Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
Speaker 1: those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
Speaker 1: and do not necessarily represent those of iHeart Media, Stuff Media,
Speaker 1: or its employees. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Zodiacs
Speaker 1: first confirmed killings in Benetia, a group of self proclaimed
Speaker 1: Zodiologists visited the site on Lake Herman Road. They went
Speaker 1: there to pay homage to the victims David Faraday and
Speaker 1: Betty lu Jensen. Days earlier, a threat was made to
Speaker 1: harm anyone who showed up at the Lake Herman site
Speaker 1: on the anniversary. The Zodiologists decided to go anyway, and
Speaker 1: we joined them. Yeah, I know there were threats made
Speaker 1: for people who came here tonight. What do we have
Speaker 1: about people here right now and over the next half hour.
Speaker 1: I expect maybe another dozen people are more coming here,
Speaker 1: though I know there are other people who would be
Speaker 1: here tonight if those threats have not been made, people
Speaker 1: who want to be here and remember the anniversary and
Speaker 1: remember David and Betty lou N She did nice, yet
Speaker 1: Lourest David A M. You're looking at the crosses where
Speaker 1: it would be a good place to have them set
Speaker 1: for a while. Right now, I came up here. If
Speaker 1: I didn't know if anybody we're gonna be here because
Speaker 1: that threat about a shooting or something, SAM would drive
Speaker 1: off here. Anyway, I'll take my chances. It's really interested
Speaker 1: to see a police officer here from the Venetia Police Department.
Speaker 1: About twenty people who came over here. There's none of
Speaker 1: us who were going to cause any problems. But we
Speaker 1: have no idea who else is going to be here
Speaker 1: this evening. There will quite likely be a number of
Speaker 1: other cars of people that we don't know that it
Speaker 1: will show up. I'm Corporal Cruise with the Inanitia Police Department.
Speaker 1: We're here because of the fiftie anniversary of the Zodiac killing.
Speaker 1: We're just here for extra patrol and just kind of
Speaker 1: make sure everyone that comes here wants to be here
Speaker 1: and stay safe. What makes she wonders how the Zodiac?
Speaker 1: I mean, you hate trail him out here? You find
Speaker 1: them by accident? And where was the car park? It
Speaker 1: was parked about where the where the taller of the
Speaker 1: arrow science right there, headed right towards this way. I
Speaker 1: don't know. They show the crime sheet photos, but you
Speaker 1: can't in there were the backup facing. I think David
Speaker 1: was found this is Tom's territory, but I think he
Speaker 1: was found outside the passengers side door because he tried
Speaker 1: to get away and she had gotten out and got
Speaker 1: she got down here and he got he was killed
Speaker 1: right there. It's it's been a real treat to hang
Speaker 1: out with other zodiologists and talk about the anniversary. This
Speaker 1: being the fiftieth anniversary is kind of sobering time. You know,
Speaker 1: fifty years ago today there was a couple who was
Speaker 1: holding hands and kissing in the front seat of a
Speaker 1: station wagon. But an hour from now, less than an
Speaker 1: hour from now, we will commemorate the time that they
Speaker 1: were shot dead for no purpose apparently, and the perpetrator
Speaker 1: has still not been identified or brought to justice. A
Speaker 1: man in a mask robbed, tied, and stabbed them, leaving
Speaker 1: them for day. Subjects stated, I want to report a murder,
Speaker 1: no a double murder. I did it. A man who
Speaker 1: wore an evil style executioner's hood, carried a knife and
Speaker 1: gun and intended to use them. They haven't arrested me
Speaker 1: because they can't prove it. I'm not damn zodiac. Who
Speaker 1: is the zodiac and where is he from? My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, and Tenderfoot TV. This is Monster, the
Speaker 1: Zodiac Killer. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery,
Speaker 1: and if that's true, the Zodiac may have had some admirers.
Speaker 1: By now, you've heard about the range and murder weapons
Speaker 1: and all the other inconsistencies between the Zodiac killings. In
Speaker 1: this episode, we'll see double confronting the unpleasant idea of
Speaker 1: a Zodiac copycat. Unspeakable evil is one thing, but consciously
Speaker 1: replicating that evil that may be worse. There are people
Speaker 1: who are totally wrapped up. They don't celebrate, but they
Speaker 1: commemorate every anniversary of these murders. People they never met,
Speaker 1: they didn't know. That's Rachel Raskin's Rhian, who you heard
Speaker 1: on last week's episode. She's a reporter at the Times
Speaker 1: Harold in Valleo, a paper that's been involved with the
Speaker 1: case since the very beginning. What's funny is the people
Speaker 1: who did know, the people who has happened to don't
Speaker 1: do that. I haven't met one that does that. They
Speaker 1: may remember it in their head, but they don't go
Speaker 1: to the site in the middle of the night. Why
Speaker 1: would you have a fan club for something like a
Speaker 1: serial killer. I guess it's not unusual. Like Manson, Charles Manson,
Speaker 1: he's got followers. Still, I can't explain it. They can't
Speaker 1: explain it. I've asked. Rachel says she's heard a lot
Speaker 1: of strange stories about the Zodiac. Some people even claim
Speaker 1: to have escaped the unknown killer. I've had a couple
Speaker 1: of people tell me that they are positive that they
Speaker 1: encountered this person and escaped death, and they can't let
Speaker 1: it go. It just becomes a part their life, and
Speaker 1: some people have becomes more of a part of their
Speaker 1: life than other people. But I imagine if you thought
Speaker 1: you encountered a serial killer and lived to tell the tale,
Speaker 1: it probably sticks with you. After the incident happened with Betty,
Speaker 1: you know, of course, everyone's talking about it in Valleo
Speaker 1: kind of were a close knit town at that time.
Speaker 1: The population wasn't like it is now. This is Lorraine
Speaker 1: de Groat. You heard her from an earlier episode when
Speaker 1: she remembered losing her childhood friend Betty lu Jensen. Lorraine
Speaker 1: believes that she too had a chance encounter with the
Speaker 1: Zodiac when her cousin and a few friends decided to
Speaker 1: visit the murder scene at Lake Herman Road. This is
Speaker 1: her story as a teenager. This one night, my cousin
Speaker 1: talked to us all in. We agreed, the four of us, okay,
Speaker 1: let's take right out there. And it was kind of late.
Speaker 1: It was like tan ten thirty eleven, and my cousin's
Speaker 1: driving Henry and I'm behind him, and then Nadine is
Speaker 1: passenger and my boyfriend's behind her. We go out there
Speaker 1: and it's totally black dark, there's no street lights, you
Speaker 1: can't see nothing, and the headlights. There's a guy standing
Speaker 1: in the road. So what was so noticeable was he
Speaker 1: was wearing this like I want to say it's an
Speaker 1: army jacket, but it was big, it was loose, and
Speaker 1: it went down to just about probably between his knees
Speaker 1: and his thighs. We were focusing and I go, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a guy. I'm sitting behind my cousin
Speaker 1: and I'm kicking him. I'm going, don't stop, don't stop,
Speaker 1: because I'm scared. I didn't even want to be out there,
Speaker 1: so I'm saying don't stop, don't stop. So we had
Speaker 1: to slow down because the guy wouldn't get out of
Speaker 1: the road. So we're slowing down. Nadine rolls the window
Speaker 1: down and so does my boyfriend and as we rolled
Speaker 1: the window down, my cousin said, can we help you?
Speaker 1: What's up? Then the guy leans kind of leans in
Speaker 1: towards Nadine looking at us, and he said, I can't
Speaker 1: find my girlfriend. We were out on a fishing boat
Speaker 1: on Lake Herman. We're going oh and it's eleven at night,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm really kicking my cousin. I'm going go,
Speaker 1: go go, because it just didn't sound right. And he said,
Speaker 1: if you could just park over here and um help
Speaker 1: me find her. Well, that was just totally stupid. It
Speaker 1: didn't even make any sense. So then my cousin like
Speaker 1: acted like, okay, we'll help you. Of course, there's no phones,
Speaker 1: no cell phones, and I think we mentioned something like, well,
Speaker 1: where's your car and he said he didn't have one.
Speaker 1: So we said, well, we could call the police for you,
Speaker 1: and then my cousin just kind of sped off the
Speaker 1: minute he the guy stood up, and we were also scared,
Speaker 1: and I said, that's Zodiac. I kept saying that is Zodiac.
Speaker 1: So we drove that whole road because there's no turning
Speaker 1: around to come back so as we're speeding away, about
Speaker 1: a mile mile and a half from where we left
Speaker 1: him was a car. Was a car on the right
Speaker 1: hand side. It was the only car during our whole
Speaker 1: speeding venture to get off that road. My guess is
Speaker 1: it had to have been his car, because there was
Speaker 1: Like I said, there was no houses, there was no
Speaker 1: that was his car. We drove that road and it
Speaker 1: comes straight into Benicia. So we go straight up to
Speaker 1: the police station. We told him the story. There's a
Speaker 1: guy out there, we just ran into him. He said
Speaker 1: his girlfriend, he lost her. And then I remember I
Speaker 1: told the officer I was saying, I think that was Zodiac.
Speaker 1: He said, well, we're gonna go check that out. We
Speaker 1: will drive out there. And then I said, can I
Speaker 1: call you back tomorrow so you can tell me if
Speaker 1: they found his girlfriend. When I called the police station
Speaker 1: the next day, of course, my curiosity is just off
Speaker 1: the chart. So I said, what happened? And he said,
Speaker 1: we went out there, and he goes, there was nothing
Speaker 1: out there, there was no car. I think he was
Speaker 1: gonna kill whoever was in the car, but there was
Speaker 1: four of us. That's what I think. I'm so consumed
Speaker 1: to this day about Zodiac until the day I die.
Speaker 1: I believe that was Zodiac. Lorraine said it was curiosity
Speaker 1: that led her and her friends down Lake Herman Road
Speaker 1: that night. In five decades later, Lorraine's fascination with the
Speaker 1: Zodiac continues. But what can happen when someone's fascination with
Speaker 1: a killer becomes an obsession and even an opportunity to
Speaker 1: pick up where a killer left off. This happened in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen eighties when another Zodiac killer showed up
Speaker 1: in New York City. In the area that was involved,
Speaker 1: basically East New York Brooklyn. At the time, it was
Speaker 1: like the motor capital of the world. It was the
Speaker 1: most violent precinct in New York City. It still is,
Speaker 1: but back then it was really, really terrible. We were
Speaker 1: averaging over a hundred homicides plus an additional five hundred
Speaker 1: montreto shootings within five square miles. So it was a
Speaker 1: very hectic time for the police and the detectives. And
Speaker 1: in the midst of all this violence was an emerging
Speaker 1: serial killer who was calling himself to Zodiac. My name
Speaker 1: is Joseph Herbert. I'm a deputy chief in a New
Speaker 1: York City police department. I recently retired and my final
Speaker 1: position was to commanding of the Joint TOEWS On Test Force.
Speaker 1: Deputy Chief Joe Herbert played a key role in the
Speaker 1: Zodiac case, which took place in New York City. On
Speaker 1: November the NYPD received an unusual letter. It stated that
Speaker 1: one person for each of the twelve zodiac signs would
Speaker 1: be killed. Authorities believed it was a hoax and nothing
Speaker 1: to be alarmed about, and there was no reason to
Speaker 1: follow up. The first letter came into the Semi five precinct,
Speaker 1: and that letter he was taken credit for a shooting
Speaker 1: that we never identified. They didn't marry it up to
Speaker 1: any actual shooting. It had the circle, it had rambling writing,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't taken seriously. I think it ended up
Speaker 1: into somebody's lacker. Authorities would soon realize the threats were
Speaker 1: no joke. His first him was a handicapped individual who
Speaker 1: was returning home from work late at night. His name
Speaker 1: was Mario Roscoe. He was walking approaching Atlantic Avenue coming
Speaker 1: home from the train and he was approached from the
Speaker 1: rear and shot once in the back by an individual
Speaker 1: who had a vandanna over his face and did not
Speaker 1: rob him, did not saying they just shot him and
Speaker 1: ran away. Three weeks later, the second victim, who was
Speaker 1: also coming home from the subway station. The name was
Speaker 1: Herman Montenegro. He was a little intoxicated. He was out
Speaker 1: partying and he's coming home from the subway and he
Speaker 1: gets approached from the rear again and he shot in
Speaker 1: the back for no reason, although in his case he
Speaker 1: believed that his passport was taken from him. With that
Speaker 1: being said, there was no letters left at that and
Speaker 1: there was no connection by the police that these two
Speaker 1: incidents were connected, and they were investigated as random shootings
Speaker 1: and they want some The first two victims of the
Speaker 1: unknown shooter had survived, the victim of the third attack
Speaker 1: would not be so lucky. The next shooting was Joseph Proachy.
Speaker 1: He was an elderly male. We used to walk around
Speaker 1: the East New York section of Brooklyn to collect bottles
Speaker 1: and cans for the deposit. He was very friendly with
Speaker 1: people in the community. One night, he's returning home from
Speaker 1: collecting bottles and cans and he's approached from the rear
Speaker 1: as he's entering his building and he shot once in
Speaker 1: the back. Also, the difference was at this scene the
Speaker 1: shooter left a note, and he weighed the note down
Speaker 1: with three stones, which could indicate that he might have
Speaker 1: left notes at the prior incidents and they might have
Speaker 1: blown away in the wind, but you know well uncertain
Speaker 1: of that. So anyway, he leaves a note at the
Speaker 1: proachy scene, and in the note he takes credit for
Speaker 1: three shootings, and he articulates and the letters the proper
Speaker 1: zodiac sign of each victim. The killer was apparently selecting
Speaker 1: victims based on their birthday the New York Zodiac. Then
Speaker 1: sent letters to the New York Post in sixty minutes.
Speaker 1: These letters were studied for DNA and latent fingerprints. Please
Speaker 1: ramp up heavily. They had detected a couple of patents.
Speaker 1: One pattern was the incidents occurred in multiples of twenty
Speaker 1: one days. The first attack occurred on March, then twenty
Speaker 1: one days later there was a second attack, and then
Speaker 1: sixty three days later was the Dot shooting. So they
Speaker 1: saw it that it was in multiples. On the twenty
Speaker 1: one day at the shooting, they flooded the area incredibly
Speaker 1: like a massive presence of undercovers, uniforms, detectives. Everything they
Speaker 1: could do and what happened is the individual does strike,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't strike in East New York section of Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: He took the train into Manhattan and he should Labby Pawham,
Speaker 1: who was sleeping on a park bench in Central Park
Speaker 1: at that scene. He leaves another note and was also
Speaker 1: weighed down by a stone with the appropriate zodiac sign
Speaker 1: of Labby Paham, now taking credit for four shootings with
Speaker 1: the appropriate zodiac signs of all four victims. Now that
Speaker 1: letter was very important. Everybody was aware of what was
Speaker 1: going on in Brooklyn. So when they came up upon
Speaker 1: a shooting in Central Park in Manhattan and they recovered
Speaker 1: the letter, the climb scene was pristine, and they were
Speaker 1: able to recover a fingerprint from that letter, which were
Speaker 1: about to be very important later on in the investigation.
Speaker 1: This story may be starting to sound familiar. A string
Speaker 1: of letters taunting the police hopes that a fingerprint would
Speaker 1: help catch the killer. The killer in New York was
Speaker 1: following in the footsteps of the Zodiac. When let his
Speaker 1: first came in, he actually claimed that he was one
Speaker 1: and the same as the Zodiac killer. He actually jew
Speaker 1: a sketch of the California Zodiac, wearing a hood on
Speaker 1: one of his letters and he said to me in
Speaker 1: the park. So, you know, we had no idea, you know,
Speaker 1: if it was the same individual the fingerprint that we
Speaker 1: had from the PAM letter, they sent it to the
Speaker 1: San Francisco dohities and was not a match too to
Speaker 1: that letter. The killer was still on the loose and
Speaker 1: authorities were trying to find any leads that would put
Speaker 1: the city's fear at ease. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: havoc and a lot of chaos in the city at
Speaker 1: the time because the Post was getting the letters and
Speaker 1: they were producing headlines, and there was putting a lot
Speaker 1: of fear into the city. So anybody who asked anybody
Speaker 1: for their birthdays in a in a random conversation, people
Speaker 1: would panic and they would call the cops. So when
Speaker 1: Mr Piam got shot in Central Park, he recovered and
Speaker 1: they interviewed him and he says, a couple of days
Speaker 1: before the shooting, he was sitting on a park bench
Speaker 1: in Central Park and an individual he was talking and
Speaker 1: the birthdays came up. A composite sketch was made of
Speaker 1: the man who spoke with Parum about birthdays just days
Speaker 1: before the shooting. So that was the basis of that sketch.
Speaker 1: They actually ended the investigation extensively by putting that sketch out.
Speaker 1: Took us in a long direction for a very long time.
Speaker 1: When you put out a sketch, you're going to get
Speaker 1: a lot of response. Make sure that you're putting a
Speaker 1: sketch out of someone who you have a witness scene
Speaker 1: doing the climb. It was a male black initially, and
Speaker 1: the Zodiac was actually a much in a malismanic just
Speaker 1: like the original Zodiac. The media played a key role
Speaker 1: in this case, and not one that was always helpful.
Speaker 1: After the press leaks that a fingerprint had been taken
Speaker 1: from one of the letters, the New York Zodiac fell silent.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't hear from him again until two years later
Speaker 1: on August. The killer struck again, but Sastafante was the
Speaker 1: only one that was a little bit different than the others.
Speaker 1: He approached her in daylight. I was she exited a bus.
Speaker 1: She was apparently lost in the book area, and he
Speaker 1: approached her and entices to the golopment to the plot
Speaker 1: with him by giving her cigarettes. She had psychological issues
Speaker 1: and he took advantage of her, and he goes so
Speaker 1: we allays does a look part of the park and
Speaker 1: the attacks he saves a one hundred times, killing her.
Speaker 1: Three more attacks would take place, all within close range
Speaker 1: of Highland Park, which borders between Brooklyn and Queens. James
Speaker 1: Webber and John Diacon were both shot and wounded in
Speaker 1: June and July. Another near fatal shooting would occur that October,
Speaker 1: again in Highland Park, when Diane Ballard was shot in
Speaker 1: the neck. She survived but was left paralyzed. The only
Speaker 1: one that was able to describe the pip was Dianne
Speaker 1: Ballad and that was the assis of the male of
Speaker 1: Spanic with the mus dish and the hat. So she
Speaker 1: was the one that kind of took us from the
Speaker 1: heavyset mail black sketch to a male Spanic sketch. The
Speaker 1: Zodiac had succeeded in putting fear into the citizens of
Speaker 1: New York. The NYPD began to ramp up in reaction
Speaker 1: to the killings, even forming a task force specifically for
Speaker 1: the case. It was the biggest man hunt in New
Speaker 1: York since the Son of Sam killings in six It
Speaker 1: was abouty serious case. The NYPD took a lot of interest,
Speaker 1: a lot of expense. They were literally being embabrassed because
Speaker 1: every time you said the lettos going headlines at the
Speaker 1: New York Post and all the other those papers. But
Speaker 1: in the letters, he was actually twenty in the NYPD
Speaker 1: at one point, zodiac the number of his victims it
Speaker 1: might have been nine and n YPD zero. Looking for
Speaker 1: any possible leads in this case, investigators in the media,
Speaker 1: we're trying to make a deeper connection between the shootings
Speaker 1: and the astrological calendar. A lot of people dropped dimes,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who contacted us. We would contacted
Speaker 1: from all over the world, Belgium, India, Pakistan, people who
Speaker 1: were interested in the zodiac, and they studied the zodiac
Speaker 1: and they were given us ideas. I'm an investigator based
Speaker 1: all my conclusions on evidence, so I didn't really like
Speaker 1: get involved with the zodiac angle of it. I concentrated
Speaker 1: on the finger prints. Joe maintains that ultimately good police
Speaker 1: work and logic helped bring this killer to justice. By
Speaker 1: tracking the locations of the shootings, Joe and his squad
Speaker 1: were able to hone in on some locations where the
Speaker 1: shooter was operating the monetary. Earlier letters, he describes an
Speaker 1: intersection in eastern oak Brooklyn, Elbert Lane and Jamaica Avenue.
Speaker 1: There's an l elevated train station. Along Jamaica Avenue, you
Speaker 1: have Frankman Kay Lane, which is a large public high
Speaker 1: school and as a large playing field, and around the
Speaker 1: playing field you have high benches, you know, for people
Speaker 1: to sit and watch the games. He would follow people
Speaker 1: from the train station. It was an exit at that intersection. Also,
Speaker 1: we figured he was concealing himself up on the stands
Speaker 1: and then he would come down and follow the people
Speaker 1: to wherever they went and wait for his prime moment
Speaker 1: to shoot them when no audi else was around. Remembers
Speaker 1: his first comfort zone. The second comfort zone was all
Speaker 1: in Highland Park. Now at Highland Park, there was a
Speaker 1: large reservoir on top of the park. Around the reservoir,
Speaker 1: it was a perch where he had the ability to
Speaker 1: walk around and look for victims. Once he identified his
Speaker 1: victims from about the top of the reservoir area, he
Speaker 1: would come down the hill and strike his victims were
Speaker 1: walking innocently in the park. We identified both those comfort zones.
Speaker 1: We drew out a map and we went a mile east,
Speaker 1: a mile west of north, and a mile south of
Speaker 1: those comfort zones, so we had probably like you know,
Speaker 1: like a two or three square mile area. We ran
Speaker 1: every address that were in the complience of that map,
Speaker 1: and then we searched about databases for people who had
Speaker 1: criminal histories in those addresses, came up with about names.
Speaker 1: I didn't really have a lot of faith in the
Speaker 1: computers at that time, so we submitted for manual latent
Speaker 1: fingerprint evaluation all the people that had criminal histories in
Speaker 1: those forty addresses. There was a ton of work just
Speaker 1: collecting these things of prints that, never mind having them
Speaker 1: board to the evaluated is to to evaluate them. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day we injected his name
Speaker 1: into the investigation. I haven't both us saida. Now they
Speaker 1: just had to match the fingerprints. Joe says, due to
Speaker 1: a charge from a past arrest being dropped that would
Speaker 1: prove to be impossible. He taken in a rushed for
Speaker 1: primal possession of a zip gun. The significant of the
Speaker 1: zip gun was that he would make the guns himself.
Speaker 1: A zip gun is a homemade weapon made by using
Speaker 1: pipes and other materials. You can find it a hardware store.
Speaker 1: This was the same type of gun used in the shootings,
Speaker 1: but authorities were unable to make the connection at the time.
Speaker 1: In the policy unit, they couldn't put together the gun
Speaker 1: properly and it couldn't discharge it, so because the gun
Speaker 1: was inoperable, they dropped charges in the book in DA's office.
Speaker 1: His fingerprints were taken at that arrest, but because they
Speaker 1: dropped the charges, they were sealed, so later on when
Speaker 1: we did dec red searched of all the adjusses and
Speaker 1: the latent fingerprints from the pocalytta, we couldn't match up
Speaker 1: to his fingerprints which could have been on file, but
Speaker 1: because the fingerprints are sealed, we never matched it up.
Speaker 1: Later on we became aware with at it that we
Speaker 1: did identify him. M authorities were so close to catching
Speaker 1: the killer. Due to some luck, they would again be
Speaker 1: confronted with SATA when an altercation with his sister led
Speaker 1: to a three hour shootout in hostage situation. I was
Speaker 1: a hosh, just negotiated, I had just finished training, and
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in the office and I get a phone
Speaker 1: called late morning. I was informed that an individual hot
Speaker 1: shot his sister and he was actively engaged in a
Speaker 1: shootout with multiple cops. From his appointment on Kicking Avenue
Speaker 1: and they needed a Housha negotiator to try to talk
Speaker 1: him out. I get there and it is a large
Speaker 1: climb scene. He had shouted out with about fifteen cops
Speaker 1: and transit cops of train station at the corner. None
Speaker 1: of those officers were hit, but he had shot his
Speaker 1: sister in the EVNT. The reason he shot his sister
Speaker 1: was because she was in the back bedroom of the
Speaker 1: apartment with a boyfriend and he didn' improve with a boyfriend.
Speaker 1: He thought the boyfriend was deal drugs. He had an
Speaker 1: argument with his sister. He probably once shot through the door.
Speaker 1: The sister came out and said, no, you're not sure,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? And then he shoots his sister
Speaker 1: and then we EVNT. She runs out of the apartment
Speaker 1: leading and the boyfriend barricade himself in the back bedroom.
Speaker 1: Police respond because neighbors called the cops with the sister
Speaker 1: bleating in the hallway, and he engages all those officers
Speaker 1: from multiple windows. He had eight I'll call and rifles
Speaker 1: of buns. There were long barrels of puns. He's shooting
Speaker 1: from the back windows, from the front windows at the
Speaker 1: cops who are covering the area. So I get there,
Speaker 1: that shooting had stopped. Anybody. Service had set me up
Speaker 1: behind a barricade, and I have a bull horn on
Speaker 1: and I started trying to communicate with him. There was
Speaker 1: a ten days degree was a very hot day, sweating
Speaker 1: like a dog, and I'm trying to engage from conversation
Speaker 1: and all the stone is coming to the window. He's
Speaker 1: pointing a large battle rifle at me, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: fire at me, and he's not communicating with me. He's
Speaker 1: not talking to me. Joe and his squad evacuated the
Speaker 1: four story apartment building before entering. We climbed into the
Speaker 1: window of the first flour and we climbed up the
Speaker 1: four flour and I started talking to him to the doorway.
Speaker 1: Now I'm having much better the results speaking to him.
Speaker 1: He's actually engaged me in conversation. At about a three
Speaker 1: hour negotiation, he finally tells us that he wants to surrender.
Speaker 1: We know he had all these scums because he had
Speaker 1: fired him out the window. I had emerged Services on
Speaker 1: the roof and they lowered a bucket from the roof
Speaker 1: to his slunt window and he loads up the bucket,
Speaker 1: multiple buckets with zip guns, pipes, bullets and so forth,
Speaker 1: But that wasn't all Sada was holding in the apartment.
Speaker 1: Joe soon realized that there was a much bigger threat
Speaker 1: they were not aware of. Now we believe that we
Speaker 1: eliminate the teat and we're going to have him opened
Speaker 1: up the door and surrender. And he says to us
Speaker 1: to the door, he says, all right, you've got the concert.
Speaker 1: What should I do with these bombs? So we said, okay,
Speaker 1: hid bombs. So we had the Bottles squad standing by.
Speaker 1: They came and they devised us get him out of
Speaker 1: the apartment, then we'll make an entry into the apartment
Speaker 1: and evaluate the bombs. And we moved the bombs with
Speaker 1: this assistance that we made the service. We had him
Speaker 1: opened up the door, turn his back to us with
Speaker 1: his hands in the air. We handcuffed him. We escort
Speaker 1: him out of the apartment, and we moved him to
Speaker 1: the seven five. The Bobs squad goes in and they
Speaker 1: we cover two pipe bombs that he had made and
Speaker 1: one smoke grenade that he had inside the department. He
Speaker 1: told us later on he was actually done a graduation
Speaker 1: being a serial shooter to Serie Obama. He had actually
Speaker 1: built a pipe bomb and tested it on a train
Speaker 1: station late at night with nobody around, and it went off.
Speaker 1: And you know, so that was in his future plenty
Speaker 1: bombs in New York City. I escored him personally out
Speaker 1: of the building, bring him to the seven five squad
Speaker 1: for the briefing. Sada was in the authorities control. He
Speaker 1: was interrogated and eventually confessed to shooting his sister. Sada
Speaker 1: signed his confession letter with a familiar symbol from an
Speaker 1: earlier Zodiac letter. He had drew an upside down course
Speaker 1: on the letters with the numbers seven seven seven, So
Speaker 1: they brought the letter to me. They knew I was
Speaker 1: on the Zodiac task Force and very famil with the letters.
Speaker 1: And as soon as I looked at the letters, I
Speaker 1: recognized the handwriting to be the same writer as the
Speaker 1: previous letters that was Senter in the good post and
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. So I knew then that we had them
Speaker 1: through the handwriting. But I also knew that suspicions are
Speaker 1: one thing. You know, ME saying it's the Zodiac isn't
Speaker 1: going to suffice. So we had to evaluate the ballistics,
Speaker 1: the fingerprints that we had on hand. The DNA DNA
Speaker 1: was in its infancy back then, and we had to
Speaker 1: interrogate him and we had to do handwriting analysis. The
Speaker 1: first thing we did was sending Tommy Moss to mp
Speaker 1: D Ballistics play with the zip guns and the pipes
Speaker 1: that were taken out of the apartment, and we matched
Speaker 1: a couple of shootings from the Zodiac with those zip guns.
Speaker 1: Then we prepared the fingerprint from the Larry pa Haim
Speaker 1: letter in Center Park and that matched his fingerprints, and
Speaker 1: then the DNA matched later on, and the handwriting analysis
Speaker 1: was also confirmed by handwriting experts. We had an eight
Speaker 1: hour interrogation and then he finally gave it all up.
Speaker 1: It was a difficult investigation. I mean even me and
Speaker 1: my guys got involved in and we were four watching it.
Speaker 1: That we solved it took him shooting his sister. We
Speaker 1: were proud that we injected his name into the investigation.
Speaker 1: But he never took another arrest where we could use
Speaker 1: our singer prints where they would match up. Because he
Speaker 1: only had that one arrest with the ziphone. That was
Speaker 1: not offerable. And they sealed the record to all the evidence,
Speaker 1: including the DNA, the ballistics, the Laking singer prints. Every
Speaker 1: name was critical and very important for the city. Was
Speaker 1: important because you know what, if we didn't sarve it,
Speaker 1: he'd still be out there. He's still be out they
Speaker 1: shooting people. He killed three innocent people who are didn't
Speaker 1: deserve it, and he armed tremendously. The other five victims,
Speaker 1: Diane Balance suffered severe no pain. Webber had difficulty with
Speaker 1: his leg. So I mean he was shooting innocent people
Speaker 1: for no reason, only because he could. You don't need
Speaker 1: people like that walking around New York City, you know.
Speaker 1: The New York Zodiac Eddie Sada was brought to is
Speaker 1: six years after his first known crime for the victims
Speaker 1: of the original Zodiac killings. This justice has yet to
Speaker 1: be found. Fifty years later, Zodiologists still travel to the
Speaker 1: murder sites each year to remember these victims. You got
Speaker 1: you guys. Like the crosses, the one on the LEFTO
Speaker 1: courses for for David and it says rest in peace, David,
Speaker 1: A f for Arthur Faraday, and then the one on
Speaker 1: the right is done in pink for Betty Lou and
Speaker 1: it says rest in peace Betty Lou. On the ribbons,
Speaker 1: it shows that we really do care that they they
Speaker 1: haven't been forgotten, you know, And that's what we want,
Speaker 1: you know, something to show that we have not forgotten,
Speaker 1: even though it's been fifty years. We will commemorate the
Speaker 1: time that they were shot dead for no purpose apparently,
Speaker 1: and the perpetrator has still not been identified or brought
Speaker 1: to justice. There's a complete seless tragedy. We want to
Speaker 1: remember David Faraday and Betty Luke Jensen on this anniversary.
Speaker 1: DNA helped the authorities to definitively pin the murders on Zeta.
Speaker 1: For many, this technology brings hope that justice will finally
Speaker 1: be served for the victims of the original Zodiac. We're
Speaker 1: just waiting on at DNA to come back, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's been so many suspects over the years.
Speaker 1: Everybody looks good on paper at some point, but then
Speaker 1: you always find something that just seemed to discount them. Soon.
Speaker 1: If it did come back negative, two things, you might
Speaker 1: try to try again, which I doubt because layos so
Speaker 1: broke they're in with or you know, they would have
Speaker 1: said something to somebody. Somebody would have handed to us
Speaker 1: that something's wrong. It's either still in the works, which
Speaker 1: takes time, as we know, and people need to be
Speaker 1: patient on that. Maybe they do have samples that they're
Speaker 1: of suspects that they're ready to go with next time
Speaker 1: on Monster the Zodiac Killer twenty three and Me is
Speaker 1: a consumer genetics testing service, so anybody can order a
Speaker 1: test online spit in a tube, but it's quite a
Speaker 1: large bit of spit. It takes about thirty minutes to
Speaker 1: fill up the whole tube. From a genealogy standpoint, what
Speaker 1: you're trying to do is you're trying to find people
Speaker 1: that are the same as you for segments of those DNA,
Speaker 1: and the more DNA that is the same between people,
Speaker 1: the more closely related they are. In the Golden State
Speaker 1: Killer case, you're talking about a semen sample the was
Speaker 1: left behind it the murder scene. That's a very good
Speaker 1: source of DNA, whereas if you had DNA like from
Speaker 1: fingernails or under fingernails, that was a higher chance in
Speaker 1: a lower risk. And I think this stamp is probably
Speaker 1: medium because you never can tell where the stamp has been.
Speaker 1: We haven't had any real updates on this case in
Speaker 1: many years. Monster the Zodiac Killer is a fifteen episode
Speaker 1: podcast produced by iHeart Radio, How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV.
Speaker 1: Donald Albright and I our executive producers on behalf of
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers Meredith Stepmon, Mason Lindsay, and Christina Dana.
Speaker 1: Jason Hope is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: along with producers Trevor Young, Miranda Hawkins, ben Kybrick, and
Speaker 1: Josh Thane. Scott Benjamin provides additional voice talent. Matt Frederick
Speaker 1: is our Hope. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Speaker 1: If you haven't already, make sure to check out the
Speaker 1: first season of Monster called Atlantic Monster, about the Atlantic
Speaker 1: child murders from the late seventies to the early eighties.
Speaker 1: Download the ten episode season right now. Have questions or comments,
Speaker 1: email us at Monster at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can call us at one eight three three
Speaker 1: eight five six six six seven. Thanks for listening.