Nine victims shot by New York Zodiac Eddie Seda

Forensic Files covers a range of cases from the quite obscure to the very popular. Watching a host of other true crime series, I've frequently noticed mainstream cases like that of Michael Peterson's murder of his wife Kathleen. Along with being detailed in several other true crime series, it was the subject of a Netflix documentary and dramatized series on HBO. Other high-profile cases such as Timothy Spencer as the Southside Strangler have been repeatedly examined over the years since the murders. This episode featuring the New York (or copycat) Zodiac killer is one of these cases. Since Heriberto "Eddie" Seda's crimes have been so well documented on other platforms, I will (mostly) stick to the episode's narrative and details.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

It's curious to consider whether Seda believed he was original in his "Zodiac" persona, unwittingly mirroring his namesake from the San Francisco area from the 1960s, or if he was a genuine copycat (further research indicates Seda has admitted to emulating the original Zodiac and wanted authorities to believe he was the same perpetrator). Even though some of the language and grammar from his letters show Seda struggled with writing, it seems he was fairly well read. It's likely that he'd encountered information about the original Zodiac and applied his own flair including his religiosity, astrology, and sadism. If you're curious about the west coast Zodiac from the 60s, this one-hour-forty-minute documentary does a worthy job aggregating and presenting the case's details.

One of the additional items I considered in writing about this episode was including the information provided by the "Forensic Astronomer", specifically in the Evidence section above. While discovering his 21- and 63-day cycles and determining the visibility of the constellations Orion and the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades may have clued police into Seda's patterns, these didn't seem to protect anyone or help catch him. Let me know if you feel differently.

Summary of Seda's attacks

The timeline of events made Eddie Seda just 20 years old when he sent his first letter to the New York police and began his attacks in 1990. He dropped out of high school four years prior when he was found bringing weapons on campus, and he continued to live in his mother's Brooklyn apartment. He was a loner and remained mostly unemployed for this "ramping-up" period. Then his first two late-night attacks in March occurred in Brooklyn, just 21 days apart.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

Nine weeks later, Seda's next victim (and eventually his first casualty) was shot as he entered his home in Queens. Joe Proce's attack was the first scene where police recovered a note from Seda and tied it back to his earlier March letter, initially considered a hoax. With the Zodiac moniker, police needed to deduce if this might actually be the original San Francisco Zodiac remerging in New York, decades later. But handwriting analysis quickly ruled this out.

The configuration of days (and stars) showed Eddie Seda should attack again on June 21, but he fooled investigators. On June 19, the coward shot a homeless man sleeping on a bench in Central Park. Larry Parham fortunately survived, and a note left at the scene this time was the beginning of Seda's downfall. An almost perfect fingerprint was recovered from this letter using ninhydrin. When this information was published in the New York Post, Seda grew worried and ceased his communication with authorities for four years.

He resumed his attacked two years later in August 1992 with the stabbing death of Patricia Fonte, but Seda didn't claim her nor his 1993 victims until he finally sent another letter in 1994. But police got one more break when they were able to recover enough DNA from the envelope flap and stamp to develop a DNA profile. Ultimately, Seda's anger was his own undoing in 1996.

The math behind the Zodiac's attacks

Along with my passion for computers and web development, I'm a genuine math lover. It was always my best subject in school, and I still remember much of what I learned over the years (if you exclude Calculus). I was a key member of our math competition team in high school. So I was instantly drawn to the opportunity to deduce the probabilities behind the "Zodiac" attacks of Eddie Seda.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

Thankfully, it's a pretty easy formula: Start by considering that his first attack couldn't result in any sort of repeat in his victim's sign. In his second attack, Seda then had an 11 in 12 chance of his victim having a different sign than his first – pretty good odds. His third victim had a 10 in 12 chance, and so on. The math for Seda to get seven unique signs in seven sequential attacks works out about an 11% cumulative chance. He was certainly growing luckier with his last few targets.

To actually target all 12 unique signs in a total of 12 sequential attacks, the odds are much greater against success. Specifically, he had only a cumulative 0.005% chance or 1 in 20,000 odds. But even his run of seven unique might suggest Eddie Seda may have learned some of his victims' signs before they were attacked. Given his modus operandi though, this is highly unlikely. It actually seems unlikely he was able to even learn his victims' signs after they were attacked – multiple reports indicated that he merely ran away laughing after he struck.

Heriberto "Eddie" Seda's list of victims

Regarding a rundown of Seda's victims, the episode does an admirable job, though it misses on a few details. Other articles are also good resources, but as of October 2022, Wikipedia seems to be the most inaccurate collection available. While its list gets the names and dates correct, it fails on what readers probably consider equally important – each victim's sign. Somehow in eight total victims, it manages to get four of their signs wrong. Here's a complete, vetted list:

• March 8, 1990: Mario Orozco – Scorpio | Survived
• March 29, 1990: Jermaine Montenesdro – Gemini | Survived
• May 31, 1990: Joe Proce – Taurus | Died
• June 19, 1990: Larry Parham – Cancer | Survived
• August 10, 1992: Patricia Fonte – Leo | Died
• June 4, 1993: James Weber – Libra | Survived
• July 20, 1993: John DiAcone – Virgo | Died
• October 2, 1993: Diane Ballard – Taurus | Survived

Recall that Seda claimed a ninth victim in his letter, and a glimpse of the letter (from this episode) indicated this was a white male shot in the head on June 11, 1994. But police never confirmed this attack.

Codebreakers

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

Recall the nine columns of 'characters' which were determined to be based on a "maritime system of flags and pendants". This encoded message was much simpler than the ciphered messages that the real Zodiac sent to newspapers in San Francisco. And while an interesting aspect of the episode, its deciphering provided no additional clues toward ultimately catching Eddie Seda.

One interesting aspect of this message to me was the non-sequitur "who mastery":

"This is the Zodiac speaking, I am in control, who mastery, be ready for more, yours truly"

I suggest this is a typo of some sort. Either Seda himself, being known to consistently use poor grammar in his writings, drew the wrong symbol for a letter he'd intended. Or less likely, the message was decrypted incorrectly. All of the letters in "who mastery" are repeated elsewhere, with the exception of the "w".

Information from other sources

Along with the grossly erroneous zodialogical (or is it zodiacal?) signs offered for several of Seda's victims on Wikipedia, there are other interesting aspects of this case I gathered from elsewhere on the web. For example, most accounts indicate that Seda's last "victim" was his half-sister, Gladys Reyes. While our episode said she was "shot in the butt", other sources claim Seda's shotgun blast hit her in the back, and it seemed much more serious than our episode implied. Also, another source mentioned her name as "Chachi".

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

In the interview, Captain Joseph Herbert describes the standoff with Eddie Seda in the Brooklyn apartment after Seda's sister made her escape and called police from a neighbor's. Seda initially held Gladys' boyfriend hostage. Herbert said the three-hour ordeal ended with Seda surrendering his weapons and giving himself up peacefully. However, another site (which seems warrant the same trust Wikipedia deserves) described this June 18, 1996 event as a "day-long shootout" with police. And contrary to this summertime date, our own episode begins the sequence's narrative by stating, "On a dark, dreary March afternoon in 1996…"

What our episode didn't mention, but seemed consistent from other sources, was Seda's mixed feelings about spirituality. On one hand, Eddie Seda hated drugs and drug dealers. He was known to provide tips to police, fingering various dope-pushers in his neighborhood. It was believed he was strongly influenced by and in service of religion, seemingly Catholicism. But Seda also owned books about weaponry, astrology, and even Satanism. These items and his actions strongly fly in the face of living one's life by the values of contemporary religion.

Unlikely actors

This episode is special in a way most others aren't, so the point deserves a mention. Most of Forensic Files' reenactments use actors in the roles of the perpetrators, victims, and authorities. There might be various scenes of the actual detectives going through the same motions the case's investigation suggests, but they rarely participate with actors in the reenactments. Sign of the Zodiac used both Joseph Herbert and Louie Savarese in their (silent) reenactment of their interrogation with Heriberto "Eddie" Seda. With a mustache like Savarese's, I strongly support this decision to use the real cops.

Where is Herbierto "Eddie" Seda now in 2024?

Eddie Seda was charged with shooting six people and killing three others. He was convicted in 1998 and sentenced to 232 years. He serves his time at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York.

Interestingly, a 2004 New York Magazine article describes Eddie Seda's first romantic relationship, in prison of course. His partner: "fellow Attica inmate Synthia-China Blast, a preop male-to-female transsexual."