When Lt. Vinnie Mazziotti came face-to-face with Heriberto Seda in a police squad room on the afternoon of June 19, 1996, the Zodiac Killer held little back. He spoke of his crimes, his reasons, his methods – and he again taunted the NYPD, chiding Mazziotti for an apparent lack of interest police seemed to have in the "chase" to bring the now convicted Zodiac to justice.

"The first thing I said to Seda was how glad I was to meet him," Mazziotti told the Tribune.

Queens cop Vinnie Maziotti spent six years on the trail of the Zodiac Killer, despite the disinterest of his supervisors.

"I said I’d been looking for him for six years – and that I felt he was ‘professional,’ very good to have avoided capture for so long."

Seda calmly stared at the detective. Then in a slow, measured, precise response he said that he had not done anything outstanding. Not in his opinion.

"I’ve been here," Seda chided. "If you had been doing your jobs you would have caught me a while ago."
 

Emergence – Murder

Heriberto Seda charted a murderous course through the streets of Queens in the early 1990s.

Seda stalked and killed three people and wounded a fourth in Queens during a four-year seige of terror.

From the beginning, he taunted city cops in a series of hand-written letters he left at crime scenes and sent through the mail. Seda promised to kill 12 people – one for each of the astrological signs. Each letter contained a sketch of an astrological wheel and a circle with a cross in the center – a symbol that became the Zodiac’s signature.

Vinnie Mazziotti was there at the beginning, in November 1989, when the Zodiac sent a letter to the 75th Precinct in Brooklyn.

"The first sign is dead," he wrote. "The Zodiac will strike fear."

The letter contained a drawing of an astrological chart – a symbol that would haunt Mazziotti and Det. Eddie Sloan until June 1996.

So dedicated to the case were the two detectives that they headed to homicide squad rooms and crime scenes on their own time over the years.

"We went after work to see what the squad had and to look for specific things the Zodiac would leave," Mazziotti said.

Most of the cases led Mazziotti and Sloan to a dead-end. But they kept going. Someone had to continue the search for the Zodiac when "official" interest in the case lagged, as the initial Zodiac went on "hiatus" following three murders and one shooting in Queens.

He had his own theories on what made this Zodiac "tick."

A final letter was received at the New York Post on June 20, 1996 from the Zodiac. The letter marked the end of Zodiac’s first tryst with terror.

"No more games, pigs," the letter said.

The chase had drawn more than 50 detectives, Mazziotti said. Holed-up in an office they shared with the Brooklyn North Narcotics Squad at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, members of the Zodiac Task Force had chased down every lead, followed up on each tip called in to the Zodiac Hotline, dissected the killer’s notes and mapped-out his trail of bloody terror.

The Task Force was phased-out when the Zodiac went on hiatus and the tips stopped coming in.

Mazziotti was reassigned to the Queens Robbery Squad following the phase-out of the Task Force. While there, he was faced with a daily barrage of perps and their crimes. But he never stopped looking over his shoulder for the Zodiac. Not even when the case files were tossed out of the Queens office. Mazziotti kept a close check on the files, adding information and updates to the case as the files lay dormant for more than three-and-a-half years. He even kept a photo of a young male Hispanic under glass on his desk – his "prime suspect."

Mazziotti credited former NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Borelli as the only NYPD official who showed any real interest in the case during the years the Zodiac laid-low.

"Chief Borelli was the only one who regularly followed-up on the case, asked questions and showed interest in the Zodiac-on-hiatus," Mazziotti said.

He's Ba-a-ack

On Aug. 4, 1994 the New York Post received a letter from a writer who claimed to be the Zodiac. The writer also claimed responsibility for five shootings that occurred between Aug. 10, 1992 and June 11, 1994.

In the newletter, the writer now credited the Zodiac with a total of nine victims – four in 1990 and five since 1992.

Mazziotti was sitting at his desk in the Queens Robbery Squad on Aug. 4, 1994, his tour about to end, when the momentum shifted.

"I was getting ready to go home when I got a call from the boss (Chief of Queens Detectives) telling me to report immediately to the Chief of Detectives’ office," Mazziotti said.

"They said they believed a Zodiac letter had been received at the NY Post. They wanted me to take a look at it – to determine if it had come from the original Zodiac."

Mazziotti said that similarities in handwriting, composition and "artwork" made the determination easy – "it was definitely from the same guy."

The Queens detective was called back – along with Eddie Sloan and a team of investigators to sniff-out the Zodiac, circa 1994.

The team worked out of a back room in a building that had previously housed the 107th Precinct on 73rd Avenue in Fresh Meadows. There, the team once again mapped out the killer’s movements, answered hotline tips and retraced the Zodiac’s steps from four years before.

Mazziotti kept the photo of the young male Hispanic on his desk at the Task Force. He never gave up, connecting pieces to the puzzle 24-hours a day.

Dead-Ends

A number of suspects emerged during the team’s search for the Zodiac, Mazziotti said.

Officials were giving a thumbs-down to just about all of the suspects, since there was no match to a fingerprint police had lifted from one of the first (1990) crime scenes.

One suspect stands out in Mazziotti’s mind. Colin Ferguson, the LIRR gunman was interviewed and scrutinized by Mazziotti for a possible link to the Zodiac crimes.

"I was on my way home to Nassau," Mazziotti said, "when I got a message to call Chief Borelli ‘forthwith,’" he said. "Get the Chief on his cell phone, at home, wherever," the message read. "Just get him – now."

When reached at home, Borelli told Mazziotti to check-out Colin Ferguson as the Zodiac – a fact that was not revealed to the public.

Mazziotti headed for the Nassau holding facility where Ferguson was being housed.

"Yes, there was a definite similarity between Ferguson and one of the composite sketches prepared during the Task Force search for the Zodiac," Mazziotti said.

"We checked into his background, went through bags at the Nassau police station that held Ferguson’s personal writings," Mazziotti said. Most of the material failed to link Ferguson to the Zodiac – that is, until the detective found a self-addressed envelope in the pile of papers.

It was the same kind of envelope used by the Zodiac to mail his letters.

"We lifted a print from the envelope," Mazziotti said. "It wasn’t the same guy – but Chief Borelli came through," he said. "The rest of the department didn’t follow through."

The Aug. 4, 1994 letter was the last time the NYPD heard from the Zodiac – until the department got lucky on June 18, 1996.

Police in East New York, Brooklyn had arrested a young man on that day, after he held cops at bay for hours.

The suspect, Heriberto Seda, surrendered to police wearing a Swiss Army helmet. Seda handed buckets of weapons to the cops, including some homemade, "personalized" weapons. Among them was a gun that was used to fatally shoot 78-year-old Joseph Proce on May 31, 1990 – the Zodiac’s third victim.

Seda confessed to police in writing, seeking forgiveness for his weapons’ cache and his "other sins." He ended the confession with a "plea for God’s help," and signed-off with a drawing of a crude cross and three-sevens.

One of the Brooklyn cops spotted a similarity to the Zodiac’s "symbol" and showed the confession to a detective in East New York, who identified it as the Zodiac.

A subsequent fingerprint match revealed Seda’s true identify, police said. With "resigned pride" Seda spoke to the Brooklyn detectives about the Zodiac murders.

Queens? Where's That?

Mazziotti never received official notice that the Zodiac was in police custody. He learned by word-of-mouth, through other detectives in Queens.

"It wasn’t just me," he said. "The heart and soul of the investigation – the Queens detectives who worked the case were left out of the notifications.

"I told the bosses and the other detectives numerous times that the guy came from Brooklyn. It was more than a hunch, it was logistics," Mazziotti said. "It was how the guy got from here to there.

"When he did come in, it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time."

Mazziotti is retired from the NYPD now. Did the frustration of being left-out of the last phase of the Zodiac case play a part in his decision to call it quits?

"Let’s just say it was time," Mazziotti said. "Sure it was frustrating. Myself, a handful of Queens cops and Chief Borelli kept this case alive when everyone else tossed it away.

"There could have been more effort given to notifying me."