Mike Rodelli - In the Shadow of Mt. Diablo: The Shocking True Identity of the Zodiac Killer

Dedicated to the memories of my mom and dad,

Ann and Joseph Rodelli

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Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

Philosopher Dan Dennett

Preface

From December 1968 until July 1974, a man who called himself the Zodiac terrorized the people of the San Francisco Bay Area with cold-blooded murders and chilling hand-printed letters to the editors of the local newspapers. In these letters, he boasted of his crimes and threatened unspeakable mayhem. He taunted and ridiculed his police pursuers. He even hinted that he was leaving clues to his true identity.

After killing five people and then writing about his exploits under his now infamous pen name, the Zodiac has been called a sexual sadist, a sexual killer without the sex, and a loser who was compensating for his feelings of inadequacy. None of these characterizations is the truth, and when you learn the truth about his identity, it will surely shock you as much as it did me.

In June 1999, I had what I thought to be a simple-minded idea to use the killers own behavior as a weapon to identify him. That idea led to just one name. Through various discoveries made from June 1999 until January 2000, I felt that I had solved the Zodiac case: there simply seemed to be too many stunning and disturbing circumstances pointing at my suspect for him not to be the Zodiac. I was certain that, with the assistance of the local police, Id have the case completely wrapped up within a few months. Instead, that one name set me on a quest that would slowly but inexorably consume the next twenty years of my life.

I was forced at various times to be my own behavioral profiler, my own internet detective, and use the World Wide Web to piece together the evidence to prove my case. I had to be my own forensic scientist and challenge the DNA evidence that had allegedly been developed from one of Zodiacs many letters. The question was, Would I be able to successfully overcome this DNA and prove that I had solved the case? Eventually I also had to become my own police interrogator when I interviewed my wealthy suspect at his request in a memorable face-to-face meeting in 2006.

The most important step in identifying the Zodiac is to redefine him through behavioral profiling techniques that were not available to the police in the 1960s. That profile is based on the killers crime scenes and how he interacted with his victims. Well undertake that task in chapter 17. It is based on my interviews with a forensic psychologist and crime scene analyst, Mr. Richard Walter, who is one of the founders of the prestigious cold-case-solving group, the Vidocq Society of Philadelphia. Mr. Walter is one of a small handful of elite profilers in the world and is known by Scotland Yard as the living Sherlock Holmes. As a result of an inaccurate profile of the Zodiac, people both inside and outside of law enforcement have been looking for the killer in all the wrong places since 1969. As Mr. Walter said to me several years ago, You cant find something if you dont know what you are looking for.

We will also redefine Zodiac through a clear obsession he had. This obsession pervades every one of his crime scenes. It is also in many of his letters to the press, and even the crimes for which Zodiac took credit but may not have committed. When combined with the updated profile, this obsession clearly and decisively points the finger of suspicion squarely at the man named in this book and dismisses all of the other three thousand or so suspects who have been named since the search for Zodiac began in 1969.

In addition to the challenges I naturally faced on my journey, Ive also had incredible experiences. In developing the name of my suspect, I happened upon an entire secret world that lay hidden just beneath the surface of this mind-bending case for a generation. I have learned amazing things and made many lasting friends since 1999. These include a retired and now deceased Superior Court judge from Solano County, California, who helped guide me through the political maze that is Northern California law enforcement. In 2001 he called mine the only true prime suspect ever developed in the history of the investigation.

Other individuals assisted me as well. One is a former investigator for the San Francisco City Attorneys Office, whose counsel and insights over the years were of inestimable assistance. Another was a man who was widely considered the dean of private investigators in San Francisco. There were also three amateur investigators from Europe whom Ive never met in person, but who became my staunchest allies and supporters at a time when I most needed them. Last but by no means least was retired Vallejo, California, Police Department detective Jim Dean, who investigated the Zodiac crimes in the 1970s. His badge opened the door to the pair of us interviewing several key eyewitnesses who were completely inaccessible to the average amateur researcher. One of these cornerstone eyewitnesses had never told his story to anyone outside of law enforcement for over thirty years. Jim and I spoke to him beginning on a memorable day in September 2003, and what a story it turned out to be! Hearing that story directly from this eyewitness was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for both Jim and me.

In the chapters where I present the circumstantial case I have assembled over the years, I provide extensive footnoting and include a number of exhibits in support of my theory. The evidence I present comes from books, newspaper and magazine articles, birth and death records, European genealogical records, maps, other publicly available information, and even as unlikely a place as horse racing results charts from the Daily Racing Form . The reason I so carefully document my evidence is twofold: First, my suspect was an upstanding citizen of San Francisco who I believed had committed a series of heinous crimes. Therefore, it was incumbent upon me, in making such accusations, to be prepared to completely substantiate my claims with the facts that had led me, as well as many others, to conclude that this man was the Zodiac. Second, I also wanted to make my case not about me and what I personally thought but about the objective facts that comprise my case. In this way, anybody could put himself in my shoes, assess the evidence for himself, and draw his own conclusions.

In short, Ive tried to make this the most heavily researched and thoroughly documented book ever written on the Zodiac mystery, one that, I believe, will bring the case to a definitive conclusion. This is in direct contrast to many other books and newspaper articles I have read on the case, in which someone might simply present handwriting from canceled checks and ask us to conclude that the writer was Zodiac. Or they might alter the 1969 wanted poster sketch of Zodiac to look like their suspect and then marvel at the resemblance or propose a dizzying case based on mathematics against a man who lived some three thousand miles from the crime scenes and was never placed at any of them. Or they may confidently name a suspect who was proven in a 2014 book to be the Zodiac with handwriting from a marriage document that I easily proved not to be the suspects handwriting at all!

I will do my utmost to take you along with me on this journey, painting in fine brush strokes wherever possible and in much broader ones when need be. I hope that you find the trip through my research on the Zodiac case as endlessly fascinating today as I found it while I was living it. It is research that brought me to unbelievable heights of discovery, led me to disaster on national television in 2002, and ultimately led me to what I believe to be the absolute truth about the identity of the heartless, power-hungry, and egotistical man who called himself Zodiac. My goal in this book is what its been since 1999: to put the truth as I see it about the identity of the Zodiac before the public. That truth may not be what people expected in their wildest dreams, nor what anyone who knew my suspect could have imagined in their worst nightmares, but it is the unvarnished truth as I see it.