Thomas Adcock - Brooklyn Noir 3 - Nothing but the Truth

Berkowitz later said he went to a White Castle on Northern Boulevard to celebrate with a bunch of belly-bomber hamburgers. He claimed that shooting couples in cars was starting to be fun.

He certainly seemed to like Queens. On November 27, 1976, Berkowitz asked two girls on 262nd Street for directions to a nearby house. Before they could answer he opened fire, hitting both. They survived, although one remains paralyzed for life.

Neither of these attacks got much press. No one had made a connection between the three shootings in 1976.

That would change on the cold winter night of January 29, 1977 — the day that TV actor Freddy Prinze of the hit series Chico and the Man committed suicide. A young Queens couple went out to Forest Hills on a date to see a movie called Rocky . Afterwards they stopped for a drink at a local pub and then walked quickly to their car, parked on Station Plaza.

They sat in a blue Pontiac Firebird, shivering in the bitter five-degree temperature, waiting for the car to warm up. As they started to snuggle, Berkowitz opened fire, killing the woman, Christine Freund.

February 1, 1977 marked the first story in the tabloids that alluded to the fact that the shootings might be connected. A sketch was shown of the gunman; it looked like the Berkowitz we later came to know. The police now suspected they had a serial killer on their hands.

But this was soon forgotten because on Valentine’s Day 1977 a neo-Nazi nut stormed the Neptune Moving Company in New Rochelle, a town just north of the Bronx, killing five people and himself in an all-day siege.

The local news stations broadcasted live footage of this and the next day’s papers were filled with the horrific tales of Fred Cowan, a thirty-three-year-old man from New Rochelle. He was a bald, hulking six foot, 250-pound weight lifter. He was a self-described Nazi, and a hater of blacks and Jews. In a rage over being suspended from his job at the moving company, he decided to take out his Jewish boss and some of his black coworkers.

For days afterwards the papers and TV news were filled with stories on Cowan. What they all missed was his odd connection to Son of Sam.

On March 8, 1977, the now labeled .44 Caliber Killer took back the headlines by shooting a college student named Virginia Voskerichian as she walked home from the subway to her apartment in Forest Hills. As the gunman approached her, her only defense was her textbooks, with which she covered her face. The bullets tore through her books and found her head. The shooting was two blocks away from the January ambush.

This was a busy neighborhood, and eyewitnesses saw two completely different-looking people running from the scene. Two drawings were published; one looked like Berkowitz and the other showed a soft-featured person, maybe a woman, in a knit cap.

On March 10, 1977, New York’s littlest mayor, Abe Beame, held a press conference at the 112th Precinct, just a few blocks away from the last shooting. He announced that a murderer with a .44 caliber weapon was stalking New Yorkers and that an NYPD command called the Omega task force, manned with more than three hundred cops, had been set up to apprehend the fiend.

Then came the aforementioned April shooting in the Bronx, where Berkowitz dropped a letter giving himself the name Son of Sam . On May 30, 1977, he got the writing bug again.

David Berkowitz mailed a letter from New Jersey to the Daily News addressed to columnist Jimmy Breslin. I talked with Breslin about receiving Berkowitz’s missive. He was home in Forest Hills when it reached the News .

“A secretary called and read some of this madness to me over the phone,” Breslin said. “She really didn’t even want to read it. Said she was scared of it. It was an eerie letter. Very eerie. I told her to get rid of it and give it to the cops. I’ve made a conscious effort to not remember what it said. It was a sick letter written by a sick, depraved mind. It was hurled out of the depths of insanity... but I will say he is probably the only serial killer in history that knew how to use a semicolon.”

The letter started out: Hello from the gutters of N.Y.C. which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine, and blood...

This was reminiscent of Robert De Niro’s character, Travis Bickle, in the 1976 film Taxi Driver , as the character let go with a tirade to a politician in his cab.

Berkowitz’s letter went on:

JB... I also want to tell you that I read your column daily and find it quite informative... Sam’s a thirsty lad and he won’t let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood... Here are some names to help you along: “The Duke of Death,” “The Wicked King Wicker,” “The Twenty Two Disciples of Hell,” “John Wheaties — Rapist and Suffocater [sic] of Young Girls .”

It was signed Son of Sam . The return address was Blood and Family, Darkness and Death, Absolute Depravity, 44.

Breslin: “It has always fascinated me how they could make such a big deal over these serial killers. I mean, why study them? I find them depressing and dull. They’re a depraved, hideous, and grizzly lot of men who are not even worth studying. Forget them.”

After Berkowitz was arrested, Breslin felt spent.

“You were left with nothing after he was caught,” he said. “Just this little bug with a mind full of oatmeal.”

I asked him about people who deny that Berkowitz was the sole killer.

“They’re crazy. He was the one who did it. The guy pleads guilty to all the shootings. They’re a bunch of conspiracy nuts.”

Breslin went on to tell me that after Berkowitz was in jail, he wrote him another letter.

“It went something like, Dear Jimmy, How are you? And it was full of clichés like, The politicians are using me like a political football. ” Breslin laughed and said, “The letter was written in a scrawl like a twelve-year-old would write. Completely different from the first one. I guess they gave him his medication in prison and then he was all right.”

The Daily News printed the first letter to Breslin and the Son of Sam was born.

Another one of Berkowitz’s prison pamphlets read:

The police and media used to call me “The Son of Sam,” but God has given me a new name, “the son of Hope,” because now, my life is about hope.

Like most convicted felons, Berkowitz had a very convenient memory. No one in the media or police force had named him: The Bogeyman had given himself his own moniker, Son of Sam.

I took a ride up to some of Berkowitz’s old haunts in Yonkers. The years have changed the neighborhood as much as they have Berkowitz’s appearance. He has gone from a stocky, wildhaired youth to a balding, middle-aged man who resembles the actor Richard Dreyfuss. His neighborhood in the north of Yonkers has slid from working class to ghetto poor.

It was a quiet Sunday in a desolate area that looked like a depressed small town in the rust belt. I sat in my car in front of the old Carr house on Warburton Avenue. This is where Berkowitz said a 6,000-year-old demon lived with his dog and commanded him to kill from his apartment up the hill on Pine Street.

The Carr house was a rambling three-story wood frame, with new aluminum siding and four cars parked in the front yard. Above the house, up on the crest of a hill, I could see Berkowitz’s old seventh-floor studio apartment window, which had a curtain over it. I hoped it wouldn’t move.

I made a left onto the hill of Wicker Street and passed the home where Berkowitz said the Wicked King Wicker lived. It didn’t look he was home. Snaking up the steep drive, I came onto Pine Street and made a right. I started looking for Berkowitz’s old address, number 35. I found his apartment building, but it’s not 35 anymore. I guess they changed it to fool curious Berkowitz buffs. On a wall across the street was a sign: Beware of Dog .