By Bob Grimm
It’s already been seventeen years since David Fincher released his supremely well-done Zodiac, starring Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Jake Gyllenhaal as a combination of detectives and reporters trying to track down the real-life serial killer.
That film felt authentic, as does This Is the Zodiac Speaking, a three-part documentary that takes a long look at primary suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen (eerily portrayed by John Carroll Lynch in the Fincher film). Through interviews with Robert Graysmith (author of the book upon which Fincher based his film) and people who spent time with Allen while the murders were happening, the case is once again laid out against Allen. And, once again, he sure does appear guilty.
The Zodiac killed people in different California cities in the late ’60s, and David, Connie and Don Seawater have a story that makes Allen seemingly a lock as the Zodiac, including road trips that had Allen in those various cities at the time of the murders.
The Zodiac infamously taunted authorities with letters and puzzles that gave details of the murders he had committed, and those letters (and murders) stopped during a four-year stretch when Allen went to prison for child molestation. As the Seawaters reveal, Allen, just before his death, called to apologize to the children for drugging them on their road trips. I mean, it’s hard to find a scenario in which Allen wasn’t the killer.
Still, the case remains cold. Allen was never formally charged, but this documentary might be the final statement on the apparent guilt of Allen.
If Allen didn’t do it, he sure did an awful job of appearing innocent, something this doc proves many times over.
This Is the Zodiac Speaking is now streaming on Netflix.
I the course of my own research on the Zodiac case, I, of course, have become familiar with the Arthur Leigh Allen angle. Other theorists have discredited this. This other guy, Steve Hodel, claims it was his own father, George Hodel, whom the younger Hodel also avers was the Black Dahlia killer. I may add that Steve Hodel is a retired LAPD homicide detective. Full disclosure: “my own research on the Zodiac case” consists of reading books, plunking around online and on YouTube, and watching that 2007 movie a few times. I’m in no position to balk at any theory, even including the one that it was something with the government, military intelligence, REAL spooky stuff. I’m talking about the special wing-walker boot treads left at murder scenes; the slayer of the taxi driver, Paul Stine, seemingly disappearing around the senior officers’ quarters on the Presidio Army base; the coded messages that resembled naval signal flags; the books on cryptography and ciphers missing from every morale activity library on every military base in the Bay Area. Balk at all that yourself, if you want; but it’s a crazy, crazy world.