With It's the Zodiac speaking to you, Netflix completes David Fincher's film

This three-part documentary gives a voice to children who grew up with the main suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen.

“Zodiac is fascinating from the first to the last minute. And there are 158″wrote First upon its release. Are you obsessed with David Fincher's thriller? In 2007, the director of Seven had made an impression by retracing in very careful detail one of the most famous criminal investigations in American history. Most frustrating, too, since the killer accused of having murdered five people (at least) between the end of the 1960s and the following decade was never arrested, despite his game with the police and the California newspapers , to whom he sent coded messages, confessions to decipher. The authorities did have some leads, and one man in particular was suspected, former school teacher Arthur Leigh Allen. But despite their suspicions of him – notably from investigator David Toschi, played by Mark Ruffalo – they did not have enough direct evidence to arrest him once and for all.

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With It's the Zodiac that speaks to youNetflix promised to shed new light on this affair, or even to finally clearly reveal the identity of the Zodiac, almost fifty years after his last crimes. This shock advertisement was not false: in three episodes broadcast since October 26 on the platform, its directors Phil Lott and Ari Mark (already behind Jailbreak: Love on the Run for the same platform) indeed provide multiple elements which, put together, leave little doubt as to Allen's involvement.

If their documentary is so effective, it is thanks to its strong angle, a common thread whose objective they never lose: after dozens of reports and works already published on this same subject, This is The Zodiac Speaking gives voice to victims of Arthur Leigh Allen. These relate so many coincidences linked to the crimes that it is difficult to retain the benefit of the doubt as to one's guilt. If what the Seawater family says is true, then Allen was at the very least a bad guy, a manipulator approaching lonely women to take advantage of their naivety, and especially their children. By giving them a voice once adults, they provide a unique perspective on the personality of “Lee”.

If there was no absolute proof allowing Allen to be caught during his lifetime, these four brothers and sisters who lived part of their youth alongside him explain having found very explicit letters exchanged in secret within the couple that he formed with their mother. They also cross-referenced the dates of some “family outings” coinciding with the scene of the Zodiac crimes, and discovered with astonishment that no murder had been committed by him during the years when Allen was locked up in a psychiatric hospital, for pedophile assault.

These children waited until the disappearance of their mother, who always refused to recognize that her former lover could be the Zodiac Killer, to delve into her personal archives, which explains the decades passed between Allen's death in 1992, and the release of this documentary. In the last episode, they also talk about their reaction to discovering Fincher's film, 17 years ago. Seized by the bluff incarnation of the suspect by John Carroll Lynch, in whom they believed they recognized their former father-in-law, they salute the obsession for this affair of the reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) and the cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) – a man who greatly participated in the investigation. He also intervenes in this documentary by telling his version of the facts, and highlighting some errors of the police at the time, Allen having for example been arrested just after the murder of a taxi driver, but ultimately not arrested when he indicated that he had “saw the suspect” run away in the opposite direction!

The testimony of these children is edifying, even if they did not follow the whole Zodiac affair assiduously. They explain that they spent their adolescence and early adult life far from these criminal concerns, but never completely cut ties with Allen, to whom they were able to speak – or even see again – before his death. .

Faced with disturbing details from the film, they were taken back to their childhood memories, such as seeing the hood worn by the Zodiac to attack a couple at the edge of a lake. A homemade suit that looked suspiciously like the ones Allen taught them to make for his diving sessions. By multiplying this type of “coincidences”they then began to put the pieces of the puzzle together…

The documentary also focuses on the end of Allen's life, when he was interviewed by a journalist to whom he assured that he was not the killer, and details the relevance of certain clues discovered after his disappearance. The late decryption of one of the Zodiac's famous coded messages suggests that he could have committed at least one other bloody crime, which would have directly affected the Seawater family. Finally, the existence of scientific proof found six decades after what could be one of the serial killer's first crimes is being analyzed. If the DNA “speak” finally, then there will be no more doubt.

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