Tag: zodiac killer

No Gary, your Dad was not the Zodiac Killer. Gary L. Stewarts The Most Dangerous Animal of All

I’m no expert on the Zodiac killer, but I have read Graysmith’s books and least have a sense of how complicated the case is and what kind of evidence would be required to confirm the killer’s identity. A new Netflix documentary recently came out confirming Graysmith’s claim that Arthur Leigh Allen was the killer, and while I am not convinced that it definitely wasn’t Arthur Leigh Allen, the claims put forth in that documentary are so damning that I find them suspicious. Either way, there are lots of reasons to think that Arthur Leigh Allen might have been the Zodiac, and until concrete evidence arises, Allen will be the measuring stick for all other Zodiac suspects.

I think I have mentioned this before, but I am very busy these days, and I am having to rely on audiobooks from my local libraries to get any reading done. Unfortunately, my Libby account doesn’t really offer many books that fit in with the theme of this blog. The horror is all modern, and the occultism is all new-age. When I checked the true crime section, I found The Most Dangerous Animal of All, a book by a man who believes his father to be the Zodiac Killer. I thought it might be worth a read.

Harper – 2014


This book sucks. There’s nothing remotely convincing about any of the author’s claims, and many of these claims have been proven to be false. On reading about the author after finishing the book, I realized that there is a 4 part documentary on this book that basically proves that it’s complete bullshit. His dad was in Austria when the Zodiac did most of his killing. Even if the claims in here were all true, Allen is still a better suspect.

Ok, so the book is bullshit, but so are many of the books I enjoy. Is there anything interesting about this at all? Well, the author claims that his father was good friends with Anton LaVey and that he jammed with Bobby Beausoleil. His dad was a convicted paedophile (that much is beyond doubt), and so these links cast darker shadows on the high Priest of Satanism and Charlie Manson’s pal than they do on the author’s sicko father.

Also, the author is a whiny little weiner. Most of the book is about his boring, pleasant life with a nice family and how he acted like a wanker when he met his birth mother. He also repeatedly brings his faith into the story and makes himself sound like a twat. If the author’s father was actually in the Zodiac’s vicinity, it’s a real pity that the Zodiac didn’t murder him too. A child wouldn’t have been raped, and this awful book would never have been written.

Did the Zodiac Killer Clean his Dildos?

I’ve been planning on reading Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac for a while. I’ve gotten into weirdo true-crime books recently, and this is the book that served as the basis for the 2007 movie of the same name. The Zodiac killer, in case you don’t know, was a freak who killed 5 people over the course of a year and then spent 5 years writing threatening and bizarre letters to newspapers. For one of the attacks, he wore an executioner’s hood with his weird symbol sewn onto it. He claimed to have killed 37 people, but there is no proof that his kill count was this high. His letters boasted of collecting souls to serve as his slaves in the afterlife, and some of these letters were written in code. One of these codes was only cracked a few years ago. This guy was a real weirdo. Robert Graysmith was a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the newspapers that received Zodiac’s first letters. He followed the case as it progressed and kept researching it for years after the Zodiac stopped sending letters.

Berkley Books – 1987 (First published 1986)

Zodiac lays out the facts of the case and focuses on pinning the blame on one particular subject, Bob Hall Star. Bob Hall Star is a pseudonym for Arthur Leigh Allen. Allen was the only person named by police as a Zodiac suspect. He was in the areas when the murders took place, he had bloody knives in his car on the day of one of the killings, he told his friends that he planned to become a killer named the Zodiac, and bombs were found in his house. Nobody was ever able to prove that he was the Zodiac, but it was proven that he molested children and didn’t wash his dildos after shoving them up his own ass.

“Several large, uncleaned dildos rolled out at his feet.” – Zodiac Unmasked: Chapter 8

I’m not convinced that Arthur Leigh Allen was definitely the Zodiac, but I really enjoyed this book. It’s well researched non-fiction, but it has a strong narrative, and it almost felt like a novel. I also really liked the movie that was based on it. You should definitely watch that if you haven’t.

So Zodiac was published in 1986, but Arthur Leigh Allen was still free at that time, and nobody had been charged in the Zodiac case. In 2002, Graysmith put out a second book on the Zodiac case containing information that came to light after his first book had been published.

Berkley Books – 2003 (First published 2002)

Zodiac Unmasked is roughly twice as long as the first book. It’s not nearly as entertaining. The narrative structure and suspense have been replaced with meticulous, repetitive and sometimes boring detail. While the first book reads like a novel, the second feels like a vendetta. Robert Graysmith was certain that Allen was the killer.

I think that Arthur Leigh Allen was a disgusting human and a good suspect, but his handwriting and DNA didn’t match that found on the Zodiac artefacts. It’s certainly possible that he found a a way to make that happen, but it’s also possible that he was just an attention seeking creep who enjoyed the notoriety that came with being a suspect.

The first book sold millions of copies. It’s tells an interesting story. The second book merely presents more evidence to believe that story and will only be interesting to people who are already super interested in the Zodiac case. While the movie was based on both books, only a few scenes in the movie are based on parts of the second book. Admittedly, my favourite scene, the interrogation of the suspect, is taken from Zodiac Unmasked.

One of the most interesting parts from Zodiac Unmasked was the description of stuff that was found in Arthur Leigh Allen’s House after he died. The police found child-porn, bombs, guns and a video cassette. They weren’t allowed watch the video until they got special permission, but they were hoping that it might contain a confession or perhaps even footage of one of the Zodiac murders. When they got the permission and finally watched the tape, it was a video of Arthur Leigh Allen mooning the camera.

The Zodiac and Arthur Lee Allen, AKA The Dirty Dildo Boys

While it wasn’t as good as the first book, I still quite enjoyed Zodiac Unmasked. I listened to an audiobook version, and I found its repetitive nature quite soothing. It was the perfect thing to listen to before falling asleep. There are other books on the Zodiac Killer, and I may well read them in the future. It really is a fascinating case.