More than 50 years after the Zodiac Killer began a killing spree in California, law enforcement officials and amateur detectives are still fascinated by the case.

Despite years of research, the identity of the Zodiac Killer still remains a mystery.

The new three-part Netflix docuseries “This is the Zodiac Speaking” shares one family’s experience with Arthur Leigh Allen, the only person police have officially named a suspect in the Zodiac murders.

The documentary explores the family’s close bond with Allen in the 1960s and reveals a shocking confession Allen allegedly made shortly before his death.

TODAY.com has reached out to the San Francisco Police Department for comment on the investigation and to learn whether the allegations in the documentary have led to action in the case.

Read on to learn more about the Zodiac Killer and what Netflix’s new documentary reveals about his infamous unsolved crimes.

Who was the Zodiac Killer?

The Zodiac Killer, whose identity has never been confirmed, was a serial killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area in 1968 and 1969. He was never caught.

Five murders have been officially attributed to the Zodiac Killer, who often targets young couples. San Francisco Chronicle.

The Zodiac Killer was known to send coded letters to newspapers and police about his crimes. San Francisco Chronicle. These letters often contained passwords and coded messages. Many featured a circle with a plus sign, which became his trademark, and began with the words “This is the Zodiac speaking…”

In 2014, author Gary Best said his biological father, Earl Van Best Jr., was the Zodiac Killer, making his claims in a book called “The Most Dangerous Animal of All: Searching for My Father… and Finding the Zodiac Killer.” ”

Despite numerous theories emerging over the years, police have named only one suspect in the Zodiac Killer case: Arthur Leigh Allen, who died in 1992.

Who was Arthur Leigh Allen and what role does he play in the Zodiac Killer investigation?

Arthur Leigh Allen remains the only suspect named in the Zodiac Killer investigation.

Allen, who died in 1992 at age 58, was a Navy veteran, former teacher and sex offender.

Vallejo police Detective Terry Poyser described Allen as “an extremely intelligent but twisted man.” Sacramento Bee.

Allen emerged as a suspect in the Zodiac murders as early as 1971; One of his old friends, Don Cheney, went to the police with concerns about threatening statements Allen had made the last time they saw each other in 1969.

Cheney’s interview with the police is featured in the Netflix documentary.

Cheney, who had known Allen for years, said in a 1971 police interview that he remembered Allen talking about “shooting the tires on the school bus and killing the cute little kids who were jumping off the bus.”

This sentence echoed a sentence from one of the Zodiac Killer’s letters, which talked about the killer’s desire to “just shoot the front tire and then shoot the kids who jump out.”

“I remembered that line about ‘throwing away little darlings,’ and that’s what forced me to go to the police,” Cheney said in the 1971 interview, the audio of which was shared in the Netflix documentary.

After meeting with Cheney, police visited Allen at work. An audio recording of an interview with San Francisco Police Department investigator David Toschi was played in the documentary. Who worked on the Zodiac caseHe did so with true-crime author Robert Graysmith, whose work inspired David Fincher’s “Zodiac.”

Toschi noticed that Allen was wearing a Zodiac watch with a crossed circle on it; The same symbol the Zodiac Killer used to sign some of his letters.

After this encounter with Allen, authorities obtained a warrant to search his trailer. Inside, they found hunting knives as well as a freezer full of dead hamsters, squirrels and birds, Toschi said.

However, Toschi said they did not find any concrete evidence linking Allen to the Zodiac murders.

“We left feeling a little depressed. I thought we’d find more,” Toschi told Graysmith.

In 1974, when Allen crossed paths with the police once again, he was accused of child molestation. Allen spent nearly two years at Atascadero State Hospital, which was intended to treat pedophiles.

Although authorities investigated him, they were never able to build a strong enough case against him.

In Allen’s 1992 obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle, Toschi reportedly said, “Mr. Allen was a very, very good suspect.” “We examined Mr. Allen very closely.”

In 1991, police searched Allen’s home in Vallejo as part of the unsolved investigation and “found some writings, some pipe bombs, some illegal guns,” Vallejo Police Chief Roy Conway told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1992. “None of this was enough to make an arrest that he was the Zodiac.”

Allen died of a heart attack in 1992. According to the documentary, Allen repeatedly denied being the Zodiac Killer, both in his letters and in media interviews.

“He was doing his best to exonerate himself,” said Glenn Rinehart, Allen’s friend. Vallejo Times Herald in 2007. “He did his best to tell his side of the story.”

In 2002, San Francisco homicide detectives said they were testing new DNA evidence from letter envelopes that might exonerate Allen. However, officials said these tests were ultimately inconclusive. San Francisco Chronicle.

“Arthur Leigh Allen does not match the partial DNA fingerprint developed from the actual Zodiac letters,” Investigator Kelly Carroll told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Who are Sea Waters and what do they say in a new documentary?

Netflix’s new three-part documentary “This Is the Zodiac Speaking” focuses on the accounts of Seawater family members who have known Allen since the early 1960s.

In 1961, Allen was a schoolteacher who developed a special relationship with single mother Phyllis Seawater and her six children, especially her three oldest children, Connie, David, and Don. Many of the children are recorded in the documentary. TODAY.com has reached out to Connie and David Seawater for comment.

Connie Seawater describes her teacher Allen as “big, smiling and friendly.”

In the documentary, Seawater’s older siblings say they cherished their early memories of Allen, saying that he became a father figure to them, taking them on trips and giving them gifts.

The Seawaters recall details of a trip Allen took to them; In hindsight this seems ominous. In the summer of 1963, the brothers say, Allen took them to Tajiguas Point, a remote beach community in Santa Barbara. They say he asked the children to wait in the car as he went down to the beach and was not there for about an hour.

Connie Seawater, who was 9 or 10 at the time, said when she returned to the car, Allen had something red in his hand, but she didn’t understand what it meant at the time. He also remembers Allen carrying something he put in the trunk and driving away from the beach in a panic.

This trip coincides with the timing and locations of the murders of 18-year-old Robert Domingos and his 17-year-old fiancée Linda Edwards, who were shot on June 4, 1963. Santa Barbara Independent.

The murders of Domingos and Edwards were never definitively linked to the Zodiac Killer, but according to the documentary, authorities believe the details of their murders—the targeting of a young couple in a remote area near a body of water—bear trademarks of the Zodiac Killer. style.

For years, the Seawater brothers did not believe that their beloved former teacher, Mr. Allen, might have had anything to do with the Zodiac Murders.

But in 1992, David Seawater says he had a phone call with Allen that changed his life. Seawater says in the documentary, Allen admitted to drugging David and his siblings when they were children.

David Seawater also said Allen admitted to molesting Connie Seawater.

“There were periods when we felt dizzy, and we had no explanation for that. Then I realized exactly what he was doing and how he was doing it,” David Seawater says in the documentary.

He says he then asked Allen, “‘Were you Zodiac?'”

“It was dead silent. For a moment I didn’t hear anything, I heard a panting sound and she was just crying,” Seawater says. “She collected herself enough and came back in a very faint voice and said, ‘Yes, it was me.'”

Seawater contacted the police after this phone call, but said the detective he spoke to said there was nothing they could do.

TODAY.com has reached out to the San Francisco Police Department for comment on the phone call.

The family connected more dots years later after watching the 2007 movie “Zodiac,” starring John Carroll Lynch as Allen and Mark Ruffalo as Toschi, one of the lead investigators on the case.

When they watched the film, the Seawater brothers noticed eerie connections between their trips with Allen as children and the timing and locations of the Zodiac Killer’s murders.

“We started looking into things and realized we had visited all the murder scenes before the murders,” David Seawater says in the documentary.

“We were kids when we went with him, so we didn’t associate Mr. Allen with the murder scenes until we saw him in the movie,” Connie Seawater says in the documentary.

Connie Seawater also says she had an epiphany when she saw the wetsuit helmet that Allen’s character wears in the movie and realized that the real-life Allen had helped her make a very similar headgear.

“When we started connecting the dots, I started seeing too many coincidences to be coincidences,” he says.

This article was first published on: TODAY.com