E. Zigo, helped arrest Son of Sam, dies

On August 10, 1977 - 13 months after the first of a string of night killings that terrorized New Yorkers and came to be known as the Son of Sam murders - NYPD Detective Edward Zigo and a partner traced a parking ticket left on a car in Brooklyn to the Yonkers apartment of David Berkowitz.

Inside a cream-colored 1970 Ford Galaxy parked outside, they saw a packet of letters and the butt of a gun peeking out of a brown paper bag.

Officers arrested their man a short while later. The next day, photographs of Zigo - a sinewy, mustachioed man in a rumpled suit holding the .44 caliber pistol Berkowitz used to shoot his victims - were published in newspapers around the world.

Zigo, one of several New York City police detectives widely credited with Berkowitz's capture, died Saturday at his home in Lynbrook. He was 83.

The cause was cancer, said his son, Edward Zigo III.

The summer of 1977 was miserable for the city, which was reeling from heat waves and a budget crisis, and also for Zigo, whose first wife, Ann, had recently died.

"He buried himself in that investigation after my mother died," said Zigo's daughter, Susan McManus. "I remember when he did actually catch him. He made a phone call from Yonkers . . . 'If I think what's going to happen happens, you can say your dad caught the Son of Sam.' He told me not to talk to anybody . . . He didn't come home for three days."

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Much of that time away from home was spent interrogating Berkowitz, who told police that "Sam" was Sam Carr, a former neighbor and owner of a black Labrador retriever that the postal worker said commanded him to kill.

"Knowing he'd killed all those people but talking with this mild, calm demeanor - my dad couldn't put the two together," McManus said.

Zigo, the child of Italian immigrants and a graduate of East New York Vocational High School, served in World War II as a seaman aboard the USS Missouri. He was a bricklayer in Levittown and Wantagh before he became an NYPD patrolman in 1954. When he made detective, he was assigned to the 60th Precinct in Coney Island.

He appeared in that capacity in a tabloid photograph in a skirt, scarf and what appears to be low pumps - the disguise used to lure a gang of mugging suspects.

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Zigo's son recalled father-son outings that sometimes ended prematurely, with son deposited in a diner for safekeeping while father drove off to bust or interrogate suspects.

The city's budget crisis notwithstanding, Zito was promoted to detective first grade after the Son of Sam collar and retired in the early 1980s after he was injured in a foot chase.

After retirement, he served as a technical adviser on movies, including one about his own life.

He fished regularly in Great South Bay and volunteered with SPLASH, a group devoted to cleaning debris from the waters around Freeport.

He is survived by his children; his wife of 20 years, Eileen; his sisters, Amy Zigo and Adeline Bonanza; and his brother, Nicholas Zigo.

Visitation will be at Flinch and Bruns Funeral Home, 34 Hempstead Ave. in Lynbrook, Wednesday from 7 to 9 p.m. and Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. Mass will be celebrated Friday at Our Lady of Peace, 25 Fowler Ave. in Lynbrook.