In the early hours of May 31, 1990, Joseph Proce, a 78-year-old Male, was taking one of his customary late-night walks in his Woodhaven, Queens neighborhood. A World War II combat veteran who now walked with a cane, Mr. Proce was a lonely man who lived on public assistance. Friends worried about his habit of walking the streets after midnight, but it was part of his routine.
On this night, his quiet, solitary life was irrevocably shattered by a random, chilling encounter that would soon terrorize the city.
Around 1:30 a.m., as he made his way near his home, a young man approached him and asked for a glass of water. Wary of the stranger, Mr. Proce refused and continued on his way. The man followed, and after a brief exchange, he pulled out a homemade zip gun and shot the elderly veteran in the lower back. As Mr. Proce fell to the ground, the attacker placed a handwritten note beside his body and vanished into the darkness. The bullet had struck his kidney, and he was rushed to Jamaica General Hospital in critical condition.
The note found at the scene was the first major clue for police that they were dealing with more than a random shooting. It contained a cryptic message: "Zodiac -- Time to die!" Above the words was a hand-drawn circle with the astrological symbols for Taurus, Scorpio, and Gemini. Investigators soon connected the note to two prior unsolved shootings in Brooklyn: a man shot on March 8 (a Scorpio) and another on March 29 (a Gemini). Mr. Proce, born on May 12, was a Taurus. The note confirmed police were hunting a serial attacker who was selecting his victims based on their zodiac signs, a copycat of the infamous Zodiac Killer who had haunted Northern California two decades earlier.
For over three weeks, Joseph Proce fought for his life in the hospital's surgical intensive care unit. His poor short-term memory, possibly due to his age and the trauma, made it difficult for him to provide detectives with a consistent description of his attacker. On June 24, 1990, Mr. Proce succumbed to his injuries, and the investigation officially became a homicide case. His death marked him as the first fatality in a string of attacks that would leave three dead and at least five wounded between 1990 and 1993.
The attacker, Heriberto "Eddie" Seda, known as The New York Zodiac Killer, continued to send taunting letters to the police and media. He remained at large for years, his case growing cold until a chance event in 1996. On June 18, Seda was involved in a domestic dispute where he shot his own half-sister. During an hours-long standoff with police, he was arrested. While giving a handwritten confession for that shooting, he signed it with a symbol that an alert officer recognized from the Zodiac letters.
This breakthrough led to a full investigation that definitively linked Seda to the crimes. Fingerprint evidence from one of the Zodiac letters, DNA from the saliva used to lick a postage stamp, and handwriting analysis all pointed to him. Seda had used untraceable, homemade guns to carry out his attacks, believing the lack of rifling marks on the bullets would make him impossible to catch. In the end, his own taunting letters and a final act of violence led to his downfall. On June 24, 1998, exactly eight years after Joseph Proce’s death, Heriberto Seda was convicted of three counts of second-degree murder and multiple counts of attempted murder and weapons possession. He was sentenced to 232 years in prison, ensuring he would never threaten the public again.
