2024 Netflix Series

In 2024, Netflix released a 3-part documentary series on the Zodiac murders titled "This is the Zodiac Speaking."  (Not to be confused with a documentary of the same name, which was released in 2008 as a bonus on the blu-ray release of David Fincher's film "Zodiac.")

The documentary presented a lot of new information about Arthur Leigh Allen. The main points are summarized below. 

Santa Rosa Elementary School

In 1961, a woman named Phyllis Seawater enrolled her kids in Santa Rosa Elementary School, in Atascadero, CA. At the time, her eldest child David was in 4th grade, Connie was in 3rd grade, and Don was in Kindergarten or 1st grade. Phyllis had a total of 6 kids, with another on the way. (Marlene, later Marlene Dodge, and Hily, later Hily Greene were other siblings interviewed in the Netflix series.) The kids' father, Paul Seawater was in Atascadero State Hospital for sexually molesting his daughter Connie. 

Arthur Leigh Allen was a teacher at Santa Rosa Elementary, and started tutoring Connie and giving her and her brothers rides home after school. After this, Allen started spending time with Phyllis and the kids.

According to David Seawater and another student named Darin Alvord, Allen taught the students in class how to decipher ciphers using letter substitution codes and grids. 

David Seawater claimed that Allen brought animals into class, including a frog that he named "Forg". 

David Seawater also recalled Allen playing music in class on a record player, including "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley" (a murder ballad about a woman who is killed by being stabbed with a knife), and songs from the Mikado.

Allen frequently took the Seawater kids (and other students) on various trips. According to one student Melody Barger, Mr. Allen was "really smitten with David's sister Connie." "He paid different attention to the girls," according to Darin Alvord.

The Murders of Robert Domingo and Linda Edwards, June 4, 1963

On June 4, 1963, two high school students, Robert Domingo and Linda Edwards, were murdered at Tajiguas beach in Santa Barbara, near Gaviota State Park. Both were shot multiple times with a .22. "Investigators believed that the man produced pre-cut lengths of rope and ordered Linda to tie-up Robert’s hands. After that, the man may have tried to bind Linda’s hands, but Robert somehow freed himself and fought back long enough for the couple to run away. The man apparently shot both Robert and Linda in the back and they fell to the ground together." The man then tried to burn the bodies and destroy other evidence by placing them in a makeshift shack on the beach and setting it on fire. But the shack failed to burn and the man fled.

It has been speculated that this may have been an early Zodiac murder.

 (https://zodiackillerfacts.com/the-crimes/zodiac-victims/possible-zodiac-victims/robert-domingos-and-linda-edwards/) 

According to David Seawater, one day at the end of the school year in 1963, Allan drove the three Seawater kids out along the coast and stopped at Tajiguas beach. He told the kids to stay in the car, took something out of the trunk, and went down a trail to the beach. The three kids waited near the car, playing around the nearby railroad tracks. After "an hour or less" (according to Connie), Mr. Allen returned. He was in a big hurry, and had something red on his hands. He wiped off his hands, put something in the trunk, and got in the car really fast and sped off "like a bat out of hell."

After the summer of 1963, Arthur Leigh Allen moved out of his trailer in Atascadero and moved north to Vallejo. According to David Seawater, "he stayed close to our mother, and would still show up on occasion and take us places and stuff like that, but not as much as before."

Trip to Riverside to watch the Races, October 28-31, 1966

October 28, 1966 (Friday)

On the evening of October 28, 1966, Arthur Leigh Allen showed up at the Seawaters' house and said "he was heading down to southern California to the racetrack in Riverside. He asked if Connie would like to go with him." According to David Seawater, "I wasn't going to let him take Connie anywhere by herself so I volunteered to go with her." By this time David was 16 and Connie was around 14. Allen promised Phyllis to have the kids back by October 31, so they could go trick-or-treating. 

They left at around 4 AM, arriving at Riverside the next morning after a 6 hour drive. They spent Saturday at the races, then went to a motel and rented a room, where according to Connie, they "went to sleep real early." The next day (Sunday), Allen took Connie for a drive, leaving David in the motel room still asleep. In the car, according to Connie, Allen had his hand down her pants. They drove to Riverside College campus, where Allen showed her around. They apparently went to the library. When they later returned to the motel, David was still asleep. He was "out like a light," Connie said. She shook him, but he wouldn't wake up. She and Mr. Allen then had something to eat, and "had some juice, sometime in the afternoon on that Sunday," then Connie "blanked out." 

(Note: It was later in the evening of this day, that Cheri Jo Bates was murdered at Riverside College, near the library.)

After passing out, Connie didn't remember anything until being vaguely aware of being put in the car at night to leave, early on Monday morning, October 31. 

Connie living in New York

1968

In 1968, Connie (now age 16) met Frank Prueter and moved with him to Canandaigua, New York. Later the two got married and had kids. Allen would occasionally call Connie over the years, and try to convince her to move back to California. 

1972

One time in 1972, Connie flew back to visit her mother, and Allen came by to visit. (photo below)

The Albany Letter

In 1973, a Zodiac letter was sent to the Times Union newspaper in Albany NY. The letter stated:

YOU WERE WRONG I AM NOT DEAD

OR IN THE HOSPITAL I AM ALIVE

AND WELL AND IM GOING TO

START KILLING AGAIN

BELOW is the NAME AND LOCATION OF MY NEXT VICTIM

But you had Better hurry be

Cause I'm going to kill Her August

10th at 5:00 P.M. When the shift 

change   ALBANY is A nice Town.

This was followed by the Zodiac symbol and a 3-line cipher.

Allen in Atascadero State Hospital

1974

In 1974, Arthur Leigh Allen sent Connie a letter from Atascadero State Hospital (or possibly from the county jail?). In it, he explained that he had been imprisoned for punching a police officer.

1975

According to Marlene, her mother Phyllis used to take her and the younger kids to visit Allen "every weekend" at the State Hospital. (By this time, David, Connie, and Don had moved out.) Phyllis apparently told the kids that Mr. Allen was in prison for "something violent."

1978

In 1978, Allen came to visit Phyllis after his release from Atascadero. According to Hily (Greene), who was 9 at the time, Allen and Phyllis went into Phyllis's bedroom, closed the door, "and they both slept there overnight. What happened behind said door... no clue."

The Knife

Sometime around 1991, Connie's (now adult) son, David Preuter drove with Arthur Leigh Allen in his convertible VW Karmann Ghia (coincidentally, the same type of car Bryan Hartnell had driven on the day of the Lake Berryessa murder.) On the way back the car got a flat tire, and they stopped to repair it. When they were getting the spare tire out of the trunk, David noticed a knife wrapped in plastic cellophane tape. David asked, "Mr Allen, what's going on with this knife?" Allen said "Why don't you keep it."

David kept the knife since that time, and didn't think much of it.

This knife has recently been tested in a lab, which revealed likely presence of blood, and "a mixture of DNA from three contributors, at least one of which genetically types as male." The DNA was degraded, and presumably old. It is unknown if the DNA has been compared to reference samples, for example of Cecelia Shepard, Bryan Hartnell, and Arthur Leigh Allen.

Arthur Leigh Allen's confessions to Connie and David 

1991

In 1991, Connie, now separated from her husband, moved back to California, and she and the other Seawater siblings saw Allen on the news being interviewed as a suspect in the Zodiac case.  

Connie called Allen to discuss this, and then agreed to visit him in his basement room in Fresno St, Vallejo. During the visit, Allen told Connie he was on dialysis twice a week. 

"I need to ask you something," Allen said. "I just wanted to know if you're ok?" 

Connie was a bit surprised by this question, and replied, "I'm as OK as I am. I'm getting along."

Allen nodded his head, saying, "good drugs."

Allen and Connie later went out sailing, and Connie asked Allen if he was the Zodiac. He replied, "If I told you that, I'd have to kill you too."

Around this same time, investigators from San Francisco visited Marlene (Dodge) to ask about Allen. During the visit they revealed to her that the real reason Allen was in Atascadero was for child molestation. After this visit, Marlene called her mother to tell her what she found out. Phyllis claimed to not believe it. 

1992

When David heard this news, he called his mother first, then called Allen. After David thanked Allen "for being there for us when we were kids," Allen started sobbing into the phone. "I was not as good to you as you think I was. I drugged you guys." 

"Mr. Allen, you drugged us?" David asked.

"Yes I did... I molested your sister." He started sobbing.

"Mr Allen. Were you the Zodiac?"

There was deathly silence. He was crying. He came back on in a weak voice, and he said "Yes, it was me."

David Seawater called the SFPD Zodiac task force, and told them about the conversation. The detective told him there was nothing they could do about it. "I only talked to him for 15 minutes before he hung up on me," David said.

David then called his mother to tell her about Allen's confession. At first, Phyllis started laughing, and said, "Oh, he was such a joker." After David said this was not a joke, she told him "not to tell anybody. Ever to tell anybody." She said that she had a box that would explain everything, but to never open it until after she died. "Don't let this out til I'm gone."

David told Don and Connie that Allen had confessed to being the Zodiac killer, that he had drugged them as kids, and that he had molested Connie. Don and Connie refused to believe this, and Connie said she did not remember Allen doing anything bad. It was then, David said, that he had a falling out with Don and Connie. He hated himself for being unable to protect his brother and sister when they were kids. 

August 26, 1992

Arthur Leigh Allen dies. He leaves some of his belongings including his books, and records, and a Mercedes, to Connie. In the will Connie is listed as Connie McCaubrey. (not sure why. Perhaps she remarried?)

Zodiac (2007) movie directed by David Fincher

In 2007, Connie went to see the movie Zodiac and "was shocked at all the similarities to Mr Allen in the movie." David and Don also saw the movie. After seeing the movie, David decided to call Don and Connie, and the three of them decided to meet at Don's house. "The three of us started piecing together these jigsaw puzzle pieces of our childhood, and a hundred things finally fell into place," Connie said.

They realized that Allen had taken them to all the murder sites before the murders: Blue Rock Springs, Lake Herman Road, Lake Berryessa, etc.

"That hood that the Zodiac was wearing, it looks like one of the hoods we made for Mr. Allen" - David

"We used to help him make his wetsuit. He'd get neoprene and one of us would get to cut it, and the other one would get to help him glue it.  It looked so goofy when he put em on.  But the hood looked so much like that, it was spooky." - Connie

Phyllis refused to see the Zodiac movie, and never admitted that she thought Allen was the Zodiac, although she told Connie that "everything she knew was going with her to the grave, except for what was in a box that would explain a lot of things."

The Box 

Phyllis Seawater died in 2017 at the age of 84. David and some of his younger siblings, looked around her house and found a box that contained a lot of letters from Allen. 

Note: The contents of the letters in the box have not been made publicly available. Some of the letters are quoted in the Netflix documentary.

Some of the letters seem to make veiled hints at perhaps admitting to be the Zodiac but they are cited in fragments, and out of context.

The Albany letter Cipher solution: "Connie Henly"

Also around this time, Connie's daughter Tammie Lee Preuter watched the documentary "The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer" (2017) a 5-part documentary series produced for the History Channel.

A major part of the documentary was about solving the cipher in the "Albany letter" from 1973, which stated "BELOW is the NAME AND LOCATION OF MY NEXT VICTIM." A computer decrypted the letter, and came back with the best match on the name being CONNIE_HENLY.

At the time, the producers of the documentary were disappointed that they were unable to find anyone matching this name. 

"In looking at these records. Nothing on a Connie Henly. This person doesnt even exist." - Sal LaBarbera, retired Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective, who was featured in the series.

Phyllis Seawater's maiden name was Hensley. 

At the time (1973) Connie was living in New York, and they had just moved into a new home in Canandaigua. Allen called Connie at this time and said he was coming out there to get her. She claimed that Allen got very mad. And that later she started getting late night phone calls with heavy breathing.

"I think my mother was getting off on him either being the Zodiac killer or him being a suspect of it. She was titillated. She was pretty good at being prey. I think she knew he was the Zodiac and she hid it and helped him hide it." - Don Seawater

The VHS Tape - final confession

Also in the box was a Memorex VHS tape that Allen had sent to Phyllis. (Phyllis and Allen corresponded by sending each other videotapes of themselves talking.) The tape included clips of Allen from the news, from the Geraldo Rivera show, clips from Zodiac killer news features, etc. After these was a shot of Allen's butt, holding a sign that says "The Living End." After this is a self recorded clip of Allen speaking into the camera, addressing Phyllis.

Note: the entirety of the contents of this VHS tape have not been made publicly available.

The tape had a jumbled collection of stickers attached to it, letters and numbers of the type that came with VHS tapes. 

On the left side were the stickers: 1 2 7 B A 3 6

On the left side were the stickers: 1 5 C O D 8 4

The letters can arguably be interpreted to read "I AM ZODIAC" (1 A3 5OD14C). (see below)

NOTE: I am not the person who initially pointed this out. A user on youtube called corneliushuxtable posted a comment pointing out "I AM ZODIAC" as far back as 2021. Also, Robert Peter Ackerman has an interesting post about the sequence of adding letters to spell out the above, and how, if you peel letters for "I AM ZODIAC", you are left with "27B" in a row. As he put it, the extra letters being "dust thrown in the eyes of investigators and detectives attempting to isolate the pattern." This analysis is quite good in my opinion. See: https://zodiacconfessed.wordpress.com/zodiacs-last-puzzle-allens-final-written-confession/