Richard Marshall, who was born in the state of Texas in 1928, had an interest in electronics and old films, finally working as a projectionist at a movie theater. He also worked as an engineer for KTM, a radio station in the Bay Area.
Marshall, a ham radio aficionado, conversed with other enthusiasts and once invited some listeners to his home. The guests were taken aback by the host’s odd behavior and immediately suspected Marshall of being the infamous “Zodiac killer.”
* Marshall was said to be a resident of Los Angeles at the time three women were killed in the region. He was also alleged to be in the Napa area at the time of the Lake Berryessa stabbing.
* Marshall is said to have informed a witness that he had discovered something “Much more interesting than sex,” he said, and he owned a library of pornographic books.
* Marshall likes to watch vintage silent films. “El Spectre Rojo,” or “The Red Phantom,” was one of his favorite flicks. This name was mentioned in one of the Zodiac’s letters from 1974.
* Marshall had a teletype machine identical to the one thought to be used by the Zodiac, which he enjoyed using “Paper of an unusual size.”
* Marshall was said to have lived in a basement flat on Scott Street in San Francisco in 1969, several miles from the Zodiac’s last known murder scene. The Zodiac mentioned his zodiac sign in one of his letters “Underground.”
* According to the sources, Marshall was ambidextrous “This suspect, like Zodiac, always writes with a black felt tip pen.” The majority of the letters written by the Zodiac were written using a BLUE felt tip pen. The suspect was also said to own a Royal typewriter, which was similar to the one used to type the documents “In the Riverside case, a “Confession” letter was written.
Marshall turned out to be a letdown, despite the number of incriminating linkages to the Zodiac. Much of the information in the report given by the suspicious informants was based on false information about the crimes, and a fingerprint comparison revealed that none of the prints thought to belong to the killer matched any of the suspects’ prints. “Marshall makes nice reading but not a very good suspect in my judgment,” retired Zodiac investigator Ken Narlow said of the man dubbed his “favorite” suspect.
During a 1989 television interview, Richard Marshall expressed his concerns. “Obviously, I would have understood why they were investigating me if they had been more transparent,” the suspect added. He admitted that he and the Zodiac seemed to have a lot in common in terms of personality and hobbies. “Despite my inexperience, the details seem to match.”
In Robert Graysmith’s 1986 novel Zodiac, a “character” named Marshall was based on Marshall “Andrews, Donald Jeff.” Graysmith’s chapter on “Andrews” mixed reality and imagination, making a reluctant Marshall a lifelong suspect in the unsolved killings. The Marshall-based character was given the name “Rick Martin” in the 2007 film adaptation of Graysmith’s novel. Director David Fincher’s interpretation of the Zodiac story, like the novel, strayed from the truth and once again put the suspect in the forefront. One of only two suspects mentioned in a movie about one of the most legendary unsolved serial murder cases in American history was immortalized for film history as a man who loved movies and wished to be a character on the big screen.
Richard Marshall, according to accounts, died in a nursing home in September 2008.
In This Article...
In the Zodiac book, who is Walker?
VALLEJO Zodiac is a zodiac sign. Residents of Solano County who are old enough to recall the gruesome deaths, public taunting of police, and cryptograms sent to newspapers are terrified by the name alone.
After all, it was in Solano County that the elusive killer first struck, terrorizing the Bay Area in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
And, according to a squad of Zodiac searchers, the serial killer has lived in Solano County. They claim it is still the case today. A 91-year-old drunkard residing in Fairfield is the team’s main suspect. They are refusing to reveal his name or address.
Lyndon Lafferty, who lives in Vallejo, stated recently, “He’ll surely be reading this.”
Despite the fact that the Zodiac has claimed up to 37 victims, detectives have only agreed on seven of them, five of whom have died. Zodiac was never apprehended.
There have been numerous suspects and unofficial Zodiac hunters. Lafferty’s crew, on the other hand, is unique. It comprises a retired Vallejo police detective, a retired Naval Investigative Service investigator, and retired Vallejo CHP officer Lafferty.
In the 1970s, Lafferty and Jerry Johnson, a retired Naval Investigative Service officer, began working on the case informally, interviewing witnesses after work and occasionally tailing their suspect. Others participated along the way, including James Dean, a Vallejo detective who investigated the case.
The group doesn’t conduct as much investigation these days, but Lafferty has documented everything in a book that he claims will be published soon. “Zodiac Killer Cover-Up (AKA The Silenced Badge)” is the title of the book.
In the opinion of some, Lafferty grew up with the Zodiac. Lafferty attended Vallejo High School with Arthur Leigh Allen, who was a top suspect for many, including Robert Graysmith, who published a book on the Zodiac that was eventually made into a film.
Allen, who died in 1992, was little more than a loner to Lafferty. Allen was a diver in high school, as well as a studious and popular student, according to Lafferty.
In 1970, Lafferty began his search. Lafferty, whose hair is graying and thinning, recalls the account of his initial contact with his suspect as though he’s seen it before.
In Graysmith’s book, the 91-year-old Fairfield resident is referred to as “Andrew Todd Walker.” Lafferty also refers to him as that, despite the fact that it is a fictitious name.
Walker had parked his automobile outside a Vallejo rest area for several days, drawing Lafferty’s attention since he sat there watching people. Walker sped up to Lafferty, who was in his patrol car, and parked inches away on one occasion.
Lafferty said, “I peered into a trembling, growling face like I was looking into the face of death.” “It terrified the living daylights out of me.”
Most police officers in the vicinity were carrying a sketch of the Zodiac at the time. Lafferty was taken aback by the parallels. His search began.
Lafferty has accumulated evidence that he claims points to Walker over the course of 40 years. Strange graffiti markings were found outside his Cordelia home, and Lafferty claims to have found his name spelled in one of the cryptograms. Walker was a regular at Terry’s Restaurant in Vallejo, where victim Darlen Ferrin worked, strange graffiti markings were found outside his Cordelia home, and Lafferty claims to have found his name spelled in one of the cryptograms.
Walker is mentioned in a few of Zodiac’s letters. Walker was a Sierra Club member, which was noted in one of the letters. Another hint could be the fact that his house was surrounded by pine trees. In one letter, Zodiac wrote “Peek through the trees.”
Ferrin’s baby sitter was interviewed by Johnson, who is retired from the Naval Investigative Service. In the weeks leading up to Ferrin’s killing, the babysitter claimed she saw a man in a car that matched Walker’s outside her home.
Walker was allegedly inspired to kill by his wife’s adultery with a Solano County Superior Court judge, according to Lafferty.
“All of Zodiac’s killings, in my opinion, were to prove, much like his letters and the usage of his codes, that he is better, brighter, smarter, more cunning than all of the courts and all of the cops together, and he will never be discovered,” Lafferty stated.
Vallejo police investigated Walker for a time. However, Dean, a veteran Vallejo detective who worked with Lafferty, said the case was abruptly dropped.
In Zodiac, who was Vaughn?
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. The anonymous caller instructed Graysmith to locate Bob Vaughn, a silent film organist who worked with Marshall, before hanging up. Graysmith discovered that the booby-trapped canisters had recently been transferred to Vaughn’s house. “Get to Vaughn,” said the voice. “See if he warns you not to go near any of his movie collection.”
Graysmith went into Marshall’s history after years of working separately on the case and discovered significant coincidences. His new suspect was a fan of The Red Spectre, an early-century film mentioned in a Zodiac letter from 1974, and had used a teletype machine similar to the killer. Marshall’s felt-pen posters outside The Avenue Theater even contained calligraphy that was comparable to the Zodiac’s strange, cursive strokes. Graysmith witnessed Vaughn playing the Wurlitzer and the Zodiac’s crosshair symbol plastered to the theater’s ceiling on his occasional visits to the upscale movie house. There were just too many indications that overlapped. He needed to get to Vaughn’s residence. “We realized there was a connection,” Graysmith says. “I was paralyzed with fear.”
Graysmith’s nightmarish encounter was converted into one of the creepiest movie scenes of all time by filmmaker David Fincher almost three decades later. It happens near the end of Zodiac, as Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) drives Vaughn (Charles Fleischer) home in his bright-orange Volkswagen Rabbit through the rain. The atmosphere rapidly becomes unsettling once inside. Vaughn brings a scared Graysmith down to his dimly lit basement after revealing that he, not Marshall, is responsible for the movie poster handwriting. The floorboards above Graysmith groan as the organist looks through his nitrate film records, implying the presence of someone. Graysmith races upstairs to the closed front door, rattling the handle, before Vaughn slowly pulls out his key and opens it from behind, after Vaughn convinces his guest that he lives alone. Graysmith dashes into the downpour, as if he’s just escaped the hands of the Zodiac.
In the end, the encounter in the third act is a red herring. Vaughn was never thought to be a serious suspect. However, in a film full of routine cop work and dead ends, just five minutes of tense tension transform a procedural into actual horror. The moment represents a culmination of Graysmith’s neurotic preoccupation with the Zodiac’s identitya glimpse into the life-threatening lengths and depths to which he’ll go to solve the caseas well as a brief rejection of the film’s otherwise objective gaze. “It’s actually so distinct from the rest of the movie,” explains Zodiac screenwriter James Vanderbilt. “It does give you that jolt that a lot of the movie is attempting to avoid.”
Simply put, the basement sequence is a classic Fincher adrenaline rush, bolstered by years of meticulous research, meticulous attention to detail, and last-minute studio foresight. Graysmith still gets shivers when he sees the movie, even though it was released thirteen years ago.
Who is Lee, the Zodiac assassin?
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.”
Who is the most likely Zodiac assailant?
According to the Case Breakers, a group of more than 40 former police investigators, journalists, and military intelligence personnel, Gary Francis Poste is the Zodiac Killer. The investigation was based on forensic evidence, images discovered in Poste’s darkroom, and part of the serial killer’s coded notes, according to the investigators.
In Zodiac, what happened to Robert?
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. Graysmith, when asked if he regrets his preoccupation with the Zodiac killer, said, “It had a negative impact on my life since I got divorced, but on the other hand, I had the best kids… That was not beneficial in terms of the personal relationship. Zodiac was once number one, however it was just dethroned.” Graysmith summed up his unwavering commitment to the case in a different interview, saying, “It wasn’t all horrible in the end. If I had to do it all over again, I believe I would. I’m sure it would. However, it has a strong hold on you. It completely takes over your life.”
Is the movie Zodiac based on a true story?
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Zodiac Killer was a well-known figure in Northern California. The killer is suspected of killing five individuals and injuring two more, but they claim to have killed 37 more. They taunted the local press with eerie and cryptic notes and statements about the scope of their crimes. Letters and symbols were frequently used to code the letters, which included the iconic Zodiac symbol. They chose a name for themselves “Zodiac Killer” as their own personal sign the same symbol that appears on Zodiac timepieces.
The murder of 18-year-old Cheri Josephine Bates is said to have sparked the crime spree in 1966. A newspaper, the police, and Joseph Bates all received nearly identical handwritten notes in April 1967 “Bates had no choice but to die. More is on the way.” Some detectives believe Bates is a Zodiac victim, although this is a supposition that has yet to be proven.