Open Letter to the Ledger-Dispatch

An Open Letter to the Calaveras County Ledger-Dispatch

The following was sent to Matthew Hedger, author of a recent article in the Calaveras County Ledger-Dispatch, and to his editor, Andrew Bird. Hedger's article on Arthur Leigh Allen was so shoddily researched and one-sided that it begged not only a rebuttal but a complaint to the Columbia Review of Journalism. Rumor had it that the Ledger-Dispatch had planned a follow-up article featuring the observations of legions of one-time Allen acquaintances; to date, no such article has materialized.

* * *

12 June 2001

Dear Mr. Hedger,

I recently read your article on Arthur Leigh Allen and the Zodiac case ("Was the Zodiac killer a local teacher?" 2 June 2001), and found it disappointing on many levels. I am in close contact with a researcher who developed a new suspect in the case and was the subject of an article last year in the San Francisco Chronicle ("Amateurs stir embers of notorious Zodiac case," 2 October 2000). He was subjected to the scrutiny of balanced reporting: in reading your piece about Allen, I hardly believe that the same standard was applied.

You note early in the article that "those closest to the investigation are morally if not absolutely certain" that Arthur Allen was the Zodiac. This seems to me quite a statement considering that not a single law enforcement agent was quoted in the entire article. Having corresponded with investigators within the appropriate jurisdictions, I can assure you that your statement simply is not true, which leads me to wonder: just who were your sources? Were they limited to one amateur sleuth with several years, thousands of dollars, and an incalculable amount of face invested in Allen being named as the infamous killer? Even supposing that detectives in Vallejo, San Francisco, and Napa were unavailable for comment, there are several publicly accessible sources that would offer a contradictory point of view, not the least of which is "The Case Against Arthur Leigh Allen," which details the specious charges leveled against the accused, and is available at my Web site, www.ZodiacSpeaking.com.

Shortly thereafter, you stated that "some believe" Allen's life began to "spin out of control" upon his termination from the Calaveras Unified School District in 1968, and that this led to the Zodiac murders between late 1968 and 1969. In the first place, you would do well to identify just who believes this and why. In the second place, the hypothesis does not account for the charge one sentence later that Allen allegedly began his murders two years prior to his dismissal, and in the third place, Allen should have been relieved that formal charges were never brought against him. Finally, Allen was able to find another teaching job after the scandal, which indicates that he was, in fact, well under control.

As anonymous sources go, "Cindy Michaels" does not exactly live up to the Woodward and Bernstein standard. An unidentified woman lodging an accusation against a dead man, "Michaels" is nonetheless "afraid of copycats or what if it wasn't him." These are not the words of someone who has the courage of her convictions; they are indicators that she is uncertain if she is telling the factual truth. This becomes more evident as she lists specific and detailed recollections about Allen's watch and use of the "titwillow" phrase - minutiae she had just seen on the Internet - but resorts to vagaries such as "weird" and "just your genuine pervert" to describe the man himself. There is also the issue of "recovered memories" and how reliable they may be: the event was over thirty years ago, and the woman was, after all, just a child. While events - especially traumatic ones involving molestation - can certainly remain vivid over decades, I muss confess skepticism regarding the recollection of what were then mere innocuous words. I trust that they will be corroborated by future witnesses, and that their statements will have been elicited by experienced interviewers.

Arthur Allen's handwriting is brought up in the article, and is referred to as "closely match[ing]" the Zodiac's. Just who was the source for this match? Are you aware that the California State Department of Justice examined Allen's left- and right-handed penmanship twice and concluded that it was "similar to but definitely not" that of the Zodiac?

In the next paragraph, you contend that Allen's 1 November 1966 sick day is important to the case with regard to the death of Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside. However, 1 November 1966 was a Tuesday. The day before (i.e., October 31, Halloween) was a school day. This would have been the day following the attack on Ms. Bates, which occurred on the evening of Sunday, 30 October. If the killer had anything to hide (i.e., scratches on his face, etc.), it would follow that he would want to take off that day more than Tuesday the 1st. Could Ms. Folendorf account for Allen's whereabouts that day? By implication, since there is no evidence to the contrary, was he in class, as scheduled? All of this ignores the fundamental point that no one in law enforcement has believed that the Zodiac was responsible for the Riverside murder in approximately twenty years.

(Apropos of the Riverside case, there is an error of omission in your account of Allen's typewriter matching the Riverside "Confession" letters. Those letters were determined by the FBI to have come from a Royal typewriter using Pica typeface; Allen's typewriter was also a Royal, but used Elite type. What you reported may have been a fact, but it was not the truth. Incidentally, what motive do you -- or Mr. Voigt -- ascribe to the Vallejo Police Department for their alleged failure to send it out for lab testing against the "Confession" letters? I doubt that there is any agency more eager to put the Zodiac case behind it than the VPD. Do they want to perpetuate the case for some reason, even if it is Allen? Probably not. The logical answer, given the difference in typeface, is that Allen's typewriter was obviously not the one used by Bates' killer.)

As early as his 1971 interview with Detectives Mulanax, Toschi and Armstrong, Allen was planting clues that would appear to incriminate himself. He stated, for instance, that he had two bloody knives on his car seat the day of the Lake Berryessa attack, that he was skin diving with a couple from "Treasure Island" that day (likely a reference to the 1939 film "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island," which had a character named "Dr. Zodiac"), stated that he enjoyed the "book" (actually a short story) "The Most Dangerous Game" (a paraphrase of which was used in a Zodiac letter), and stated that he was in Riverside the day that Bates was killed (which is true). Then there is Allen's Zodiac Sea Wolf watch, possibly the most overestimated timepiece in the annals of American crime. Arthur Allen's brother, Ron, who has shown himself to be honest and cooperative with the police, stated that Arthur received the watch as a gift from his mother for Christmas, 1967. By claiming to have received it in "July or August of 1969," the precise time that the Zodiac began communicating with the press, Arthur Allen was following his own pattern of assigning himself undue suspicion.

Finally, the implication that Vallejo Police, the Napa County Sheriff's Department, and the San Francisco Police Department formed a multi-jurisdictional task force to counter the efforts of a lone Web designer from out of state is one that begs an opposing view. I can say with certainty that it is not the opinion of those in any law enforcement agency. Mr. Voigt, who has something of a cottage industry hiring himself out to various documentary filmmakers as an expert, is justifiably biased, but your job as a member of the fourth estate is to provide balance. By portraying Voigt as a vigorous hero outdoing the ineffectual agents of law enforcement, you are ironically using the same aggrandizing tactic that the Zodiac used 30 years ago.

There are two sides to this story, one of which has been repeated so many times that its legend has become accepted as fact. The media have been remiss in their treatment of this "top suspect" for over a decade: today, with so much information available at the push of a button, you have an opportunity to correct your colleagues' oversights. Are you up to the challenge?

Sincerely,

Jake Wark

Cc: Andrew Bird

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