Who is the Zodiac Killer? A trio of siblings who knew the suspect as children reveal why they believe he did it

TTo the Seawater children, Arthur Leigh Allen wasn't just a fun teacher who introduced them to new music and took them on shell-hunting “field trips” – he was a father figure.

When they discovered years later that police believed he might be the infamous “Zodiac Killer” who terrorized California with a spate of brutal murders in the 1960s, they didn't believe it.

Until they asked him – and he confessed.

Connie, David and Don Seawater's explosive claims have been revealed in the new Netflix docuseries That's that Zodiac Speaking of which.

The siblings also claim that they later discovered that while accompanying him on these excursions, he was either scouting out a killing site or even committing murder.

“We realized that we had been to all the murder scenes before the murders,” David Seawater says in the docuseries as the siblings spoke publicly about the case for the first time.

On a memorable trip to Tajiguas Point in 1963, Connie Seawater recalled how Allen left her with her brothers in his car for about an hour and then suddenly showed up with what appeared to be blood on her hands.

The next day, teenagers Robert Domingos, 18, and Linda Edwards, 17, were found shot to death on the same spot on the beach. Their murders were never solved.

In the 1960s, five people were murdered and were confirmed to be victims of the Zodiac Killer, who sent taunting ciphers to reporters and threatened to kill more people if the news was not published on the front page of San Francisco newspapers would.

Police have only ever publicly identified Allen as a suspect in the case, but they have never found enough evidence to charge him.

Who was Arthur Leigh Allen? The suspected Zodiac killer

Arthur Leigh Allen was an elementary school teacher who was popular with his students.

In the docuseries, a former student, Darin Alvord, recalled how Allen taught them how to decipher codes that were eerily similar to the complicated codes the Zodiac Killer later used in his letters.

Another student remembered Allen playing music The Mikado, a comic opera during class – songs that would be quoted years later in the Zodiac Killer's letters.

Students praised the former teacher, but years later remembered how disturbingly he referred to the girls in his class as “my beautiful one.”

The Seawater children were also students of Allen's, but he soon became a fixture at family dinners after becoming familiar with their mother, who had to raise several children while their father was in a psychiatric hospital.

Field trips and murder confessions

Connie Seawater and her brothers remember happy times with Allen. He often took them on weekend trips that took the children all over the state.

But years later, when Connie saw the 2007 film Zodiacshe realized that they had been to all the places where Zodiac murders had taken place.

“(There was) so much in this film that felt incredibly familiar,” she says in the docuseries.

Like on June 4, 1963, when they traveled to Tajiguas Point, where Domingos and Edwards were murdered.

Connie, a freshman, remembers visiting the Riverside racetrack on October 28, 1966. While her brother slept in the hotel, she recalled that Allen once took her on a tour of the Riverside City College campus, where she put his hand down her pants and sexually assaulted her.

When they returned to the hotel, her brother still didn't wake up and she remembers drinking juice before falling asleep. The next thing she remembers is being led back to the car on October 31st. Allen later confessed to drugging the siblings in Riverside.

On October 30, a woman named Cheri Jo Bates was found dead on the grounds of the Riverside City College campus. No connection was ever found between her murder and the Zodiac Killer and the case was never solved.

Before Allen died, he was questioned extensively about his possible role in the murders. He served three years in prison for child abuse. During this time there were no murders linked to the Zodiac Killer and no letters were sent to the press or police.

Connie, who had moved away and started a family, returned to California and visited the man she had named her daughter after.

She said in the docuseries that she now believes Allen hinted that he was the Zodiac Killer.

While sailing with Allen in 1991, she asked him if he was a Zodiac Killer. But he said if he told her he would have to kill her. “I thought it was a big joke,” she said.

However, her brother David said he received a full confession from Allen in 1992, shortly before his death.

Allen broke down in tears over the phone as he confessed to drugging them as children and abusing his sister Connie. When David asked him if he was the Zodiac Killer, Allen, still crying, said he was.

“The thought that someone I once loved and trusted was capable of something like that drove me crazy,” David said.

He called the police, who told him there was nothing they could do. And then he called his mother, who laughed and said Allen was a joker.

The Seawater siblings say their mother never believed Allen could be the Zodiac Killer or a child molester. However, when she died in 2017, they found a box of letters between her and Allen in which he discussed the zodiac.

Allen died on August 26, 1992. He was 58 years old. In his last letter he denied being the Zodiac Killer.

There have been no further Zodiac murders since Allen's death.

The victims of the Zodiac Killer

There are five confirmed murders of the Zodiac Killer that occurred in California between 1968 and 1969 and two survivors. The target group was predominantly young couples.

In letters to the police and the press, the killer admitted to at least 37 other murders.

On December 20, 1968, David Arthur Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16, were found shot to death on Lake Herman Road in Benicia, California, known as Lover's Lane.

In a similar attack on July 4, 1969, Michael Renault Mageau, 19, and Darlene Ferrin, 22, were shot while sitting in Ferrin's car at Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo. Mageau survived.

Vallejo police later received a call from a man who claimed responsibility for the murders and also blamed himself for the Faraday-Jensen murders.

On July 31, 1969, the killer sent messages to newspapers in San Francisco, marking the beginning of the Zodiac letters.

Just weeks later, on September 27, Bryan Hartnell, 20, and his girlfriend Cecelia Shepard, 22, were stabbed to death while on a picnic at Lake Berryessa.

According to Hartnell, who survived the attack, a man wearing a hooded medieval executioner's outfit attacked the couple, tied them up and stabbed them multiple times.

On October 11, 1969, Paul Stine, a 29-year-old taxi driver, was shot and killed after picking up a passenger in San Francisco and taking him to Presidio Heights – about 30 miles from the site of the other murders – where he was shot in the back of the head.

His murder was not linked to the others until the Zodiac sent a letter to the murderer with a bloody stain on Stine's shirt San Francisco Chronicle. Stine would be the Zodiac's last confirmed victim, although the taunting letters to the media continued until 1974.

The Zodiac Killer is believed to be linked to a number of other victims, including the 1963 murders of Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards, in which the Seawater siblings claim to have been nearby with Allen when it occurred happened, and the death of an 18 year old. Old Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside in October 1966 when the Seawater kids were in town with Allen.

The dark messages of the Zodiac Killer

Four ciphers (encrypted messages) sent to Bay Area newspapers over the years were believed to be the key to tracking down the killer. Some have been deciphered, others remain a mystery.

In 2020, one of his most enigmatic messages, the so-called 340 cipher, was solved.

“I hope you enjoy catching me, who wasn't me, on the TV show that raises a point about me: I'm not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradise (sic). “, the note reads.

“All the more so because I now have enough slaves to work for me, where everyone else has nothing when they reach paradise and is afraid of death. I am not afraid because I know that my new life will be an easy life in paradise death.”

Two ciphers have not yet been encoded, but authorities said they are unsure whether they will ever be able to decipher the mysterious messages.

This is the Zodiac Speaking is now streaming on Netflix.