There is confirmation from a helpful viewer who knew Allen that this picture is indeed him. I'm not sure when this photo was taken, however. (Thanks to Jonathan Zychowski of Z.I.N.G. for providing  this photo.)

Other suspicious events his family reported included:

In November of 1969, his sister noticed a paper in Allen's hand and asked him what it was. He had been keeping it in a metal box in his brother's room in the North Bay. The paper appeared to have strange lines of symbols on it (similar to a letter of code Zodiac sent the police). Hiding the paper, Allen told his sister that "This is the work of an insane person. I'll show it to you later." He never did.

On the day of the Berryessa attack, his sister-in-law discovered a bloody knife on the front seat of his car. He told her that it was chicken's blood and that he used it to kill chickens.


As a result of his family's suspicions, Allen's Santa Rosa trailer was searched on June 4, 1971. Handwriting and fingerprint comparisons were made. The fingerprints did not match those left by Zodiac on Stine's cab. (There are, however, beliefs that Zodiac had left a false print to throw investigators off track.) The handwriting showed several characteristics of Zodiac's writing, most notably the letter spacing and the way the lines tilted toward the bottom right side of the page.

At the same time, Allen lived with his mother in Vallejo. Police were able to search only one occupance and decided on the Santa Rosa trailer. Allen's room at his mother's house was a basement. (Zodiac implied that he had a basement in one of his letters.)

One of the most fascinating aspects of Allen as a suspect is the following timeline:

1971, March 22: Zodiac postcard to the Chronicle.
1971, June 4: Allen's trailer searched.
1971, June - 1974, Jan.: Zodiac letters cease. During this time, the murders directly connected with Santa Rosa begin (Feb. 1972).
1974, Jan. 29: First Zodiac letter in three years.
1974, May 8: Letter to the Chronice from Zodiac.
1974, July 8: Letter to the Chronicle from Zodiac. 1975, December: Allen committed to institution for child molestation. The linked murders of young hitchhikers around Santa Rosa cease.
1977, Dec. 30: Allen is released. He immediately writes Toschi a typewritten note.
1978, April 24: Zodiac writes again for first time in four years.
1979, Feb. 24: The first linked murder since Oct. 16, 1975, occurs. Teresa Matthews is strangled on a Saturday and left by a body of water (the Russian River).

The typed note he wrote to Toschi after being released on Dec. 30, 1977, read:

"If I can ever be of any halep to you just let me know. I'm sorry I wasn't your man."

He addressed the note to Inspector David Toschi and not to Bill Armstrong as well. Armstrong was Toschi's partner throughout much of the Zodiac investigation. In the Zodiac letters, Toschi was the only investigator mentioned by name.

Other evidence against Allen included:

- Allen's general physical description matched that of Zodiac's. He was very strong physically.

- Allen can be placed at Riverside City College in 1966, the same time Cheri Jo Bates was murdered.

- He tended to talk in a taunting way and often suffered from painful headaches. The psychological profile of Zodiac indicated that this was a trait of the killer.

- Allen was ambidextrous. It is believed that Zodiac was ambidextrous.

- Allen had studied chemistry. Zodiac's school bus bomb was a chemical bomb.

- In ink blot tests, Allen gave at least five answers that began with the letter Z. There are highly unlikely odds that this would happen normally.

- In 1965, even before the Cheri Jo Bates murder, Allen had confided in two hunting friends that he would someday hunt and kill people and write taunting letters to the police and newspapers bragging about the crimes. He also said that he would call himself Zodiac. (This report may be suspect as some antagonism had formed between the hunters and Allen.)

- Allen was suspected of having five separate and distinct personalities. A 1973 doctor's report on him stated that he was "potentially violent, dangerous" and that "he is capable of killing."

- When Allen was arrested for child molestation, he confided in his friends that he was being arrested because he was the Zodiac killer. During his time in prison, he wrote his friends that he "hoped Zodiac would kill or write a new letter to the papers. That will clear me." No Zodiac correspondence showed up until several months after Allen was released.

- After his release, Allen seemed to be "repressing deep hatred" in psychological sessions with his doctor. Whenever the doctor would bring up Zodiac, Allen would begin crying.

- Once, officers on the way to the Santa Rosa area that a killer had used as a dumping ground for the bodies for the Santa Rosa coeds stopped in their tracks on Sully Road. Walking down the road toward them and away from the murder area was Allen. He traveled the road to go skin-diving, he told the officers.

- More than once, Allen was seen wearing a Zodiac-brand wristwatch.

- Allen lived very close to Darlene Ferrin's house in 1969 when she was killed. It would only take 15 minutes for him to walk to Ferrin's house from his own. The phone booth he called the police from on July 4, 1969 was about a block from Darlene's house and could have been walked to from Allen's residence very easily on that night.

- Allen for years carried a mysterious gray metal box that he allowed no one to look into.

- Allen, of all the suspects, can be placed at the scene of all Zodiac murders.

In 1987, the Department of Justice stated that Allen had been eliminated as a suspect. I received a message from Jonathan Zychowski of Z.I.N.G. indicating that Vince Reppetto, the San Francisco detective currently assigned the Zodiac case, had informed him that Allen had been ruled out based on DNA analysis. I can only concluded that this analysis was a comparison of Allen's saliva with the saliva on the Zodiac envelopes. (I can think of no other samples of Zodiac's DNA to compare against.)

It seems that he was not completely ruled out, however. His residence was searched as recently as 1991 in association with the Zodiac case. At the time of his death in 1992, Toschi cited him as a "very, very good suspect." There was never enough hard evidence to arrest Allen (or anyone else, for that matter) for the Zodiac crimes.