Read article : How Son of Sam terrorized NYC during the summer of 1977
They only had eyes for each other, and that gave their killer all the time he needed. Stepping from the darkness that shrouded the Hutchinson River Parkway service road, he thrust a .44-caliber revolver through the parked car's passenger window and fired five times. Alexander Esau, 20, and Valerie Suriani, 17, never had a chance.
As the two sweethearts lay dying, the gunman put down a letter on the bloody front seat between them.
I am a monster, he had written. I am the Son of Sam.
This, on the night of April 17, 1977, was the coming-out missive of a maniac, addressed to Capt. Joseph Borelli, the police detective heading the manhunt for the gunman who was targeting young women with long, dark hair.
I love to hunt. Prowling the streets looking for fair game tasty meat.
He had struck five times already. Three women were dead, four other people wounded. The papers had dubbed him "The .44 Caliber Killer."
Now he had given himself a name.
Son of Sam.
I'll be back. I'll be back.
Across the city, frightened young women began cutting off their hair, or hiding it under a hat, or dyeing it blonde. Young couples started avoiding lovers' lanes. Anxious parents swept their kids in from the streets as soon as the sun went down. The Son of Sam had put into motion a frenzy of fear unparalleled in the history of New York.
Daily News crime photos through the years
The killing had started the previous summer on a quiet street in the east Bronx. Eighteen-year-old Donna Lauria was the first to die.
She and her friend Jody Valenti had gone dancing in New Rochelle, then driven back to Donna's home on Buhre Ave. at about 1 a.m. Enjoying the warm night, the two young women lingered in Valenti's blue Cutlass to chat. Then a stranger approached.
"Now who is this?" said Lauria.
An instant later she was dead. Valenti, 19, was wounded.
There were three more shootings before police connected them:
Oct. 23, 1976: Robert Denaro, 20, wounded as he sat in a car with Rosemary Keenan, 21, on 160th St. in Flushing, Queens. Denaro wore his hair to his shoulders; the gunman apparently mistook him for a woman.
Nov. 27, 1976: Donna DiMasi, 17, and Joanne Lomino, 18, wounded as they sat outside the Lomino home on 282nd St. in Floral Park, Queens.
Jan. 29, 1977: Christine Freund, 26, shot dead near the Forest Hills, Queens, railroad station as she sat in a car with John Diel, 30.
A police task force was quietly assembled. Then, on March 8, there was another shooting, just a half-block from where Freund had died. The 19-year-old victim was Columbia University student Virginia Voskerichian. Eye to eye with her killer, she had reflexively raised a textbook to her face. The bullet tore through it.
Sam Carr, neighbor of David Berkowitz. (Daily News)Three days later, Mayor Abe Beame and Police Commissioner Michael Codd publicly acknowledged that a serial killer was on the loose.
But, in a city that had seen 1,800 murders the year before, the news caused little more than a ripple of alarm.
That changed when Esau and Suriani died and cops read their slayer's letter. Under the direction of Inspector Timothy Dowd, 75 detectives and 225 officers checked out the 400 New Yorkers who had permits for .44-caliber revolvers, even attempted to trace all 28,000 Bulldogs manufactured by the Charter Arms Co. They investigated current and former mental patients. They consulted with psychics and astrologers. And they issued an unprecedented public plea for Son of Sam's surrender.
"We know you are not a woman hater," police said. "We know how much you have suffered. Please let us help you."
Sam liked the attention. In early June, he wrote to Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin.
Hello from the gutters of New York.
Don't think because you haven't heard from me for a while that I went to sleep.
I am still here. Like a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest. Anxious to please.
On June 26, he shot Sal Lupo, 20, and Judy Placido, 17, as they sat in a car outside a Bayside disco. Both lived.
The fear spread. A police tip line started ringing off the hook as neighbors and co-workers reported each other, mothers tearfully turned in their sons, women handed over their husbands and lovers.
Son Of Sam, said the T-shirts hawked in Central Park. Get Him Before He Gets You.
He killed again on July 31, now in Brooklyn. Robert Violante and Stacy Moscowitz, on their first date, had gone to the movies, then driven to Shore Parkway and Bay 17th St. Under the light of a full moon, they walked hand in hand across a footbridge to the edge of Gravesend Bay then quickly returned to the car when Violante spotted a man watching them.
The stranger was faster. He dropped into a crouch and shot them both. Moscowitz was killed, Violante badly wounded.
Now there was mounting panic. Moscowitz wasn't even a brunette. Now Sam was shooting anyone.
Meanwhile, he had made a mistake.
Unable to find a parking space on the Bath Beach streets as he stalked Moscowitz and Violante, he had left his Ford Galaxie at a fire hydrant on Bay 17th St. For months he had craftily eluded the biggest manhunt in NYPD history. Now he had a parking ticket.
That ticket swiftly led to 24-year-old David Berkowitz of Pine St. in Yonkers. Examining the car parked outside his apartment, police spotted a rifle inside and waited.
Fifteen cops drew on Berkowitz when he showed up several hours later. He was carrying a manila envelope. Inside it was a .44, the gun that had killed six people and wounded seven.
Daily News Frontpage, April 18, 1977
(Daily News)
Daily News Frontpage, August 11, 1977
(Daily News)
Daily News Frontpage, June 5, 1977.
(Daily News)
Frontpage, August 11, 1977.
(Daily News)"Okay," he said. "You got me."
The reign of terror was over.
The face of evil belonged to a pudgy postal worker who worked a 4-to-midnight shift sorting mail in the Bronx.
He told court-appointed psychiatrists that the killing spree had been ordered by his neighbor's dog. The neighbor, Sam Carr, had lived 6,000 years ago, Berkowitz explained.
After shooting Violante and Moscowitz, he said, he had gone home and dutifully written a $35 check to pay the parking ticket: "It's the law."
Doctors differed over his sanity. A judge finally ruled him competent to stand trial, and he pleaded guilty. On June 12, 1978, he was sentenced to 547 years in prison.
"I know a lot of victims' parents and stuff, you know, they always say `Why?' " mused David Berkowitz.
"I hate to disappoint all these people. They're not going to find out."
First published on November 3, 1998 as part of the "Big Town" series on old New York. Find more stories about the city's epic history here.
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