Who was the Zodiac killer?
It’s a question that’s plagued everyone from the police to the public for nearly 60 years.
Me? I’ve firmly believed that Arthur Leigh Allen was the Zodiac, and after watching the Netflix three episode documentary series This is the Zodiac Speaking you’re going to say it too.
Masterfully told by co-directors Ari Mark and Phil Lott, This is the Zodiac Speaking delves deep into the story of the infamous serial killer who terrorized Northern California at the end of the 1960s, including a series of killings in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Zodiac, as he called himself, sent cyptic letters to local newspapers along with cyphers, some of which weren’t decrypted until the new millennium.
David Fincher’s brilliant 2007 film Zodiac told the story to a large degree and pointed the figure at suspect Arthur Leigh Allen as the likely man behind the mask. Unfortunately the police, who included SF Inspector David Toschi, the inspiration for both Steve McQueen’s Bullitt and Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry Callahan, could never find enough evidence to make their case official. The case of the Zodiac has never been far from the public consciousness, though, with amateur sleuths continually trying to crack the case.
This is the Zodiac Speaking may have done just, thanks to the horrifying revelations of siblings Don, David, and Colleen Seawater and their mother, who allowed Allen, then a teacher, to take her children on road trips around Northern California. As we learn through the series, those locations wound up being the same places where the Zodiac had killed his victims. And that’s just for starters.
To say too much more about the contents of This is the Zodiac Speaking would really be spoiling the gripping series, and I don’t want to ruin the ride that it takes the viewer. Suffice to say, with new evidence and its carefully constructed timelines, co-directors Mark and Lott have crafted what is likely the final say on who the Zodiac was.
For anyone like me, who was and continues to be mesmerized by David Fincher’s film and the true horror story that, until now, never felt it had a real conclusion, This is the Zodiac Speaking is a must-watch.
