Once inside, the mood quickly becomes unnerving. It takes place near the end of Zodiac, after Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) follows Vaughn (Charles Fleischer) to his home through the rain in his conspicuous, bright-orange Volkswagen Rabbit.

“I was scared to death.”Īlmost three decades later, director David Fincher turned Graysmith’s nightmarish visit into one of the creepiest movie scenes of all time.

“We knew there was some link,” Graysmith tells me. On occasional visits to the upscale movie house, Graysmith observed Vaughn playing the Wurlitzer and noticed the Zodiac’s crosshair symbol plastered to the theater’s ceiling. Outside The Avenue Theater, Marshall’s felt-pen posters even had handwriting similar to the Zodiac’s obscure, cursive strokes. His new suspect liked The Red Spectre, an early-century movie referenced in a 1974 Zodiac letter, and had used a teletype machine just like the killer. “See if he tells you to stay away from part of his film collection.”Īfter years spent independently entrenched in the open case, Graysmith dug into Marshall’s history and found several coincidences. The booby-trapped canisters, Graysmith learned, had recently been moved to Vaughn’s home. Before hanging up, the nameless caller told Graysmith to find Bob Vaughn, a silent film organist who worked with Marshall. According to the tipster, Marshall-a former projectionist at The Avenue Theater-had hidden evidence from his five victims inside movie canisters, which he’d rigged to explode. The killer’s string of murders in 1969 had gone unsolved, but Graysmith suddenly had a new lead. “He’s a guy named Rick Marshall,” the mysterious voice told him at the start of an hourlong conversation. On a wet September night in 1978, Robert Graysmith couldn’t resist his curiosity.Ī month earlier, the San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist had received an anonymous phone call regarding the identity of the Zodiac, the notorious Bay Area serial killer. Join us all throughout the week as we celebrate and examine the man, the myth, and his impeccable body of work. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Se7en and the 10th anniversary of The Social Network, The Ringer hereby dubs September 21-25 David Fincher Week.

Zodiac by Robert Graysmith