The Most Dangerous Animal of All: Searching for My Father...and Finding the Zodiac Killer

by Gary L. Stewart, Susan Mustafa

Overview

A New York Times Bestseller
A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller

Soon after his birthmother contacted him for the first time at the age of thirty-nine, adoptee Gary L. Stewart decided to search for his biological father. His quest would lead him to a horrifying truth and force him to reconsider everything he thought he knew about himself and his world.

Written with award-winning author and journalist Susan Mustafa, The Most Dangerous Animal of All tells the story of Stewart's decade-long hunt. While combing through government records and news reports and tracking down relatives and friends, Stewart turns up a host of clues—including forensic evidence—that conclusively identify his father as the Zodiac Killer, one of the most notorious and elusive serial murderers in history.

For decades, the Zodiac Killer has captivated America's imagination. His ability to evade capture while taunting authorities made him infamous. The vicious specificity of his crimes terrified Californians before the Manson murders and after, and shocked a culture enamored with the ideals of the dawning Age of Aquarius. To this day, his ciphers have baffled detectives and amateur sleuths, and his identity remains one of the twentieth century's great unsolved mysteries.

The Most Dangerous Animal of All reveals the name of the Zodiac for the very first time. Mustafa and Stewart construct a chilling psychological profile of Stewart's father: as a boy with disturbing fixations, a frustrated intellectual with pretensions to high culture, and an inappropriate suitor and then jilted lover unable to process his rage. At last, all the questions that have surrounded the case for almost fifty years are answered in this riveting narrative. The result is a singular work of true crime at its finest—a compelling, unbelievable true story told with the pacing of a page-turning novel—as well as a sensational and powerful memoir.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062313164
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	05/13/2014
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Gary L. Stewart earned his bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Louisiana State University and is vice president of Delta Tech Service of Louisiana. Ten years ago, Gary began writing a journal, chronicling every detail of his search for his father and his own identity. That journal served as the basis for The Most Dangerous Animal of All. Gary resides in Louisiana with his wife, Kristy, and son, Zach.

Susan Mustafa is an award-winning author and journalist. She is the coauthor of Dismembered, written with Sue Israel, which chronicles the story of serial killer Sean Vincent Gillis; and Blood Bath, about the life and crimes of serial killer Derrick Todd Lee, written with Special Prosecutor Tony Clayton and Sue Israel. Susan lives in Louisiana with her husband, Scott.

Editorial Reviews

The central paradox about true crime books is that although serial killers are among the least interesting human beings, our fascination with the excitement of tracking down these obsessive monsters has actually spawned thousands of books, movies, and television shows, real or imagined, about them. Several habitual murderers have returned the favor by taunting us with codes and clues about themselves, none more defiantly than California's so-called Zodiac Killer. In this extraordinarily intimate memoir, author Gary Stewart went searching for his father and became convinced that the man he found had been the dreaded Zodiac. Thus, his hunt for clues is more personal than any detective's, making it stranger and more knotty than a narrative fixated on the now deceased accused culprit. The Most Dangerous Animal of All is not your conventional true crime book; for me, that makes it more winning.
-R.J. Wilson, Bookseller, #1002, New York NY

06/02/2014
When an author purports to have uncovered the truth about a notorious unsolved series of murders, let alone that the killer was his own father, it's vital to establish credibility from the outset; unfortunately, Stewart's concession that the narrative "of father's early life" is fictionalized gets things started badly. The unreliability of those sections is a significant drawback that engenders skepticism long before Stewart presents any evidence to support his claim that his biological father, who abandoned him as an infant, was responsible for the murders that terrorized San Francisco in the 1960s. And that evidence is far less impressive than Stewart believes—a resemblance between a wanted poster's image and a picture of his father, a tortured interpretation of a coded message, some ambiguous partial fingerprint, and handwriting evidence. The motive for the crimes-ostensibly the enactment of revenge fantasies on young women resembling Stewart's mother—is also unconvincing, as the author fails to even address the killing of a cabbie that could not have been so motivated. The kicker is the decision to publish before DNA test results are available that could significantly strengthen or weaken the theory. (May)

Publishers Weekly

A compelling work of true crime that makes a strong case for Best being responsible for the series of murders and horrifying threats that paralyzed San Francisco with fear in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Baton Rouge Advocate

I promise that you’ve never read anything like The Most Dangerous Animal of All. Mesmerizing from the first page, the story includes a shattering surprise that will sear itself in your memory. Be prepared to read non-stop; this really is a book you won’t be able to put down.

Jeff Guinn

2014-05-22
An adopted Louisiana engineer’s search for his biological roots results in a shocking, highly controversial connection to the Zodiac Killer.With its details legally vetted and enshrouded in pre-publication secrecy, Stewart’s head-turning memoir, skillfully co-written by veteran true-crime journalist Mustafa, explores how the search for personal truth can sometimes unearth unexpected results. Though his adoptive parents loved him unconditionally, the author still felt “discarded,” plagued by crippling feelings of insecurity and abandonment. At 39, Stewart writes of being contacted by his birth mother, Judy Gilford, a runaway who became pregnant by an older, seductive man. The author, ecstatic at their reunion, began journaling his experience, which soon included an intensive, obsessive search for his father, who he believes to be Earl Van Best Jr., a statutory rapist Stewart would soon discover had abandoned him in a Baton Rouge apartment building stairwell—and who he believes went on to become a notorious murderer. The narrative begins to build suspenseful momentum only after early sections that re-create Best’s fractured childhood and early adulthood (heavily influenced, claims Stewart, by notorious Satanist Anton LaVey). Then the author chronicles the ensuing killing spree, encrypted communications and police-taunting media spectacle that immortalized him as the Zodiac Killer. The author painstakingly pieces together over a decade’s worth of personal research and verbatim interviews with family, friends and law enforcement, then goes further to scrutinize and compare handwriting samples, police sketches and photographs, all bearing uncanny resemblances to recorded documentation from the Zodiac files. Stewart soberingly remarks that while the burden of DNA proof remains elusive, the closure he has received with his personal investigation has satisfactorily provided the “truth about my life.”High-minded speculation and documented assumptions are the building blocks of Stewart’s convincing memoir; whether perceived as the byproduct of shrewd spadework or a fertile imagination, the author’s family history offers chilling and credible correlations.

Kirkus Reviews