Zodiac Unmasked (6 page)

station. I do not know if he observed this subject or not. Respectful y submitted. Donald A. Fouke, Patrolman, Star 847.”

“I remember Officer Fouke tel ing us the composite drawing was not nearly as accurate as we original y thought with the children,” Toschi told me.

Within the homicide division the wanted poster was changed to read “five feet eleven inches” tal . “That Zodiac was rounder-faced, bigger. When

you think back to Fouke’s verbal description the word ‘lumbering’ sounds like a goril a, for God’s sake.” As years passed, Fouke altered his

estimate of Zodiac’s weight upward to 230-240 pounds and calculated his height at six feet or six feet one. He eventual y recal ed the low-cut shoes

as engineering boots and the jacket as “dirty.” “Zodiac,” he said to a television producer, was “walking toward us at an average pace, turned when

he saw us, and walked into a private residence [on Jackson Street].”

Toschi disagreed. “Zodiac disappeared,” he said. “‘Into the brush, somewhere in the park,’ is what Fouke said, not into a residence, not

whatsoever. Fouke clocked the encounter at no more than five to ten seconds. We felt that Zelms and Fouke had stopped Zodiac, and did

everything we could to keep it quiet so they wouldn’t be hurt by the police commission or embarrassed. I remember I talked to Don [Fouke] on the

side. He was al teary-eyed. ‘Jesus Christ, Dave, my God, it was the guy,’ he said. I said, ‘Yeah, it was, Don, but he could’ve kil ed you so easy. If

you had gotten out of your vehicle, unassuming, he could have blown you and Eric [Zelms] away. You gotta consider that.’ We had them do a sketch,

sent our sketch artist out there, and got the composite.”

“I interviewed the one surviving member of that duo there in the 1990s,” George Bawart told me later. “One guy was dead and the other was stil

working for SFPD. He was working Juvenile or something and he wasn’t real happy about being interviewed. It was not the high point of his career

and he didn’t want to talk about it. Who could blame him.”

Val ejo Detective Sergeant John Lynch too was obsessed with how close Zodiac had come to being captured. “The way I heard the thing,” he

told me, “is that when they were talking to him a cal came on the radio that they were looking for a black man, and [they] let this guy go and he

disappeared into the Presidio. I don’t believe he was covered with blood. You know, in the murder of a cabdriver you can almost bet your boots the

cops came out of that squad car with their guns in their hands. You’d have to. They waited so long to tel their chief because they were probably

shook up over that.”

Twelve days before, there may have been a dry run for the Stine shooting. At 11:00 P.M., September 30, 1969, Yel ow Cab driver Paul Hom

snagged a fare at the Mark Hopkin’s Hotel. The passenger asked to be driven to Washington and Locust Streets, three blocks before Washington

and Cherry Streets. At the destination, he asked Hom to continue along Washington to Arguel o Boulevard, then proceed north into the Presidio for

several hundred yards. Abruptly, he pul ed a long-barreled revolver and robbed Hom of $35 in cash. The cabbie, forced into the trunk, pleaded with

the robber to spare his life. Later he was released, unharmed, by M.P’s. After Stine’s murder, Captain Marty Lee, basing his conclusion on an

“amazing similarity of M.O. between criminals in two cabby cases,” said he believed the robber to have been Zodiac. The
Chronicle
thought so too.

“One of the luckiest men alive,” it reported, “taken for a ride by Zodiac, but lived to tel about it.” One discrepancy could not be explained. Hom’s

robber was only twenty-four, “135 pounds with black hair and eyes,” and dressed in “blue denim jacket and dark slacks.” But Zodiac was undeniably

a stocky, older man. Did he have a young accomplice who had scouted out the scene for him, rehearsing the Stine kil ing? Was that where the

answer lay?

Mulanax would never
see Fouke’s internal SFPD communication and upward estimate of Zodiac’s height and weight. Virtual y no one did. He

replaced the wanted poster with a mistaken conception of the kil er’s appearance and an uncomfortable sense it did not entirely fit their new

suspect. The Val ejo detective also never knew that Starr had an odd way of striding. “When walking he was terribly lumbering,” Starr’s friend told

me later. “He had a funny hip [his leg was lacerated so badly in August of 1965 that plastic surgery had been required].” One common link was the

description of Zodiac as an unusual y round-faced man. “Could Zodiac’s round, bloated face be indicative of fluid retention from a developing health

problem?” I asked a nurse. “Such as failing kidneys?” she answered. “Yes, very definitely.”

Mulanax next learned that the suspect had been arrested June 15, 1958, for a violation of 415 P.C., disturbing the peace. It was a minor blip in

his record, but one that had disastrous ramifications later on. As Mulanax put away the file folder, he saw that Starr had been a victim or a witness

to several other incidents. Additional y, suspicions existed about his improper relationships with children.

“Not a nice boy,” Mulanax thought.

The detective wanted to be prepared before the arrival of the “Zodiac Twins”—as the papers had dubbed Armstrong and Toschi. He phoned

CI&I for a more detailed rap sheet, then buzzed the Department of Motor Vehicles for a photo. “Susan, that’s California Driver’s License

#B672352,” he repeated for Susan Raspino. While she processed his request, Mulanax left the office to check out the residence Starr shared with

his widowed mother. It was cooler that day. Prevailing winds through the Golden Gate kept the town’s climate a little warmer in winter and a little

cooler in summer than other Bay Area cities. Mulanax turned off Tennessee Street and swung by Fresno Street.

Starr’s home, hunched on the east side of the street, was sun-bleached brown and shone pinkish-gray where diagonal slashes of light cut across

it. The numerals “32,” affixed in a metal frame on the facade, stood out stark black against white. A 1957 blue and white Ford sedan, parked in front

and hooked to a boat trailer, caught Mulanax’s eye. He slowed and jotted down the license number—LDH 974. DMV verified it was registered to

Starr, who also owned a two-seat Austin Healey, a VW, and a white Buick. A driveway led back to a detached two-door garage where a white

1965 Mercedes 220SB was parked. Mulanax had already learned that the suspect had formerly been employed as an attendant at Harry Wogan’s

Service Station. An auto repair job such as that would have made many cars left overnight for repair available to Starr.

The sergeant reached the end of the block, made a U-turn at Il inois Street, and cruised back by the house. He took one last critical look, then

spoke with Wogan. The service station owner told Mulanax that Starr had left his employment in 1970. “He said he was thinking of returning to

school at Sonoma State Col ege in Cotati,” replied Wogan. This was true. Starr had begun working toward a degree in biology in the fal of 1970.

Though Starr, according to his former boss, had been an efficient worker, he had shown too much interest in smal children. Wogan had three smal

children himself and they sometimes came around the station. “That worried me,” he said. “I wasn’t sorry to see him go.” That seemed to be the way

with Starr’s many employers. “They had him working at a school as some sort of custodian,” Mulanax told me later. “I was infuriated because I felt

he should have been arrested.”

At the start of summer, Starr had dropped by Wogan’s home and picked up his thirteen-year-old daughter. “How would you like to go for a ride

with me on my boat?” he had asked. The youngster had accepted without her parents’ consent. The girl returned to relate that Starr had made

“improper advances” toward her. After this, Wogan had not seen his employee again or wanted to.

Sergeant Mulanax believed much of the interest pedophiles had in smal children came from having absolute power over another individual,

reducing them to objects—a trait Zodiac and almost every serial kil er shared. “When Zodiac had hog-tied his victims at Lake Berryessa,” he told

me, “he had had complete power, had reduced them in his mind to mere objects, and especial y wore his homemade executioner’s costume for the

occasion.” Perhaps Zodiac had hoped someone might glimpse his frightening outfit and incite more terror in an already terrified community. But he

could hardly have hoped his victims would survive to tel the tale. Had he shown himself to someone else, as yet unknown?

Zodiac’s threats to blow up school buses and shoot children inspired as much fear as his costume. Mulanax recal ed armed sentinels—off-duty

teachers, drivers, and firemen, riding shotgun on school buses. Napa P.D., the jurisdiction of the Berryessa stabbings, assigned more than seventy

police units to fol ow the buses, and fixed-wing guard planes trailed hawklike behind them. People peeked behind their doors and gave second,

even third glances to cars gliding along the freeways and back roads at night. Zodiac was the twentieth-century version of the Bogeyman.

To obtain more samples of Starr’s handprinting, Mulanax drove to 1660 Tennessee Street, where Starr maintained a checking account at

Crocker-Citizens Bank. He arranged to get photostats of recent canceled checks connected to account #546-1685-48. He had considered

borrowing the originals (since Starr had ordered the bank not to return them), but decided against it. He saw one draft was to a man named Phil

Tucker. Another, dated July 20, 1971, was a $9.00 check to R. G. Black-wood for a 44-gal on cooler. A third showed a June 4 payment made out to

Tal Trees Trailer Court. The notation said: “Storage Rental.” Mulanax dispatched al three samples to Morril for analysis without giving much

consideration to what Starr might be storing in a trailer court. He had many trailers.

At 1:30 P.M., Inspectors Armstrong and Toschi, like travelers into a foreign land, crossed into Solano County for their appointment with Mulanax.

Since 1969 they had examined hundreds of suspects, were, in fact, weary. However, Starr was beginning to look serious, beginning to look very

good. Toschi, with his mass of tight, curly black hair, was wearing his trademark bow tie. A smile broadened his remarkably expressive face. They

had brought along Mel Nicolai, and Toschi was beaming at being among such good company. He had a high opinion of Nicolai. “Very

professional,” he told me later. “Mel enjoyed a good laugh and was a very, very good law enforcement officer. With his crew cut and glasses, he

looked like a professor. Nicolai, as a State Department of Justice CI&I agent, put cases together when multiple counties were involved. He was a

middle guy. We could contact him and he could get us information out of Sacramento.”

As for Mulanax, he was a man’s man, a rugged outdoorsman, a hunter like Zodiac. “After I see Starr in person, I’l contact you guys to come

back,” he assured them as the meeting concluded. Mulanax was the kind of man you could count on. Toschi knew he would come back with the

goods.

Monday, August 2, 1971

Mulanax continued his
circumspect investigation into Starr’s past, gathering as much background information as he could before making

personal contact with the suspect. He noted, as others had, that Starr’s birth date was December 18—two days shy of the December 20 date of the

Lake Herman Road double murders. Mulanax knew some serial kil ers struck on dates that held significance for them. So far, Zodiac had shot or

stabbed couples on the Fourth of July, near Hal oween, Columbus Day, and a few days before Christmas. However, a few VPD investigators

believed Zodiac had only taken responsibility for the Lake Herman tragedy to enhance his rep and further confuse the police. “Mulanax told me,”

said Toschi, “that one day when Starr wasn’t home, he went to Starr’s house and his mother was there. He kinda just walked around and searched

a little bit.”

If Mulanax spoke conversational y with Starr himself that day (not a questioning in any respect), no record has survived. Mulanax saw the open

door to Starr’s basement room yawning before him, and observed it was painted the same “near-neutral green” as the kitchen, though a shade

lighter. Was Starr down there now, peering up at him? Bernice, catching his eye, said, “It was a bedroom for both my boys for many years.” The

mailbox was a slot in the corner of the basement room. “Al letters must drop into that hideaway,” thought Mulanax, thinking of the mail-obsessed

kil er. And Zodiac had said in a letter he had a basement and bombs there. Starr had moved from an upstairs room back to the basement for more

privacy. Mulanax was tempted, but caution prevented him from advancing a step further. He retreated, but was stil thinking over the substance of

his visit and a few of Bernice’s vague remarks as the weekend ended and he prepared to confer again with the San Francisco detectives.

Tuesday, August 3, 1971

Many along Fresno
Street had known Starr since he was a boy, knew how devoted he was to his mother. But that mutual affection existed only as

smoke and mirrors—neighbors often overheard shouting matches between the two. “His mother was a little on the stern side,” said Cheney. “Yeah,

she was tough. She was a tal woman, almost as tal as Starr. Both parents were tal and slender like Ron. Unlike his brother, Ron got along with

everybody.” The main bone of contention was that Bernice held Starr’s younger brother, Ron, in higher regard than him.

“There was a big rivalry between Ron and his older brother,” Panzarel a told me later. “Ron got more girls. He could be more charming and the