I recently watched the 2007 Zodiac movie, based on the Zodiac book by Robert Graysmith, and I was struck by how pulp-fiction the real-life crimes were — and how they had nonetheless disappeared from pop culture after a decade. Only as an adult did I learn that the real-life Zodiac killer was the inspiration for Dirty Harry’s Scorpio.
Scorpio, in turn, inspired the Faraday School kidnapping in Australia, the Chowchilla kidnapping in California, and the Ursula Herrmann kidnapping in Germany.
The Zodiac literally shot and stabbed young couples in secluded places, wrote taunting letters to newspapers, opened the third letter with, “This is the Zodiac speaking,” included literal cryptograms in four of the letters, and signed his correspondence with crosshairs.
The only man ever named by the police as a suspect was Arthur Leigh Allen, a former elementary school teacher and convicted sex offender who went on to die in 1992. In the movie they question him at his blue-collar job, where he’s nonetheless wearing his rather fancy Zodiac watch. Zodiac’s Sea Wolf was the first purpose-built dive watch.
Naturally I found it odd that a mechanic in coveralls would be wearing an expensive watch, and I expected the detectives to remark on it — beyond raising their eyebrows at the crosshair logo. The suspect is also left-handed, but ostensibly ambidextrous enough to write with either hand, and wearing the watch on his left wrist. This didn’t come up, either.
