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