On a sweltering summer day in New York City, the reign of a serial killer who styled himself after San Francisco’s infamous Zodiac came to a brutal and terrifying climax. For two years, a man sending cryptic letters to newspapers and police had been shooting people at random, sowing fear across the boroughs. His attacks had been vicious but sporadic, and after his first spree in 1990, he fell silent.
But in the early hours of August 10, 1992, he reemerged with a savagery that dwarfed his previous crimes.
His victim was Patricia Fonti, a 39-year-old woman. Patricia was a vulnerable person who struggled with long-term mental health issues and was at times homeless. In the pre-dawn darkness, she was near Highland Park, a large green space on the border of Brooklyn and Queens, when she encountered a stranger. The man lured her into the park, and near the reservoir, he pulled out a homemade.22 caliber zip gun and shot her.
Unlike the killer's other victims, many of whom were shot from behind in surprise attacks, Patricia fought back. A desperate struggle ensued between her and her assailant. The man, panicked by her resistance, pulled out a knife and stabbed her repeatedly. She was left with more than 100 stab wounds in addition to being shot. Patricia Fonti died at the scene, the victim of a horrifyingly personal and frenzied assault.
For a long time, her murder was not officially connected to the string of shootings that had terrorized the city in 1990. The attacker, Heriberto Seda, known as the "New York Zodiac Killer," went quiet again after killing Patricia. He attacked others in 1993, killing one and wounding two, but it wasn't until August 1994 that he sent another letter to the *New York Post*. In it, he claimed responsibility for five attacks, including the murder of Patricia Fonti, whom he identified by her astrological sign, Leo. This new communication reignited the police investigation and put the city back on high alert.
The New York Police Department had formed a task force to hunt the killer, but the trail went cold again. The break in the case came unexpectedly two years later, on June 18, 1996. Police responded to a domestic dispute in an East New York, Brooklyn, apartment where a man had shot his 17-year-old half-sister and was holding her boyfriend hostage. After a standoff, the man, Heriberto "Eddie" Seda, surrendered. While giving a handwritten confession for the shooting, he signed it with a symbol—a circle with a cross through it—that a detective recognized from the Zodiac letters.
This crucial observation broke the case wide open. Seda’s fingerprints were matched to a print found on a note left at one of the 1990 crime scenes. His DNA was matched to saliva found on a stamp from one of the letters mailed to the press. Ballistics from the dozen homemade zip guns found in his apartment linked him to the shootings. Faced with the evidence, Seda confessed to being the New York Zodiac killer and described his crimes, including the brutal murder of Patricia Fonti.
Heriberto Seda, an unemployed high school dropout obsessed with astrology and the original Zodiac Killer, was tried in 1998. He went through two separate trials in Queens and Brooklyn for his multi-borough crime spree. He was convicted of three counts of second-degree murder, including Patricia's, and multiple counts of attempted murder and weapons possession.
The judge sentenced Seda to a total of 232 years in prison, ensuring the man who preyed on the vulnerable and terrorized a city would never be free again. For Patricia Fonti, whose life ended in a struggle for survival against a cold-blooded killer in a dark city park, the conviction brought a final, somber measure of justice.
