Attorney claims to know Zodiac killer

SAN FRANCISCO, July 19 (UPI) -- A San Francisco lawyer who claims to know the identity of the Zodiac Killer says it wasn't the man identified in a 2007 film.

However, Robert Tarbox, 82, a former maritime lawyer declined to say who the real killer is, the San Francisco Chronicle said Sunday. Tarbox told the newspaper a merchant seaman came to his office more than 30 years ago and confessed to the killings.

The Zodiac killed three young women, a teenage boy and a cabdriver in San Francisco and nearby Vallejo in 1968 and 1969. Intent on publicity, the killer wrote letters to the Chronicle calling himself the Zodiac.

Tarbox said he came forward because the killer was not Arthur Leigh Allen, who was investigated three times by police and named as the killer in "Zodiac" -- a 2007 movie directed by David Fincher and starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Robert Graysmith, a crime writer who investigated the case.

Tarbox said he never came forward before because of client confidentiality and, for the same reason, still won't release the name of the merchant seaman.

Police long believed the Zodiac could be a merchant seaman because of the ease with which a seaman could board a ship and be far away from the Bay Area immediately after a crime, the newspaper said.