William Mentzer

Case record: William Mentzer

Background

William Mentzer was a contract killer with ties to drug syndicates. He was also named by David Berkowitz as a participant in satanic cult murders.

Mentzer was an associate of Charles Manson. He was implicated in the killing of Arliss Perry, a devout Christian slain in North Dakota.

Mentzer was described as “Manson II” by David Berkowitz, who had been convicted of the Son of Sam slayings.

Los Angeles Police openly acknowledged Mentzer’s membership in “some kind of hit squad”. The Process Church of the Final Judgement had been associated with both the Manson and Sam slayings, and it had been said by some commentators to be the operation running such a hit squad.

The offence

Mentzer was jailed for the murder of impresario Roy Radin, who was suspected of being the head of the Son of Sam cult.

Mentzer was serving a life sentence for the savage L.A. murders of Roy Radin in 1983 and prostitute June Mincher in 1984.

Roy Radin was shot more than 20 times in the head. Mentzer then put a small stick of dynamite in Radin’s mouth, lit it and blew off his face.

Mentzer was also asked if he shot Mincher seven times in the head; he told The Post, “No, I think it was eight.”

Investigation

A Post investigation unearthed “compelling” links between Mentzer and the police profile of the Zodiac Killer. The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office said the information was turned over to the San Francisco Police Department.

Mark MacNamara, the public-information officer for the San Francisco DA, said:

“There appear to be some compelling parallels here,”

MacNamara added:

“We have given the information to the police inspectors for their review.”

The Post developed the information after more than 20 hours of interviews with Mentzer at the California state prison in Lancaster.

The Post discovered two dozen links between Mentzer, who was from Los Angeles, and the Zodiac Killer, including the following alleged parallels:

• Investigators said the Zodiac had military training, and Mentzer served in the Marines during the Vietnam War and claims 10 kills.
• The Zodiac’s murders began in December 1968, shortly after Mentzer returned to California from Vietnam.
• In September 1969, the Zodiac stabbed two victims with a bayonet-like knife carried in a handmade sheath fastened with rivets. Mentzer said he had a job making rivets at an aerospace company around the same time of the attack. He also said he carried a bayonet in Vietnam.
• The Zodiac wrote letters to the media taunting the police. Mentzer said, “It was fun to f- - - with them.”
• In the letters, the Zodiac drew a diagram of a bomb and threatened to blow up a school bus. Mentzer, who once had a job driving a bus, told The Post he had military training in demolition and kept plastic explosives.
• A survivor of a Zodiac attack said the killer spoke in a slow, monotone with a slight drawl. Mentzer had the same speech pattern.

Police said the Zodiac randomly killed five people and severely wounded two others during his spree, which began in the Bay Area in the late ’60s. In letters and cryptograms sent to the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times, the Zodiac boasted that he had committed more than 30 other murders. He congratulated police for uncovering a 1966 murder in Riverside, Calif., about 45 miles east of L.A. The Zodiac ominously said, “There are a hell of a lot more down there.” He also threatened to “pick off” children as they came bounding out of their school bus.

The psychotic killer mysteriously dropped out of sight in 1974, after a final letter to the press.

One week after the initial interviews, The Post confronted Mentzer with information linking him to the Zodiac Killer. Mentzer said:

“I am not the Zodiac,”

Mentzer added:

“I am not some crazed killer, but I think I know who he is.”

Mentzer said he met the Zodiac while they were incarcerated at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi in the early ’90s. He described the Zodiac as a 240-pound black man. Police said the Zodiac is white.

After Mentzer was handed the Zodiac links, he began to read the document as his forearms pulsated. He spent about 15 minutes reviewing the information accusing him of being the Zodiac Killer, and made five minor corrections and one significant change. Mentzer noted that in 1966, he was based at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, Calif., near Riverside. The Riverside killing mentioned in the Zodiac letter took place a few months before Mentzer left for Vietnam. There were no reported Zodiac murders until Mentzer returned to California about two years later.

Trial

Mentzer was sentenced to life in prison without parole in California in 1991 on two counts.

Sentencing

Mentzer was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the L.A. murders of Roy Radin in 1983 and June Mincher in 1984.

Appeals

No appeal information was provided.

Outcome

The San Francisco Police Department dismissed evidence provided by a New York tabloid implicating Mentzer in the Zodiac case.

San Francisco Police Homicide Inspector Kelly Carroll said:

“It’s a non starter,”

Carroll stated:

“There does not seem to be, on the face of it, any compelling evidence; the physical evidence has been discounted to this point in terms of making a connection,”

Carroll added:

“It appears not to support any reasonable suspicion of probable cause that the suspect is our Zodiac.”

Carroll declined to elaborate on the nature of the physical evidence but said that the circumstantial evidence provided by The Post was no more compelling than the hundreds of dud leads offered to police throughout the past 35 years.

Carroll said that over the years police had received thousands of tip-offs of potential suspects with backgrounds in the military and training with explosives. He said:

“Many of them were very unsavory characters capable of committing heinous crimes, but there’s a big difference between a very bad guy and the actual bad guy that did those terrible crimes,”

Carroll added that many tips about possible suspects have included “interesting circumstances in their background, like a background in the military, familiarity with code breaking ... but they don’t come close to reaching the level of probable cause.”

Other details

SEX: M RACE: W TYPE: T MOTIVE: CE DATE(S): 1974-88 VENUE: Calif./N.Y./Fla. VICTIMS: Five+ suspected MO: Contract killer with ties to drug syndicates; also named by DAVID BERKOWITZ as participant in satanic cult murders DISPOSITION: Life without parole on two counts in California, 1991.

Michael Newton’s work, An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans, included material about William Mentzer.