Forensic Files - Season 8, Episode 25 - Sign of the Zodiac - Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

For six years, a serial killer prowled the streets of New York City. He wrote letters to police and The New York Post, indicating he would kill twelve people, one for each astrological sign.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

#truecrime #forensicfiles #fullepisodes Click here to watch full episodes from Forensic Files - Season 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gAB0hcY3Z0&list=PLC4mqmKvz1IbdnLKfCt8--pOV0xEpMIP5 Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

The episode covers the New York Zodiac killer's astrological murders and the investigation leading to Eddie Sata's capture.

Key points

The Zodiac's Threat. A killer promises to murder one person for each astrological sign, leaving a chilling note.
The Manhunt Begins. The New York City police launch a massive manhunt for the Zodiac killer.
The Copycat Killer. Investigators realize they are dealing with a sophisticated copycat of the original Zodiac.
The Capture of Eddie Sata. Police identify Eddie Sata as the Zodiac killer after a series of forensic matches.
The Conviction. Eddie Sata is convicted and sentenced to 232 years in prison for his crimes.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is the zodiac speaking, I am in control.

13:56WatchDec 16, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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