Who is the Zodiac Killer? A trio of siblings who knew the suspect as children reveal why they think he did it
The Zodiac killer is one of the most notorious killers of all time, but has never been caught. Now, a family who knew the prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen have come forward for the first time in the Netflix documentary This Is the Zodiac Speaking to reveal shocking new information in the case. Andrea Cavallier reports
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To the Seawater children, Arthur Leigh Allen wasn’t just a fun teacher who introduced them to new music and took them on “field trips” to go clam digging – he was a father figure.
So years later when they found out that police believed he could be the notorious “Zodiac killer” who terrorized California with a spate of brutal murders in the 1960s, they did not believe it.
Until they asked him – and he confessed.
The explosive claims by Connie, David and Don Seawater were revealed in the new Netflix docuseries This Is the Zodiac Speaking.
The siblings also claim that they later discovered that while accompanying him on those field trips, he was either scoping out a killing site or even committing a murder.
“We realized we had been to all the murder sites before the murders,” David Seawater says in the docuseries, during the siblings’ first time speaking out publicly about the case.
In one memorable outing to Tajiguas Point in 1963, Connie Seawater recalled how Allen left her with her brothers in his car for about an hour, and then suddenly appeared with what appeared to be blood on his hands.
The next day, teenagers Robert Domingos, 18, and Linda Edwards, 17, were found shot to death on the same area of the beach. Their murders have never been solved.
In the 1960s, five people were murdered and confirmed to be victims of the Zodiac killer, who sent taunting ciphers to reporters and threatened to kill more people if the messages weren’t published in the front page of San Francisco newspapers.
Police have only ever publicly identified Allen as a suspect in the case, but they never found enough evidence to charge him.
Who was Arthur Leigh Allen? The suspected Zodiac killer
Arthur Leigh Allen was an elementary school teacher who was popular among his students.
In the docuseries, one former student, Darin Alvord recalled how Allen would teach them how to decipher codes, which were eerily similar to the elaborate codes that the Zodiac killer later used in his letters.
Another student remembered how Allen would play music from The Mikado, a comic opera, during lessons – songs that the Zodiac killer’s letters would quote years later.
The students spoke highly of the former teacher, but years later recalled the disturbing way he would call the girls in his class “my beautiful.”
The Seawater children were also students of Allen’s but he soon became a fixture at family dinners after becoming close with their mother who had been left to raise several children while their father was in a psychiatric hospital.
Field trips and murder confessions
Connie Seawater and her brothers remember their time with Allen as a happy one. He often whisked them away on weekend jaunts that took the children all over the state.
But years later, when Connie saw the 2007 film Zodiac, she realized they had been to all of the sites where Zodiac murders took place.
“[There was] so much in that movie that was scary familiar,” she says in the docuseries.
Like on June 4, 1963, when they traveled toTajiguas Point, where Domingos and Edwards were murdered.
In 1996, Connie, who was a freshman, remembers going to the racetrack in Riverside on October 28, 1966. While her brother slept in the hotel, she recalls that Allen took her on a tour of Riverside City College campus, at one point putting his hand down her pants and sexually assaulting her.
When they returned to the hotel, her brother still wouldn’t wake up and she recalls drinking juice before falling asleep. The next thing she remembers is being led back to the car on October 31. Allen later confessed to drugging the siblings in Riverside.
On October 30, a woman named Cheri Jo Bates was found dead on the grounds of Riverside City College campus. No connection between her murder and the Zodiac killer was ever found, and the case has never been solved.
Before Allen died, he was extensively questioned about his possible role in the killings. He served three years in prison for child molestion charges. During this time, there were no murders linked to the Zodiac killer and no letters were sent to the press or police.
Connie, who had moved away and started a family, returned to California and visited the man she had named her daughter after.
She said in the docuseries that she now believes that Allen hinted that he was the Zodiac killer.
In 1991, while out sailing with Allen, she asked him if he was a Zodiac killer. But he said if he told her, then he’d have to kill her. “I thought it was a big joke,” she said.
Her brother David, however, said he got a full confession out of Allen in 1992, shortly before his death.
Allen broke down sobbing on the phone as he confessed to drugging them as kids and molesting his sister Connie. When David asked him if he was the Zodiac killer, Allen, still crying, said that he was.
“To think that somebody I once loved and trusted was capable of doing something like that freaked me out,” David said.
He called the police, who told him there was nothing they could do. And then he called his mother, who laughed and said that Allen was a jokester.
The Seawater siblings say their mother never believed Allen could be the Zodiac killer, or a child molester. However, when she died in 2017, they found a box with letters between her and Allen in which he talked about the Zodiac.
Allen died on August 26, 1992. He was 58 years old. In his last letter, he denied being the Zodiac killer.
Since Allen’s death, there have been no additional Zodiac murders.
The Zodiac Killer’s victims
There are five confirmed murders of the Zodiac killer that happened in California between 1968 and 1969, and two survivors. The targets were predominately young couples.
In letters written to the police and to the press, the killer admitted to at least 37 more murders.
On December 20, 1968, David Arthur Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16, were found shot to death on Lake Herman Road in Benicia, California, known as Lover’s Lane.
In a similar attack on July 4, 1969, Michael Renault Mageau, 19, and Darlene Ferrin, 22, were shot while sitting in Ferrin’s car, in Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo. Mageau survived.
The Vallejo Police Department later got a call from a man claiming responsibility for the killings, and also took credit for the Faraday-Jensen murders.
On July 31, 1969, the killer sent messages to San Francisco newspapers, marking it the beginning of the Zodiac letters.
Just weeks later, on September 27, Bryan Hartnell, 20, and his girlfriend Cecelia Shepard, 22, were stabbed while on a picnic at Lake Berryessa.
A man wearing a medieval executioner-style, hooded garb attacked the couple and tied them up before stabbing them multiple times, killing Shepard, according to Hartnell who survived the attack.
On October 11, 1969, Paul Stine, a 29-year-old cab driver was shot to death after picking up a passenger in San Francisco and taking him to Presidio Heights — about 30 miles from where the other murders occurred — when he was shot in the back of the head.
His murder wasn’t connected to the others until the Zodiac sent a letter with a bloody patch of Stine’s shirt to the San Francisco Chronicle. Stine would be the Zodiac’s last-confirmed victim, though taunting letters to the media continued until 1974.
The Zodiac killer is believed to be connected to a slew of other victims, including the 1963 slayings of Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards, in which the Seawater siblings claim to have been with Allen nearby when it happened, and the death of 18-year-old Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside in October 1966, when the Seawater children were in town with Allen.
Zodiac killer’s sinister messages
Four ciphers (encrypted messages) that were sent out to Bay Area newspapers over the years were believed to be the key to tracking down the killer. Some have been decoded, others remain a mystery.
In 2020, one of his most puzzling messages, known as the 340 cipher, was solved.
“I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me that wasnt me on the TV show which brings up a point about me I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice [sic]," the note read.
“All the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me where everyone else has nothing when they reach paradice so they are afraid of death I am not afraid because I know that my new life is life will be an easy one in paradice death.”
Two ciphers remain uncoded, but authorities have said they’re not sure if they’ll ever be able to unravel the mysterious messages.
‘This is the Zodiac Speaking’ is now streaming on Netflix.