The Zodiac killer is one of the most famous unsolved serial killers, but few know about the three siblings — David, Connie and Don Seawater — who spent time with Arthur Leigh Allen, the only person the San Francisco Police Department named as a suspect.
Director Ari Mark earned the trust of the three and is behind the Netflix documentary, “This Is the Zodiac Speaking.”
Mark, who founded Ample Entertainment with Phil Lott, had his first foray into film more than two decades ago, when he made an animated short about his grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. The Los Angeles resident went on to work at Sundance, XBOX and two years ago, with Lott, he co-wrote and co-directed “The Invisible Pilot,” an 2022 HBO miniseries executive produced by Adam McKay.
“It’s not that I’m only interested in serial killers,” Mark said. “I’m in interested in the way people operate. I didn’t set out to make documentaries. I started with scripts. Over time, I realized with real stories, I was getting more authentic stuff and more shocking revelations.”
“This Is the Zodiac Speaking,” a three-part series was No. 1 on Netflix the week it came out.It’s the story of a broken family. Connie accused her father, Paul, of molestingher. “Mr. Allen” was a hulking and well-liked teacher who took the kids on a trip and only years later did they put the pieces together and the 2006 film “Zodiac” got the wheels in motions in their minds.
“Memory is a weird thing,” Mark said. “I think they experienced a lot of traumas. I think it triggered them to take a hard look at their lives and see what dots they are connecting. They never really huddled up before. They had their suspicions. They didn’t all agree. Their mother wouldn’t allow them to think that.”
Allen would take the kids to movies and on trips. Mark said he was not surprised the docuseries got such a strong reaction.
“It’s one thing to make something up out of thin air,” Mark said. “But when you can show people this is what someone else experienced, you’re opening up another world of psychology, family relationships, strangeness and darkness that people don’t realize exist. When I make things, I try to get people’s attention. The goal is to find the intersection between broad entertainment and high-quality story telling.”
“This is Zodiac Speaking,” he said, also took a certain amount of tact and diplomacy.
“It always is (sensitive), especially when you’re dealing with victims of abuse and violent crime,” Mark said. “This was the ultimate betrayal for these kids. Here is a man they idolized and trusted, and he exploited them in the worst possible way. The tricky part of the TV business is it’s filled with a lot of frauds. The world has been trained to not believe many in the entertainment business. They’ve been trained out of the gate and we’re trying to exploit them. I have to gain and earn their trust. With these people, it was going to their homes and taking it slow. I’m working on another project with a family looking for their missing daughter. They’ve been burned so many times, given false hope. In this case with the Zodiac, it is more coming to terms with what happened in a grieving process. Once out in the open, it also becomes more real for them.”
The siblings speak of Allen as a talented diver who was kind and befriended their mother in ways they only understood more when they grew older. Yet they have come to believe he murdered five people and they think they even helped him make the mask he war. The series gets its title from the letters the Zodiac Killer sent to The San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times: “This Is the Zodiac Speaking” and was also the title of a book about the murders.
The docuseries shows despite seemingly strong evidence against Allen, there was not enough for any trial, let alone a conviction. Would the surveillance cameras placed throughout cities today have made a difference?
“I’m not sure if law enforcement has changed that much but the big thing that has changed is technology,” Mark said. “We are much more more able to get criminals by traffic lights or cell phone pings. Decades ago, it was much harder.”
Allen maintained his innocence and the last moments of the series show a surprising letter that was found at the time of his death.
Why has there been such an explosion in interest in true crime?
“I think it’s due to distribution models,” Mark said. “People have always been infatuated because it’s the highest stakes of life and death. What’s changed has been able to get into people’s living rooms around thew world in a much quicker way. Cases solved by DNA are the least interesting from a narrative part. Most of the true crime series you see are from years ago, or if it’s not the evidence isn’t clear. In some ways the more technology advances, the less of these stories there will be, which is a good thing. We don’t want people getting murdered and have law enforcement not know who did it.”
David Seawater did not live to see the finished series; he died in August of 2023.
“He passed away pretty soon after the (last) interview,” Mark said. “He seemed fine before. He went to the doctor, and they said you’ve got cancer everywhere. I’m talking about days later; he was in a catatonic state. It was crazy. I flew to the hospital in Sacramento. They wanted me to get the last moments of his life one film. He was definitely gone too young.”
Mark said many are befuddled as to how Allen presumably got away with the murder of five people.
“Part of the fascination of the case, is why the hell couldn’t they just bring him in?” Mark said. “So much of the evidence was corrupted from a DNA standpoint. There were so many departments involved because he murdered people across different state lines which we think was intentional to confuse people. At the end of the day, it’s still circumstantial, as crazy as it sounds. They tried to build a case, and they just weren’t able to find something that tipped the scales. Just because they found pipe bombs, apparently that’s not enough.”
The case became famous due to a cipher that was used and students said Allen taught them how to create and use codes. The docuseries for the first time reveals a letter between the siblings’ mother and Allen as well as the existence of a knife that is thought to have been used in one of the murders. There is a bit of archival footage and testimony from a TV news reporter named Rita Williams says Allen nearly confessed to her.
“It was hard to track down people who still wanted to talk about the case,” Mark said. “The hardest part in making this is moving past the stigma that people have about the zodiac killer, that it shouldn’t be the same old nonsense. We had a new angle.”
“This is the Zodiac Speaking” is head spinning, frightening, and makes it difficult to believe police were not able to make a case against Allen. The siblings appear to feel haunted but perhaps being the docuseries can give them a small measure of peace.
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