Arthur Leigh Allen

Allen was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on December 18, 1933. He grew up in Vallejo, California, and had a strained relationship with his mother. Allen entered the U.S. Navy on December 13, 1951, and served until his honorable discharge on December 12, 1959. During his time in the navy, he served mostly in the reserves but spent some time on active duty. He served on multiple submarines and earned the China Service Medal for his service in southeast Asia. On April 4, 1958, Allen faced a special court-martial at Treasure Island for bringing a loaded .45 pistol onto the naval base. He was found not guilty. Allen attended California Polytechnic State College, where he was the California collegiate trampoline champion in 1959. In the early 1960s, Allen moved to Atascadero, California, where he worked as a teacher and later as a mechanic. He died from a heart-attack on August 26, 1992. Allen was played by John Carroll Lynch in the 2007 David Fincher film Zodiac. == Zodiac suspect ==

Allen had been interviewed by police from the early days of the Zodiac investigation and was the subject of several search warrants over a twenty-year period. In 2007, true crime author Robert Graysmith noted that several policemen described Allen as the most likely suspect. In 2010, SFPD investigator Dave Toschi stated that all the evidence against Allen ultimately "turned out to be negative". In the 2024 documentary This Is the Zodiac Speaking, allegations were made by a family who were friends of Allen which, if true, would reinforce his culpability; this includes Allen admitting to being the Zodiac before his death in 1992. On October 6, 1969, Allen was interviewed by Detective John Lynch of the Vallejo Police Department. Allen had been reported in the vicinity of the Lake Berryessa attack on September 27. He told Lynch that he was going to go to Lake Berryessa but changed his mind and went scuba diving at Salt Point State Park instead. In 1971, Allen's former friend, Donald L. Cheney, reported to Manhattan Beach police that Allen had spoken of his desire to kill people, used the name Zodiac, and secured a flashlight to a firearm for visibility at night. Cheney said this conversation occurred no later than January 1, 1969. Allen was interviewed again on August 4, 1971, this time by Detective Mulanax of the Vallejo Police Department and Inspectors Toschi and Bill Armstrong of SFPD. Allen admitted to having possession of bloody knives the day of the Berryessa attack, claiming he used the knives to “kill a chicken.” In 1974, Allen was arrested for lewdness with a nine-year-old boy. After pleading guilty he was sent to Atascadero State Hospital for pre-sentence evaluation and treatment. On May 13, 1977, Allen was given a suspended prison sentence and five years of felony probation. He completed probation successfully in 1982. Allen's arrest and sentencing could provide a potential reason for why the Zodiac's communications stopped in 1974. A possible Zodiac letter was received in 1978, after Allen was released. After an old nemesis of Allen's named Ralph Spinelli told VPD that Allen admitted to him that he was the Zodiac, Two days after his death in 1992, they served another warrant and seized property from his residence. Evidence , Allen's watch, which has the same logo as the Zodiac Killer On August 16, 1991, Michael Mageau identified Allen from a photo lineup of 1968 driver's licenses as the man who shot him in 1969, saying, "That's him! It's the man who shot me!". In contrast, police officer Donald Fouke, who (with officer Eric Zelms) possibly saw the Zodiac fleeing the Paul Stine murder scene, said in the 2007 documentary His Name was Arthur Leigh Allen that Allen weighed about 100 pounds more than the man Fouke saw, and that Allen's face was "too round". Allen and the Zodiac did, however, both wear shoes sized 10.5. Shortly before his death, Allen wrote a letter to Rita Williams, a reporter from San Francisco station KTVU who had just interviewed him. The letter contained grammatical mistakes similar to those of the Zodiac letters. Williams firmly believes that Allen was the Zodiac. Retired police handwriting expert Lloyd Cunningham, who worked on the Zodiac case for decades, stated in 2009, "They gave me banana boxes full of Allen's writing, and none of his writing even came close to the Zodiac. Nor did DNA extracted from the envelopes [on the Zodiac letters] come close to Arthur Leigh Allen". In 2002, Cydne Holt of the SFPD crime lab developed a partial DNA profile from saliva on stamps and envelopes of the Zodiac's letters – especially the stamp on the November 8, 1969, card – for the ABC News program Primetime Thursday. A partial DNA profile cannot "point to just one person", it "can only rule someone in as a possibility or exclude them if it isn't a match". The SFPD compared this partial profile to that of Allen and Cheney. Since neither test result indicated a match, the two were excluded as the contributors of the DNA. Zodiac researcher Michael Butterfield was skeptical of the documentary's allegations. In the letter, the History Channel show revealed that Zodiac named his next victim as "Connie Henly" and her location in Albany, New York, thus rendering the full deciphered code as "Connie Henly, Albany Medical Center. This is only the beginning". Phyllis Seawater's maiden-name was "Hensley", and at the time the letter had been sent, Connie was living in New York State, just a few hours from Albany. Allen had previously fallen out with Connie for not leaving her family for him. The Seawaters also found a cache of Allen's letters to their mother, which include extensive discussions of the Zodiac. == References ==