RITA Williams is a former KTVU reporter who interviewed the only man to be named as a Zodiac Killer suspect.
The reporter had the last ever interview conducted with Arthur Leigh Allen before his death and she shared new details of her nail biting meeting with him in Netflix’s This is the Zodiac Speaking.
Up close with a Zodiac suspect
Rita worked on KTVU for 40 years before hanging up her microphone and retiring in 2013.
She interviewed Arthur Leigh Allen, the prime Zodiac suspect, in 1991 in his childhood home in Vallejo, Northern California.
Allen vehemently denied being the infamous serial murderer during the interview and initially asked for his face to be blurred.
Eventually, he agreed for his face to be shown but maintained his innocence.
He said: “They haven’t arrested me because they can’t prove a thing. I’m not the damn Zodiac.”
Rita pointed out that pipe bombs were found under his home, alongside a diagram which bore a resemblance to a drawing of a bomb included in a Zodiac letter.
Allen claimed that the bomb was given to him by an ex-con friend.
In the interview, Rita was allowed to see the original letters sent by the killer to the police.
Investigators found DNA on a stamp, included with one of the letters, but found that it was not a match.
When Rita asked whether Allen’s mother, whom he lived with at the time, could have licked the stamp she was told that investigators know it was a man.
Allen died shortly after the interview, but not before sending Rita a letter in which he referred to her as a friend.
Also, the letter included a made up word, “professionality”, which Zodiac Killer expert Robert Graysmith felt was further proof that Allen was the killer.
The Zodiac Killer’s letters were filled with misspelled words, like “paradice”, and newly created words like the one written in his letter to Rita.
The Zodiac Killer’s murder spree
The Zodiac Killer began his criminal rampage in the late 1960s, with the murder of Betty Lou Jensen, aged 16, and David Arthur Faraday, aged 17.
His murder spree continued until the killing of Paul Stine, a 30-year-old taxi driver.
The killer would send letters to the police which taunted them for their inability to catch him.
The letters were often signed off with an ominous symbol which matched a logo later found on one of Allen’s watches.
Cryptic ciphers were also sent to newspapers across California, which the Zodiac Killer claimed would reveal his identity.
However, a group of cold case investigators later pointed to the fact that the cipher could be solved by removing the name of another Zodiac suspect Gary Francis Poste, casting doubt on whether Allen was the killer.
Arthur Leigh Allen’s crimes
Although Allen was never charged with any crime related to the Zodiac murders, he did spend years in jail for sexually assaulting a teenager in 1974.
He had been fired from his teaching position in 1968, after allegations of sexual misconduct were made by several pupils.
The Seawater family were close with Allen during the 1960s and the three Seawater children feel that Allen might have committed his murders while on holiday with them.
On one trip to Tajiguas Beach in June 1963, Allen left the three children on the beach before returning with his hands covered in something red.
After he bundled the children into the car and raced away, it was revealed that two teenagers named Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards had been killed in the area.
Later, Cheri Jo Bates was murdered near a motel that the Seawaters had stayed in with Allen.
Two of the Seawater children later revealed that they had fallen into a deep sleep during the trip, after drinking juice they had found in their room.
The only thing that Connie Seawater remembers, after drinking the juice, is being taken back to the car by Allen a day later.
