00:00:06
for six years a serial killer prowled
00:00:09
the streets of new york city hunting his
00:00:12
victims
00:00:14
he promised to kill 12 people one for
00:00:17
each astrological sign
00:00:20
and he only struck while certain
00:00:22
constellations were visible
00:00:26
it took forensic astronomy handwriting
00:00:28
analysis and the world war ii code
00:00:31
breaker to find him
00:00:36
[Music]
00:00:42
[Music]
00:00:59
[Music]
00:01:02
late one cold night in march 1990
00:01:05
49 year old mario orozco was walking
00:01:08
home from his restaurant job in brooklyn
00:01:12
without warning he was shot in the back
00:01:18
mario survived
00:01:19
but he couldn't describe his attacker
00:01:23
three weeks later there was a similar
00:01:25
incident a few blocks away
00:01:28
34 year old factory worker hermann
00:01:30
montenegro was walking home after a
00:01:33
serious night of drinking when someone
00:01:35
shot him in the back
00:01:38
he too survived but he didn't see the
00:01:40
gunman either
00:01:42
police recovered the nine-millimeter
00:01:44
bullet
00:01:46
there were no crews on the bullets and
00:01:48
we're probably dealing with a
00:01:50
zip gun
00:01:52
um type of
00:01:55
homemade
00:01:56
weapon
00:01:58
two months later a short distance away
00:02:00
in queens seventy-eight-year-old joe
00:02:03
procci was about to open the door to his
00:02:05
apartment when he was shot with a nine
00:02:07
millimeter zip gun
00:02:09
prochi died later at the hospital
00:02:12
this time
00:02:13
the killer left the note beside the
00:02:15
victim
00:02:17
it was a threat to kill 12 people one
00:02:20
for each astrological sign of the zodiac
00:02:24
this is the zodiac
00:02:26
the 12 signs will die when the belts in
00:02:28
heaven are seen
00:02:30
the next day a similar note arrived at
00:02:33
the offices of the new york post
00:02:34
newspaper
00:02:36
it was so crazy
00:02:38
there was this wheel with signs of the
00:02:40
zodiac and this one it was unusual it
00:02:43
was a little different most are just
00:02:44
scribbled
00:02:46
lunacy and this guy was organized he's
00:02:48
got this chart and it was bizarre
00:02:52
the killer called himself
00:02:54
the zodiac
00:02:56
the zodiac claimed responsibility for
00:02:59
the three shootings but he mistakenly
00:03:01
believed that he had killed all three
00:03:05
it was apparent the zodiac knew his
00:03:07
victims birthdays and astrological signs
00:03:12
mario orozco was a scorpio
00:03:15
hermann montenegro was a gemini
00:03:18
and joe procci was a taurus
00:03:22
but how did the zodiac know the victims
00:03:25
astrological signs
00:03:26
[Music]
00:03:28
are you kidding it freaked them out
00:03:29
completely
00:03:30
the new york city police department went
00:03:32
into the biggest manhunt it was mammoth
00:03:35
and it was driving them crazy
00:03:38
at this point
00:03:39
investigators realized the zodiac had
00:03:42
contacted them before
00:03:45
they just didn't know it
00:03:48
three months earlier he had written a
00:03:49
letter to police headquarters but it was
00:03:52
ignored
00:03:54
and basically it was
00:03:56
viewed humorously here's a nut letter i
00:03:58
believe was posted on a bulletin board
00:04:00
it was not taken very seriously
00:04:04
this letter held
00:04:05
yet another clue
00:04:08
the zodiac will kill the 12 signs in the
00:04:10
belt when the zodiacal light is seen
00:04:13
orion is the one that could stop zodiac
00:04:16
and the seven sisters
00:04:19
an astrologer told police that the
00:04:21
constellations orion and the seven
00:04:23
sisters of the pleiades were not visible
00:04:26
on the nights of the shootings
00:04:28
the zodiac's letter implied
00:04:30
he wouldn't strike when orion and the
00:04:33
seven sisters were in the sky
00:04:36
this thing was all over the newspaper
00:04:38
now i mean
00:04:39
this guy's claiming zodiac
00:04:42
so now this thing is really
00:04:45
a hot potato it's like the
00:04:47
biggest case in years
00:04:49
in new york city
00:04:51
25 years earlier a man in san francisco
00:04:54
killed six people and wrote taunting
00:04:56
letters to police he too called himself
00:04:59
the zodiac and was never apprehended
00:05:03
was it possible the san francisco zodiac
00:05:07
was now in new york city
00:05:10
if the zodiac from california in the 60s
00:05:13
had resurfaced in new york they knew
00:05:16
this this was a complete law enforcement
00:05:19
nightmare
00:05:23
new york city police were searching for
00:05:25
a killer who called himself the zodiac
00:05:29
he promised to kill one victim for each
00:05:32
of the 12 astrological signs
00:05:36
before the zodiac killer in new york
00:05:38
when the guy said to a girl what's your
00:05:39
sign
00:05:41
he was hitting on her afterwards i mean
00:05:43
there was literally a case where a guy
00:05:44
asked a girl a sign and she screamed for
00:05:46
the police
00:05:48
handwriting experts compared the new
00:05:50
york zodiac letters to those written by
00:05:52
san francisco zodiac killer 25 years
00:05:55
earlier
00:05:57
one characteristic of this writer is
00:05:58
that he makes his horizontal lines
00:06:01
in a descending
00:06:03
way his t-bars tend to descend
00:06:07
the crossbar on his lower case f's
00:06:10
tend to descend
00:06:12
handwriting experts concluded that the
00:06:14
san francisco zodiac and the new york
00:06:17
zodiac were two different men
00:06:21
investigators now realized they were
00:06:23
dealing with a very sophisticated
00:06:25
copycat
00:06:28
the shootings had taken place at 21 and
00:06:31
63-day intervals suggesting variations
00:06:35
of a three-week cycle
00:06:38
and they happened on nights when the
00:06:40
constellations orion and the seven
00:06:42
sisters of the pleiades were not visible
00:06:45
in the
00:06:46
sky the planets aren't just named after
00:06:49
gods and goddesses they were the gods
00:06:51
and goddesses the stars also were either
00:06:55
homes of gods or the lights into heaven
00:06:59
so
00:07:00
these are powerful ideas these are
00:07:02
powerful symbols
00:07:03
to predict when the zodiac would strike
00:07:06
next
00:07:07
police asked astronomer gregory matloff
00:07:09
to identify the next time within the
00:07:12
21-day cycle that orion and the seven
00:07:15
sisters would not be in the sky
00:07:19
he did so by consulting his astrological
00:07:22
charts
00:07:24
by just adjusting this for time and day
00:07:26
and in some cases location your latitude
00:07:29
you can see what is rising and what is
00:07:32
setting
00:07:33
matloff predicted
00:07:35
zodiac would strike next on june 21st
00:07:38
the summer solstice the longest day of
00:07:41
the year
00:07:42
so we have hundreds
00:07:44
of plainclothes detectives
00:07:47
out on nights when we think this guy is
00:07:49
going to shoot again
00:07:51
and the zodiac was even more clever than
00:07:54
anticipated he did strike
00:07:56
but not in the same area as before
00:08:02
this time it was in manhattan
00:08:04
he shot a homeless man larry parham who
00:08:07
was sleeping on a bench in central park
00:08:10
in the victim's shoe
00:08:12
was a note
00:08:15
the zodiac somehow knew that larry
00:08:17
parham was a cancer
00:08:19
a sign different from the other three
00:08:22
victims
00:08:24
and zodiac registered his indignation
00:08:27
that the newspapers were calling him a
00:08:29
copycat
00:08:31
one zodiac
00:08:33
he's angry he's trying to convince us no
00:08:35
no i'm the zodiac just one zodiac
00:08:38
and
00:08:40
you know we
00:08:41
we knew it wasn't him we knew it was a
00:08:43
copycat
00:08:45
to look for forensic evidence
00:08:47
criminalist saturated the letter with
00:08:50
menhidren a chemical that reacts with
00:08:52
the amino acids from skin oils
00:08:56
then
00:08:57
the letter was placed in a humidity
00:08:59
chamber for several hours
00:09:02
the moisture in the chamber accelerated
00:09:04
the chemical process eventually
00:09:07
revealing an almost perfect thumbprint
00:09:11
this was photographed and then compared
00:09:14
to prints in every fingerprint database
00:09:16
available
00:09:18
they did databases for city employees
00:09:21
department motor vehicles
00:09:22
postal workers and they were going
00:09:24
through those databases including police
00:09:26
officers every police officer in new
00:09:28
york's fingerprints were compared to the
00:09:29
zodiacs believe me they tried it and
00:09:34
nothing no hits
00:09:38
there had been no witnesses
00:09:40
none of the surviving victims could give
00:09:42
a description and the only forensic
00:09:45
evidence was a single fingerprint
00:09:49
zodiac claimed that only the
00:09:51
constellations orion and the seven
00:09:54
sisters could stop him
00:09:57
new york police hope to add
00:09:59
themselves to the list
00:10:05
the zodiac killed one man and wounded
00:10:07
three others in new york city and for
00:10:10
some unexplained reason he struck only
00:10:13
on nights when the constellations orion
00:10:16
and the seven sisters were not in the
00:10:18
sky
00:10:18
[Music]
00:10:20
just as unusual was the fact that he
00:10:23
apparently knew the birthdays of all
00:10:26
four of his victims
00:10:28
and it was clear from the zodiac's
00:10:30
letters that he was following the
00:10:32
investigation in the newspaper
00:10:35
i printed a story
00:10:37
that the police had his fingerprints he
00:10:39
messed up and i'm convinced that as soon
00:10:41
as he saw that
00:10:42
you know
00:10:43
he he folded his tent because
00:10:47
he knew that once i had fingerprints if
00:10:48
they had comparison
00:10:50
he was cooked
00:10:51
and for almost two years
00:10:53
there were no more zodiac shootings
00:10:56
it wasn't until 1994 that the zodiac
00:11:00
sent his next letter announcing his
00:11:03
return
00:11:05
the zodiac claimed responsibility for
00:11:08
the stabbing death of 39 year old
00:11:10
patricia fonte in highland park
00:11:12
patricia was a leo
00:11:15
and 40 year old joseph diacong was shot
00:11:18
and killed while he was walking near
00:11:20
this highway underpass
00:11:23
joseph was a virgo
00:11:25
the bullet was a throwing
00:11:26
through-and-through wound which severed
00:11:28
his carotid artery and he bled to death
00:11:31
there
00:11:32
within moments certainly
00:11:34
zodiac's next victim
00:11:36
forty-year-old james webber was shot in
00:11:38
the same location he was a libra and
00:11:42
fortunately he survived the attack
00:11:47
he snuck up behind them gave them no
00:11:49
warning
00:11:50
and he just shot them and ran away
00:11:52
laughing according to weber where he
00:11:55
said after he was shot in the buttocks
00:11:56
he heard him laughing as he jumped into
00:11:58
the cemetery
00:12:00
amazingly
00:12:01
each of zodiac's seven victims had a
00:12:04
different astrological sign
00:12:07
but the pattern stopped with his eighth
00:12:09
victim forty-year-old diane ballard who
00:12:12
also survived the shooting but was a
00:12:15
taurus
00:12:16
the same sign as an earlier victim
00:12:20
zodiac also took credit for shooting a
00:12:23
ninth man in highland park although
00:12:25
police couldn't confirm the shooting
00:12:27
took place
00:12:29
one of his last remarks in each of those
00:12:32
letters
00:12:32
he actually says no grooves
00:12:35
and
00:12:36
those are the ballistic identifiers that
00:12:39
ordinarily most examinations and
00:12:41
comparisons are made by in the field of
00:12:42
ballistics
00:12:44
although the zodiac bragged that police
00:12:46
would never catch him with this letter
00:12:49
he made a mistake
00:12:51
he licked the envelope flap
00:12:54
and left enough saliva for dna testing
00:12:58
police now had
00:13:00
the dna profile of the zodiac killer
00:13:05
the letter also included
00:13:07
another clue
00:13:10
i just i knew it was a code it was a
00:13:11
nine towers because there were nine
00:13:13
victims and i wrote down all the
00:13:16
different symbols and i think i had 23
00:13:19
very close to an alphabet
00:13:21
and then i did something called a
00:13:23
frequency count
00:13:25
which is you you
00:13:26
write down how many times each letter is
00:13:29
used because for example e is the most
00:13:31
commonly used letter in the alphabet
00:13:33
kieran crowley's father-in-law had been
00:13:35
a code breaker in world war ii
00:13:38
together they discovered that the
00:13:40
alphabet was based on a maritime system
00:13:42
of international flags and pendants
00:13:46
and with this discovery they were able
00:13:48
to decipher the zodiac secret message
00:13:53
it said this is the zodiac speaking i am
00:13:56
in control
00:13:57
who mastery
00:13:59
be ready for more
00:14:01
yours truly
00:14:06
the zodiac killer had been walking the
00:14:09
dark deserted streets of new york city
00:14:12
undetected for six years
00:14:15
captain joseph herbert worked on the
00:14:17
zodiac task force and he knew that
00:14:20
eventually the forensic evidence would
00:14:23
catch him
00:14:25
this case is actually a study in
00:14:27
forensic
00:14:28
and interventionic investigations
00:14:30
because i knew at the time from working
00:14:32
on a test for us that we had partial
00:14:34
fingerprints from turtle letters from
00:14:36
the earlier shootings
00:14:38
the bullets that were removed from the
00:14:39
bodies were not traditional
00:14:42
lands and groove bullets but they did
00:14:44
have bowel markings on them that could
00:14:46
be compared to other battles
00:14:48
we knew that we had a dna sample from
00:14:52
one of the letters
00:14:53
police continued to search for the
00:14:55
zodiac
00:14:56
on a dark dreary march afternoon in 1996
00:15:00
their luck began to change
00:15:05
open the door
00:15:07
a young man in a brooklyn apartment
00:15:09
apparently got angry because his younger
00:15:12
sister and her boyfriend were together
00:15:14
alone in her bedroom
00:15:16
he demanded the boyfriend leave when
00:15:18
they refused he fired a shot through the
00:15:21
bedroom door
00:15:26
when the woman ran out to confront her
00:15:28
brother he shot her in the buttocks with
00:15:29
a shotgun
00:15:34
the police arrived to discover the man
00:15:36
was holding his sister's boyfriend
00:15:38
hostage
00:15:40
captain herbert was assigned as the
00:15:42
hostage negotiator
00:15:45
i'm behind one sided door and he's on
00:15:47
the other side of the door and i'm
00:15:48
talking to him and i'm trying to
00:15:50
articulate to him that enough damage has
00:15:52
been done after about three hours he
00:15:55
indicated to me that he wanted to
00:15:56
surrender
00:15:58
herbert convinced him to put all of his
00:16:01
weapons in buckets police lowered from
00:16:03
the roof to his apartment window
00:16:05
and he
00:16:06
surrendered his name
00:16:09
was eddie sada a 26 year old high school
00:16:12
dropout unemployed
00:16:14
who was still living at home with his
00:16:16
mother and younger sister
00:16:19
one day he seemed religious and quiet
00:16:21
and shy and strange and other days he
00:16:24
seemed aggressive and scary
00:16:27
at headquarters
00:16:28
police asked sata to provide a written
00:16:31
statement describing what happened
00:16:33
inside his apartment
00:16:36
sata complied
00:16:38
and when finished he signed it with an
00:16:41
odd symbol next to his name
00:16:43
[Music]
00:16:44
and the detective who did it looks at it
00:16:46
and says
00:16:48
what's this
00:16:49
and he said that that was a symbol for
00:16:51
god and god's love or something
00:16:54
an alert police officer asked hostage
00:16:56
negotiator joseph herbert to have a look
00:17:00
herbert knew immediately
00:17:02
what he was looking at
00:17:05
i remember the feeling to this day it
00:17:06
was very calm feeling because i knew
00:17:09
we had i studied those letters for four
00:17:11
years
00:17:12
and uh it was ingrained in not only my
00:17:14
memory
00:17:15
all the guys who wrote the zodiac test
00:17:16
for us
00:17:17
statement out of my mouth was
00:17:20
as soon as i'm standing here this is
00:17:21
zodiac
00:17:22
to prove their suspicions police turned
00:17:25
to forensic science
00:17:27
[Music]
00:17:28
first
00:17:29
cedar was fingerprinted
00:17:31
his prints were then compared with the
00:17:33
print left on the letter in central park
00:17:36
it was a match
00:17:38
next handwriting experts compared the
00:17:41
handwriting from the zodiac's letters to
00:17:43
seda's known handwriting sample
00:17:46
the experts concluded
00:17:48
they were written by the same hand
00:17:52
ballistics experts examined seda's
00:17:55
collection of 15 zip guns
00:17:59
in his letters
00:18:00
zodiac claimed no one would catch him
00:18:03
because his gun barrel didn't have the
00:18:05
traditional lands and grooves inside for
00:18:08
testing
00:18:09
but the zodiac apparently didn't know
00:18:12
about forensic tool mark analysis
00:18:15
a tumor is a characteristic left behind
00:18:19
during the process of
00:18:21
using a tool to either cut grind
00:18:24
file or polish a piece of metal there
00:18:28
can be hundreds of microscopic tool
00:18:30
marks in a pipe used in a homemade gun
00:18:34
when ballistics experts compared the
00:18:36
bullets from the victims to those fired
00:18:38
from say the zip gun
00:18:40
the tool marks were microscopically
00:18:43
similar
00:18:45
finally
00:18:46
police asked theta for a blood sample
00:18:48
for dna testing
00:18:50
his dna
00:18:52
matched the saliva on the envelope flap
00:18:55
of the zodiac letter
00:18:58
hey donati
00:18:59
hey i want introduction to detective
00:19:01
louis
00:19:03
detective savarese had the pleasure of
00:19:06
telling seder
00:19:08
they knew his true identity
00:19:12
i put out my hand said uh
00:19:14
i'm looking for you for six years and i
00:19:16
said you're the zodiac
00:19:18
and he says uh no i'm not he's i said
00:19:20
you have the zodiac
00:19:23
that was beginning of a six seven hour
00:19:25
interrogation
00:19:27
on the zodiac shootings
00:19:28
uh until finally he did give it up he
00:19:30
did confess to it
00:19:32
he didn't want to go to jail for simply
00:19:34
shooting his sister in the butt with a
00:19:36
with a shotgun
00:19:38
he wanted to take credit for his
00:19:40
years of of handiwork
00:19:44
in one of his first letters
00:19:46
the zodiac claimed that only orion and
00:19:49
the seven sisters could stop him
00:19:52
ironically
00:19:53
on the day of his sister shooting orion
00:19:56
and the seven sisters were overhead
00:19:59
they just weren't visible in the
00:20:00
overcast sky
00:20:03
eddie sata was charged with shooting six
00:20:06
people and killing three others
00:20:09
prosecutors had so much forensic
00:20:11
evidence they had a hard time deciding
00:20:14
how to hold the jury's interest
00:20:16
we weren't certain that the public at
00:20:17
large would be as interested in all of
00:20:19
this forensic evidence and we were
00:20:21
curious about how the jury would receive
00:20:23
it and ultimately we ultimately set
00:20:25
aside a week that we just referred to as
00:20:27
forensic week we're shocked to see the
00:20:29
jury sat on the edge of their seats
00:20:32
and i just remember one morning sitting
00:20:34
there sifting through the guns and the
00:20:36
knives whatever it was that day and
00:20:38
looking at it and just at that moment
00:20:40
being struck by like wow
00:20:42
what am i going to do with this stuff
00:20:44
you beat the ballistics you've got the
00:20:45
fingerprint you beat the fingerprint
00:20:46
you've got the handwriting you beat the
00:20:48
handwriting you've got the statement you
00:20:50
beat one statement you've got another
00:20:51
statement all those forensic
00:20:54
entities
00:20:55
came back to haunt eddie big time
00:20:58
eddie sater was convicted and sentenced
00:21:00
the 232 years in prison
00:21:04
eddie sater was a coward he attacked his
00:21:06
victims from the rear he shot them for
00:21:09
no reason other than that he could
00:21:12
but one question remains
00:21:14
how did satan know
00:21:16
his victim's birthdays
00:21:21
some speculate
00:21:22
that he looked inside his victim's
00:21:24
wallet after each shooting
00:21:27
and that all had different astrological
00:21:29
signs due to nothing more than luck
00:21:37
[Music]
00:21:44
[Music]
00:21:58
[Music]
00:22:07
you
