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DAVID Seawater and his family were close with Arthur Leigh Allen, the only man to ever be named as a Zodiac Killer suspect by the police.
The Netflix documentary series This is the Zodiac Speaking examines Allen’s suspected involvement in the murders and, in the programme, David reveals what it was like to know the man thought to be an infamous serial killer.
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Family friend?
David and his family became close friends with Allen while their dad was in a mental institution.
Allen would take him, his sister Connie and his brother Don on holidays while their dad was away.
Their mother Phyllis was close with Allen and remained so until his death in 1992.
On one holiday to Tajiguas Beach on June 4, 1963, Connie said that Allen left them on the beach and returned some time later with something red on his hands.
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Out of breath, he packed them into the car and sped away.
The next day, it was revealed that two teenagers named Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards had been killed.
Connie believes that Allen killed a third person, Cheri Jo Bates, while on holiday with them and she claims that she drugged her and David in order to slip away.
David claimed that when he confronted Allen about their suspicions that he confessed to being the serial killer before cutting off contact with the family.
Arthur Leigh Allen’s crimes
Allen was charged with several crimes unrelated to being the Zodiac Killer.
In 1974, he was arrested and jailed for sexually assaulting a teenage boy and, by this time, he had already been fired from his job after being accused of sexual misconduct by several pupils.
A police search of his home was conducted after his death in 1992 and investigators uncovered a piece of evidence that they believed was a strong sign that Allen was the Zodiac killer.
A watch named the Zodiac Sea Wolf wristwatch was found in his house and the watch had a symbol which bore a strong resemblance to the symbol left on the Zodiac Killer’s letters.
In the 2007 film Zodiac, based on a book by crime writer and researcher Robert Graysmith, Allen is revealed to be the killer.
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The Zodiac Killer’s murder spree
The Zodiac Killer operated during the late 1960s and killed five victims during this time.
His murder spree began with the double murder of Betty Lou Jensen, aged 16, and David Arthur Faraday, aged 17 and ended with the murder of Paul Stine, a 30-year-old taxi driver.
He taunted the police by sending them mocking letters, in which he identified himself as the Zodiac and announced that he would continue killing people.
Each letter was signed off with a symbol which matched the one later found on Allen’s wristwatch.
The killer also sent cryptic ciphers to newspapers across California and he claimed that solving the codes would lead to his capture.
The ciphers were finally cracked in 2020 and it was revealed that the killer believed murdering people would make them his slaves in the afterlife.
A group of investigators named The Case Breakers suggested that a man named Gary Francis Poste was the killer, since removing his name from the cipher allowed it to be solved.
