Between 1989 and 1996, the serial killer known as the New York Zodiac killed three people and injured five. Much like the Zodiac killer who terrorized northern California in the '60s, the New York Zodiac left letters taunting police and the press.
Between 1989 and 1996, the serial killer the New York Zodiac killed three people and injured five in attacks that occurred in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.
The New York Zodiac, also referred to as the Brooklyn Sniper, Faust and the copycat Zodiac killer, was influenced by the monsters who came before him. He targeted his victims based on their zodiac signs and pulled inspiration from tactics utilized by Ted Bundy, "Son of Sam" David Berkowitz, and, as his moniker implies, the original Zodiac killer. Much like the Zodiac killer, a serial killer better known for the same moniker who terrorized northern California in the '60s, the New York Zodiac left letters taunting police, the press and his victims.
But unlike his predecessor, the New York Zodiac was caught and brought to justice. Heriberto Seda's reign of terror ended in a shootout with police inside his Brooklyn home in the summer of 1996. But before his killings came to a dramatic end, police would spend nearly a decade trying to identify and capture who had become the latest serial killer to make New York City his hunting grounds.
The Zodiac Was Speaking
“The Zodiac Killings were crimes that occurred in Northern California. It was very complex set of crimes; it involved five deaths and two survivors," Drew H. Beeson, an author who has chronicled the Zodiac murders, tells Inside Edition Digital. "There were four canonical attacks, as we know them as. It was a very strange set of murders that involved letters to newspapers. It also involved ciphers, which were messages hidden in cryptic codes. It became the most notorious unsolved mystery in American history.”
Starting in December 1968 and lasting 10 months, the Zodiac haunted and hunted random women and couples at lover’s lanes in Northern California. The Zodiac case remains unsolved. The last correspondence the killer had with authorities was in the mid 1970s and is believed to have never been heard from again.
The New York Zodiac first landed on the NYPD’s radar in November 1989 after he sent a warning letter telling authorities he was going to kill someone. The letter, like those of the notorious Zodiac of Northern California, included a circle with a cross in it. It was clear he was pulling inspiration from the California-based serial killer, but it wouldn't be until the following year that it would become clear that he would follow through on his threats.
Copying the Tactics of a Famous Killer
The New York Zodiac first attacked a 49-year-old Brooklyn man in the spring of 1990. Mario Orozco was on his way home from his job washing dishes at a coffee shop when he was shot in the back by a man wearing a ski mask.
Orozco managed to make it to his home, where he called police, and ultimately he survived his attack.
Twenty-one days later, Jermaine Montenesdro, 33, was shot in the in the head and in his side while in Jamaica, Queens. He too recovered from his injuries.
Police were baffled by what was happening, but quickly connected the shootings as both were carried out by someone using a zip gun.
The zip gun "had a barrel that didn't leave tracing marks on it, so you couldn't do any forensics on the projectiles that came out of that gun," Beeson says. "That was actually pretty intelligent, because he knew that he would never be able to be linked to these guns that he would use.”
Another 21 days later, on May 31, 1990, retiree Joseph Proce, 78, was shot and killed in Queens. Authorities found a note nearby that bore a pie-shaped picture with the symbols for the zodiac signs of the three victims scrawled inside it—the symbol of Scorpio for Orozco, Gemini for Montenesdro, and Taurus for Proce—along with the message, "Zodiac -- Time to die!"
“At that point, the city developed a task force," Sheryl Anania, a former Kings County assistant district attorney, tells Inside Edition Digital. After the shooter identified himself using such an infamous moniker, he became the top priority for both the press covering the case and the police trying to find the person responsible. "There were dozens and dozens of detectives assigned to try to find him…They flooded the streets in that neighborhood to see if in 21 days he would appear,” she says.
Looking to the Stars and the Heavens to Crack the Case
With a new shooting, a new clue and more pressure from the public, the press and authorities, detectives working the case had to think outside the box. Retired NYPD detective Larry Milanesi was one of the first investigators to work the case.
He tells Inside Edition Digital once he and his colleagues noticed that the shootings were happening in 21-day intervals, they literally reached for the stars.
“We met with astronomers, astrologists and actually had a meeting with a warlock who put us into the works of Aleister Crowley,” he says. Crowley was a British occultist, philosopher and ceremonial magician who died in 1942 at 72 years old. “Whoever was doing the shootings was following the works of Aleister Crowley," he says. "And it was called ‘The Book of the Law' by Aleister Crowley. He told us to get.”
Milanesi says that he found the only copy in New York City at the New York research library. The book was so rare that it was not allowed to be taken out of the library.
“When I sat down, I opened the cover of the book and the book opened to the page I wanted. In that page was a note. I believe it said, ‘White Devil, we knew you were coming,’ and it had a pentagram and a lightning bolt on it,” he says. “My reaction was, first thing I did, I loosened my gun up and I looked around to see who the hell is here looking at us. I mean, if this is the only book in existence, and the spine on it was broken, so it would open to that page, so we weren't going to miss what was to be said there, I felt somebody was there."
Once he was sure the shooter wasn't there, Milanesi began studying the book.
It “laid out basically this whole thing with the shootings, why (the victims) were being shot,” he says.
Crowley apparently believed in “taking a slave for the afterlife," Milanesi says. "It said about striking down the wretched and strike low, strike hard. Everyone was shot (in) the lower back.”
Through his research of Crowley’s teachings, Milanesi was able to deduce that the shootings were occurring around constellations.
“What happened was all the notes had indicated that it was Orion, hunting Taurus, in front of the Seven Sisters and we found that they were all constellations," he says. "We found that they were all visible at the time of the shooting. Stars are in the sky 24 hours a day but they're only visible certain hours. What happened was every one of the shootings took place on a 21-day pattern, and it was when those stars were in alignment. They were all in the sky at that time.
“Now, when you take that and you put it together with the works of Crowley, based on the number 21, it fell in that they were on 21-day patterns," he says. "When a 21-day pattern was missed, those stars were never visible at the same time.”
Milanesi and his task force were able to predict when the next shooting would happen, but could not figure where it would occur.
On June 21, 1990, the killer struck again, this time targeting a homeless man sleeping on a bench in Central Park. Before shooting Larry Parham, the Zodiac asked him what his sign was, The New York Times reported at the time.
Parham said he was a Cancer and then a shot rang out. Parham was wounded but survived. Authorities would again find a note at the scene.
After the attack on Parham, the New York Zodiac seemed to go quiet. His inaction did not assuage the fears of New Yorkers or the detectives working the case, including Milanesi, who says hunting for the shooter was more frightening than dealing with the mafia.
“It got to a point where when I left work, I didn't go home," he says. "I drove and I'd get off the parkway a couple of exits early, circle blocks, making sure I wasn't being followed or anything and back on the parkway and went home. I did change a bit. My wife felt a change in my tone because it was really starting to bother me that. I'm not an overly religious person, but this occult stuff is out of the realm of what I'd like to be doing or I had done in the past. I had worked on homicides, primarily organized crime things. I never was scared like I was in this case."
The Differences Between New York and California’s Zodiac Killers
While there were many similarities between the new Zodiac killer and the monster in California from whom he took inspiration, there were also many differences between the two, and authorities were confident they were not dealing with the same man in both instances.
“I think early on (the New York Zodiac) wanted people to believe that (the killings were the work of one person), because he was a huge admirer of the San Francisco Zodiac," Breeson says. "But he started his crime spree in 1990. The last confirmed notice we got from the San Francisco Zodiac was the 1974, what we call 'the Exorcist Letter,' the last confirmed correspondence from the San Francisco Zodiac. And so there was a good 16-year time spread from that."
The writings of the New York Zodiac and those of the California Zodiac didn’t match either. Breeson says the NYPD studied writing samples of the first Zodiac killer and compared them to those being left in New York. They were not a match.
Their victim patterns were also different.
The New York Zodiac “was attacking lone individuals, and he was basically looking for weak targets," Breeson says. "So he was looking for targets that he was pretty sure could not fight back if he got his shots in with his zip gun. And he was pretty much a coward. He was definitely going after people that looked pretty weak.
"The San Francisco Zodiac probably had a lot more planning in who he was targeting, and why," Breeson continues. "I don't think either of these killers knew their victims, though. I think that's something that they did have in common. I don't think either one knew the victims, and they had their own methodology.”
Authorities still are unsure as to how the New York Zodiac knew the astrological signs of the people he shot. While in some cases he asked his victims, in others he said nothing, leading some to believe he stalked his targets.
Catching a Killer
After years of inactivity, a report of a domestic disturbance proved to be the undoing of the New York Zodiac.
On a hot June day in 1996, Gladys "Chachi" Reyes was shot in the back by her brother, Heriberto “Eddie” Seda, in their shared Brooklyn home. Reyes escaped the home and fled to a neighbor's house, where she called police. Reyes' boyfriend was still trapped in the home with Seda but managed to barricade himself in a bedroom.
Police who arrived on the scene were met with a barrage of gunfire from Seda, beginning what would be an hours-long standoff. Hostage negotiator Joe Herbert was called to the scene, where he negotiated with Seda until he finally surrendered.
When police entered his home, they found a cache of weapons, which included pipe bombs and zip guns.
Herbert, who had been one of the detectives on the New York Zodiac task force, brought Seda in to the nearby 75th precinct.
When Seda gave a written statement to another police officer about what happened that day, he signed it with a circle and cross making a cross hair mark. The logo looked familiar to the detective, who showed it to Herbert, who recognized the handwriting as that of the New York Zodiac.
Seda's fingerprints and handwriting samples were then sent to the task force. They were a match to what was collected at the Central Park killing.
“Those two letters, the fingerprints they retrieved from both of those, matched each other. They knew it was from the same person,” Anania, the former assistant district attorney, says. “Years went by and they were always trying to match those fingerprints with the fingerprint from whoever was arrested.
“It was really exciting. I always said, it was like Cinderella," she says. "It was like the shoe finally fit after all these attempts to try to find him."
After Seda’s arrest, police realized they had an earlier opportunity to nab him as well, as he had been arrested in 1994 for having a zip gun. Authorities found that the zip gun was inoperable, and the case was dismissed.
“They kept the gun, and it turned out that that was the same gun that was used to shoot different victims of the Zodiac,” Anania says.
As news quickly spread that the New York Zodiac was arrested and in police custody, more came out about Seda's history.
“Eddie was just basically a loser," Breeson says. "He got kicked out of school for carrying a gun to school when he was 16 years old. He wanted to be a Green Beret. He joined the Army, and fortunately did not get past their psychological test to get into the Army, or who knows what would've came, because if he did get in the Army, I'm sure he would've actually been able to acquire real weapons later on."
Following his arrest, Reyes gave an interview from her hospital bed to the New York Daily News where she chronicled past abuse she faced from her brother, saying, "he used to beat me a lot and hurt me."
Seda ultimately confessed to the Zodiac killings and attacks. He was charged with three murders and multiple assaults.
Convicting a Killer
In June 1998, Seda was convicted of three murders and one attempted murder after a six-week trial in Queens and was sentenced to 83 years in prison. Seda was also convicted in a separate trial in Brooklyn one year later of eight attempted murders. Several of those charges were filed in connection to his attack on his sister and for firing on police officers during the subsequent shootout. He was sentenced to 152 years in that case.
While trying the case in Brooklyn, dealing with Seda was like dealing with the weather, Anania says. She never knew what she was going to be working with—or against—that day.
“He decided he would come to court whenever he felt like it. And so there were days sometimes he didn't show up, so we would just be trying the case without him sitting there,” she recalls. “As he was walking out of the courtroom after [one day’s] proceedings, he walked by the judge, and the next thing you knew, he started running up the steps towards the judge on the bench. And we were all like, ‘Oh my God.’ The court officers just tackled him and brought him down.”
He "had some deep-rooted anger in him," she says.
In total, Seda was sentenced to 232 years in prison. Now 56, he remains incarcerated in the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, the same facility that houses "Son of Sam" David Berkowitz and serial killer Joel Rifkin.
Having experienced a number of failures and setbacks in his life, Seda is believed to have been motivated to kill by the desire to be known, but as Breeson notes, his crime spree is often eclipsed by the more famous of the Zodiac killers.
“I think he was just looking for an excuse to attack anybody," Breeson says. "And it was about creating a name for himself, even though he wasn't even original enough to come up with his own name. He's borrowing, of course, the one from the San Francisco Zodiac Killer, so he wasn't even original there."
