, who worked as a legal secretary in San Francisco, alighted from the bus at around 9 p.m. in Tamalpais Valley and began walking home up Pine Hill. Seemingly out of nowhere, a white Chevrolet swerved across the road at her. The car stopped. The driver apologised and offered to give her a lift home. When Mrs Watson declined, he pulled a knife on her and stabbed her in the back. Her screams alerted the neighbours. The man ran back to his car and sped off. Mrs Watson recovered and gave a description: her assailant was a white man in his early forties, around five foot nine inches and he wore black-rimmed reading glasses. The police said that there was a better than fifty-fifty chance that this was the Zodiac Killer.
As time went on, other detectives dropped out of the case, leaving only Inspector David Toschi. The FBI looked at the files, but even they could take the case no further.
The correspondence from the Zodiac ceased for nearly four years. Though psychologists believed that he was the type who might commit suicide, Toschi did not believe he was dead. Toschi reasoned that the Zodiac got his kicks from the publicity surrounding the killings, rather than the killings themselves. Surely he would have left a note, or some clue in his room, that he was the Zodiac. Then on 25 April 1978, Toschi got confirmation. The Chronicle received a new letter from him. This time it mentioned Toschi by name. And the author wanted the people of San Francisco to know he was back. This gave the police a new opportunity to catch him.
Robert Graysmith, author of the book Zodiac, deduced that the killer was a film buff. In one of his cryptograms he mentions ‘the most dangerous game’ which is the title of a film. In another, he calls himself ‘the Red Phantom’, the title of another film. And he frequently mentions going to the cinema to see The Exorcist or Badlands, a fictionalised account of the murderous spree of Nebraskan killer Charles Starkweather. The police used this information and the Zodiac Killer’s obvious love of publicity to try and trap him. When a film about the Zodiac killings was shown in San Francisco a suggestions box was left in the lobby of the cinema. The audience were asked to drop a note of any information or theories they may have in it. The