Yes. In the film, we see Robert (Jake Gyllenhaal) grow obsessed with his amateur Zodiac investigation, which ends up destroying his marriage to Melanie (Chloe Sevigny). The Zodiac book took Robert ten years to finish in real life, and it cost him his wife. When asked if he regrets his obsession with the Zodiac killer, Graysmith said, “It affected my life in one bad way because I was divorced, but on the other hand, I had the best kids… As far as the personal relationship, that was not good. Zodiac was number one, that just took over.”
In This Article...
What was Robert Graysmith’s take on the film Zodiac?
Author Robert Graysmith and onscreen co-star Jake Gyllenhaal discuss the film and Gyllenhaal’s performance. Graysmith claims he was unaware of his obsession until Gyllenhaal represented him. The interviewer wonders if the audience would be wanting for more resolution at the conclusion of the film.
Is Arthur Leigh Allen the sign of the zodiac?
The ending of David Fincher’s Zodiac mirrors the tragic reality of a real-life crime: there isn’t enough evidence to identify Arthur Leigh Allen as the Zodiac killer. On a truly perplexing case, Allen was the most likely suspect. He died of a heart attack before he could be charged, strangely enough. As the ending of Zodiac reveals, it was widely assumed that Allen was the culprit based on circumstantial evidence, so the case was closed following his death. Let’s look at why Allen wasn’t the murderer.
Zodiac is based on Robert Greysmith’s book of the same name, and Greysmith plays a key role in the film. His book told the story of a mystery serial killer terrorizing Northern California. A cop (Mark Ruffalo) and two reporters (Robert Downey, Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal) get fascinated with figuring out who he is in the film. While the killer claims his victims and taunts the authorities with letters, their fixation grows.
Graysmith had a theory about who the Zodiac was.
Based on circumstantial evidence, Robert Graysmith’s book Zodiac suggested Arthur Leigh Allen, who died in 1992, as a possible suspect. Allen had been questioned by police since the beginning of the Zodiac case, and he had been the subject of many search warrants over the course of a 20-year period. Several police detectives characterized Allen as the most likely culprit, according to Graysmith in 2007. All of the evidence against Allen “came out to be negative,” according to Dave Toschi in 2010. In 2018, Toschi’s daughter stated that her father had always suspected Allen of being the murderer, but that they lacked the proof to prove it. Mark Ruffalo, who played Toschi in the 2007 picture Zodiac, had this to say about the situation: “When you learn more about who these cops were, you’ll see how they had to remove their personal opinions and hunches from the equation. ‘As soon as that guy walked in the door, I knew it was him,’ Dave Toschi told me. He was certain he had him, but he never had concrete proof. As a result, he had to keep looking into every possible possibility.”
Detective John Lynch of the Vallejo Police Department interrogated Allen on October 6, 1969. Allen had been seen in the area of the Lake Berryessa attack on Hartnell and Shepard on September 27, 1969; on the day of the attacks, he described himself as scuba diving at Salt Point. In 1971, his buddy Donald Cheney reported to authorities in Manhattan Beach, California, that Allen had expressed a desire to kill people, assumed the moniker Zodiac, and attached a spotlight to a pistol for nighttime visibility. This exchange, according to Cheney, took place no later than January 1, 1969.
After claims of sexual misbehavior with minors, Jack Mulanax of the Vallejo Police Department stated that Allen had gotten an unhonorable discharge from the United States Navy in 1958 and had been sacked from his job as an elementary school teacher in March 1968. Those who knew him said he was “fixated on young children and angry at women,” yet he was also described as “fixated on young children and angry at women.”
San Francisco police acquired a search warrant for Allen’s home in September 1972. Allen was caught in 1974 for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old kid, and he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison.
In February 1991, Vallejo police executed another search warrant at Allen’s home. Vallejo police filed another warrant and took belongings from Allen’s home two days after his death in 1992. Mike Mageau, a victim, identified Allen as the man who shot him in 1969 from a photo line-up in July 1992 “He’s the one! That’s the man who fired the shot that killed me “.. However, in the 2007 documentary His Name Was Arthur Leigh Allen, police officer Donald Fouke, who is believed to have spotted the Zodiac escaping from the Stine killing, indicated that Allen weighed around 100 pounds heavier than the man he saw, and that his face was “too round.” While Nancy Slover, who received the Zodiac call following the Mageau/Ferrin shooting, stated that Allen did not sound like the man on the phone.
Other, if circumstantial, evidence existed against Allen. Bates’ killer composed a letter to the Riverside Police Department on a Royal typewriter with Elite type, the same kind seized during the February 1991 search of Allen’s home. He wore and owned a Zodiac wristwatch. He lived in Vallejo and worked just a few blocks from the home of one of the Zodiac victims (Ferrin) and the scene of one of the murders.
The SFPD created a partial DNA profile from the saliva on Zodiac’s stamps and envelopes in 2002. The SFPD tested this fragment of DNA to Arthur Leigh Allen’s DNA. The DNA of Don Cheney, Allen’s former close friend and the first person to suggest Allen could be the Zodiac Killer, was also compared. Allen and Cheney were ruled out as DNA sources because neither test result indicated a match.
Lloyd Cunningham, a retired police handwriting expert who worked on the Zodiac investigation for decades, remarked, “They showed me banana boxes full of Allen’s work, none of which compared to the Zodiac. DNA collected from the envelopes (on the Zodiac letters) didn’t even come close to matching Arthur Leigh Allen.”
In Zodiac, who was the guy in the basement?
Robert Graysmith couldn’t resist his curiosity on a rainy September night in 1978.
An anonymous phone call about the identity of the Zodiac, the legendary Bay Area serial murderer, had been received by the San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist a month before. At the outset of an hour-long chat, the mystery voice said, “He’s a person named Rick Marshall.” The serial killer’s spate of murders had gone unsolved since 1969, but Graysmith had a new clue. Marshall, a former projectionist at The Avenue Theater, had stashed evidence from his five victims inside movie canisters that he’d rigged to explode, according to the informant. Before hanging up, the anonymous caller instructed Graysmith to locate Bob Vaughn, a silent film organist who had recently passed away.
What was the origin of the Zodiac killer’s moniker?
The press began to refer to him as the ‘Zodiac Killer,’ but it is unclear why the killer chose that moniker.
In addition, he would sign his letters with a circle and a cross over it, which resembled a target or a coordinate symbol.
The signature symbols, according to authorities, were designed to symbolize coordinates that could indicate future killing locations.
Rick Marshall could be the Zodiac Killer.
Many people believe that the Zodiac’s true identity is tied to one of the case’s high-profile suspects. Richard Gaikowski, Arthur Leigh Allen, Richard Reed Marshall, and Lawrence Kane are among names that have been synonymous with the Zodiac Killer investigation. Is it possible that one of these men is the Zodiac Killer?
One of the most popular suspects in the Zodiac Killer investigation is Richard “Rick” Marshall. Although he was born in Texas, he migrated to California in the mid-1960s, putting him in the vicinity of the Zodiac’s murders at the correct period. He stayed in Riverside, California for a short time before relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Is it possible that Arthur Leigh Allen knew Darlene Ferrin?
Zodiac by David Fincher avoids drawing any hard conclusions, instead allowing the spectator to digest the material and draw their own judgments. However, none of the characters in the novel has more fingers pointed at them than Arthur Leigh Allen. He may or may not have been charged as the Zodiac Killer, but all of the evidence uncovered by Robert Greysmith, as well as Mike Mageau’s witness testimony, strongly suggests that he is.
Then there are the pieces of circumstantial evidence that are in sync. When David Toschi, William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), and Jack Mulanax (Elias Koteas) interviewed Arthur Leigh Allen, he not only wore a Zodiac watch which seemed to be the inspiration for the killer’s name and symbol but also military boots and gloves the same size as prints found at crime scenes. In keeping with the murderer’s letters, Allen also claimed to be a huge fan of Richard Connell’s book The Most Dangerous Game (mentioned in the taunting messages), and was known to misspell the word “Christmas” as “Christmass” (as the police discovered from Allen’s own brother).
However, the way Arthur Leigh Allen’s life seems to frequently hook up with the Zodiac Killer actions in the 1960s and 1970s is maybe more significant than any of that. The first suspected event involving the murderer occurred eight months after Allen was fired from his employment due to child molestations in Vallejo, California. Allen lived in his mother’s basement, which was less than 50 yards from Darlene’s workplace, and it was established that she had been spotted with a weird person named Lee.
Then there’s Arthur Leigh Allen’s unusual behavior following his initial police interview during the Zodiac Killer investigation. He moved to a different county two days after his meeting with Toschi, Armstrong, and Mulanax, and letters ceased coming in for three years. The letters resumed only after authorities moved away from Allen as a suspect, according to Robert Greysmith, and then abruptly stopped once Allen was captured and sentenced to prison. After four years, the letters resumed after Allen was released in 1977.
The evidence pointing to Arthur Leigh Allen appears to be solid in general, however there are several significant gaps in the case.
Is it possible that the Zodiac Killer dialed into a TV show?
If either attorney Melvin Belli or attorney F. Lee Bailey were on the radio, it would be a live broadcast. The police called Belli and Dunbar to set up the meeting in the hopes of apprehending the suspect. The suspect called when he said he would, said a few words, and then hung up, repeating the process 54 times in the next two hours. Eric Weill, a mentally ill patient at Napa State Hospital, was later identified as the caller. Weill was swiftly ruled out as the Zodiac by police. Later that year, though, Belli received a letter from the real Zodiac.