The Most Dangerous Animal of All (24 page)

For some reason, Van had targeted attorney Melvin Belli again.

On June 26, he sent another letter to the
Chronicle
, this time expressing his displeasure that no one was wearing his Zodiac buttons. He also claimed to have killed a man with a .38.

Van signed the letter,

–12 SFPD – 0

At the bottom, he included a thirty-two-character cipher that, coupled with a map he included, was supposed to tell police where his bomb was set. This cipher has never been decoded.

On July 24, Van claimed responsibility for Kathleen Johns’s abduction in a letter sent to the
Chronicle
that would become known as “Zodiac’s Little List”:

This is the Zodiac speaking.

I am rather unhappy because you people will not wear some nice 
buttons. So I now have a little list, starting with the woeman + her baby that I gave a rather intersting ride for a coupple howers one evening a few months back that ended in my burning her car where I found them.

Van included his “little list,” which gave the police even more to mull over. Through a variation of verses lifted from a song—“As Someday It May Happen,” from
The Mikado
—Van listed all of the types of people who could become potential victims. Police were able to deduce from that letter that the Zodiac was a Gilbert and Sullivan fan, that he listened to opera, and that his misspellings and grammatical errors were possibly an act. This killer was learned. Cultured.

Van had included references to preachers, organists, writers, children, and lawyers on the list of people who would not be missed if they disappeared.

Two days later, another letter arrived, this one explaining in graphic detail Van’s fantasies about what he wanted to do to his slaves. It revealed just how sick and out of control he was becoming

This is the Zodiac speaking

Being that you will not wear some nice
buttons; how about wearing some nasty
buttons. Or any type of
buttons that you can think up. If you do not wear any type of
buttons, I shall (on top of everything else) torture all 13 of my slaves that I have wateing for me in Paradice. Some I shall Tie over ant hills and watch them scream and twich and squirm. Others shall have pine splinters driven under their nails + then burned. Others shall be placed in cages + fed salt beef until they are gorged then I shall listen to their pleas for water and I shall laugh at them. Others will hang by their thumbs + burn in the sun then I will rub them down with deep heat to warm them up. Others I shall skin them alive + let them run around screaming. And all billiard players I shall have them play in a darkened dungon cell with crooked cues + Twisted shoes. Yes, I shall have great fun inflicting the most delicious of pain to my Slaves.

He signed it:

SFPD=0
=13

Each envelope, each letter, was tested for fingerprints and searched for clues to the identity of the sender. Numerous law enforcement agencies around California, as well as the FBI, were stumped. They could not crack the codes my father sent, nor could they stop the murders. Their hands were tied, and Van was rubbing it in.

At the time, police still had not connected the latest rash of murders with the murder of Cheri Jo Bates; however, Van had left them a clue in his latest letter. He had misspelled “twich” the same way he had misspelled “twiched” in the confession letter he had sent to police in Riverside.

It was a frustrating time for Toschi and Armstrong. They had the killer’s fingerprints, his handwriting. They had so many clues to his personality. They realized he used British vernacular in his writing. They just couldn’t catch him. They even had the killer’s name, and they didn’t know it.

Van was having the time of his life.

San Francisco Chronicle
reporter Paul Avery was not.

He was as deeply entrenched in the Zodiac case as the police. Avery worked long hours trying to be the first to report any new developments. Van observed his dedication with interest, reading every word the reporter wrote and taking offense at much of it.

On October 27, Avery received a Halloween card from my father.

Avery did not like being singled out by Zodiac and became afraid that he would be targeted as his next victim. He immediately bought a gun for protection.