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00:00Test, test, test, test.
00:15The interview with David Berkowitz at Attica Prison.
00:21Over a number of weeks, we talked openly
00:24and actually formed an ongoing relationship.
00:29I wanted to understand why he had done what he had done.
00:36Can you think of what it was when you
00:38leave your arms down and keep suicidal?
00:40I was reading a lot of books and movies
00:45about other individuals who took their problems
00:50out on other people.
00:53The Boston Strangler, the Zodiac guy.
00:59Berkowitz had a cinematic mind.
01:03He was an avid student of true crime.
01:06He read William Hirons, the lipstick killer.
01:08This guy, you know, had killed a whole bunch of people,
01:12gained a great deal of attention in his 20s.
01:16He went to the library.
01:17He checked out books on Jack the Ripper.
01:20Jack the Ripper, the historical book.
01:23It discussed the crimes of great length
01:25and showed snapshots of morgue victims,
01:28old black and white photos.
01:31Do you identify with that sort of stuff?
01:34Yeah.
01:35He was using a lot of previous killers' MOs
01:39to inform his work, so to speak.
01:43But here I would see these other guys acting out
01:48their anguish and frustrations on other people.
01:52He was writing his own Stephen King story about himself.
01:55I became outwardly aggressive after a period of time,
02:00especially after all these movies and things,
02:02which seem to encourage me.
02:04It's a deadly and very complicated story
02:09of how a human mind spirals out of control
02:13and becomes a lone gunman and mass murderer.
02:21That was a person who's in his childhood,
02:23has always had a tendency to vent his aggression
02:26through antisocial means.
02:28It was just a matter of time.
02:29Well, the guns in my anger were going to blend together
02:33and everything's going to blow up, you know?
03:03Following Tuesday's killing
03:08of 20-year-old Virginia Voskarikian,
03:10Commissioner Codd indicated that the same man
03:13may be the murder suspect in perhaps three of five killings
03:16of young women, two in Forest Hills and one in the Bronx,
03:19dating back to last July 29th.
03:22Most of the victims have been young women
03:24with shoulder-length dark brown hair
03:26who were gunned down as they sat in parked cars
03:28or walked the sidewalks of the Bronx and Queens.
03:31Last night, Virginia Voskarikian only got this far.
03:35Captain Varelli, as of this moment,
03:36can you reconstruct what happened last night?
03:39We know the victim is a student at Columbia University.
03:43Somewhere along the line, she was stopped on the street
03:46or accosted by an individual.
03:48She either saw a weapon being displayed
03:51or, for some reason, she put the books up.
03:53That would indicate a defensive-type reaction.
03:56Why? You know, the big question, why?
03:58A young girl like this.
04:00He shoots her right in the face.
04:02I was concerned for my girls,
04:04because I have four daughters,
04:06and I'm picturing this young girl.
04:08My oldest daughter was just maybe a year or two younger.
04:11That was very emotional.
04:13With the Virginia Voskarikian murder,
04:16now we have a total of five shootings.
04:18All these bullets, these ballistics now, are matching.
04:21It's a .44-caliber bullet that came from the same gun.
04:25We have determined that there has been a .44-caliber revolver
04:29used in every one of them.
04:30And that was the moment where everything just switched on.
04:34Oh, my God, it's a serial killer.
04:36The general description that we have
04:39is of a male, white, 25 to 30 years of age,
04:435 feet 10 inches to 6 feet in height,
04:46medium build, well-groomed, with dark hair.
04:50It's important that you tell the police what you know
04:54and let them judge and follow through.
04:57As soon as the press conference was held,
05:00that's when the city just went totally on edge.
05:03People wouldn't come out at night.
05:05They're really scared.
05:06And I mean, when they're scared,
05:07that's all they do is talk about the killer.
05:10People have not gone out of their houses.
05:13It's just scary. It's frightening.
05:15Now the newspapers are starting to pick it up.
05:17It's no longer page three.
05:19Now it's page one.
05:23Everyone wants a piece of this story.
05:28The Daily News and The Post were the main source of information
05:31for everyone in New York City.
05:33I was a reporter at the New York Daily News.
05:36I got assigned to working nights back at the city room
05:40where all the action was.
05:41Journalism at the time was you had a bottle of booze at your desk.
05:45If you had a desk, it was gritty.
05:48Journalists thrive on chaos.
05:51I was 31 years old.
05:54I had come out of the army and I suddenly was the city editor of the New York Post.
06:00This wasn't just a story. This was the story.
06:04The killer police are looking for is called the .44 caliber killer because of the weapon he has used.
06:10Everything became public.
06:13The police commissioner is under pressure.
06:15You know, we've got to solve this case right away.
06:17Ballistics compared the bullets and we determined that it was one gun.
06:22We know he's riding because it's happening all over.
06:25Early in the morning hours, you know, after midnight generally.
06:29We were looking for something, anything.
06:33I was in the 15th homicide zone and that was the most interesting time of my life on a job.
06:40The assumption was this assailant would be out at night time.
06:46But we didn't know where he was going to strike again.
06:49Queens in the Bronx had been all the locations.
06:56And we had heavy patrols in those areas.
06:59We also implemented the use of unblocked cars.
07:04You don't really know what's going on in his mind.
07:07You don't.
07:09But you kind of, I don't know, try to beat him to the punch.
07:14Meanwhile, during the killing spree, Berkowitz really starts to kind of lose it.
07:27He was living in these really cheap apartments and sort of bad neighborhoods because it was all he could afford.
07:33He ended up in a series of odd jobs.
07:36He becomes a security guard.
07:39That wasn't making any real money.
07:41I left one job and went into another and then another.
07:44I wasn't unemployed for very long.
07:46Kind of like these were all sort of dead-end jobs.
07:49Yeah.
07:50That all, of course, started to add to his feelings of frustration and intense anger.
07:56He rents an apartment at 35 Pine Street in Yonkers, New York, which will be the epicenter of everything.
08:06It's kind of off the beaten path in what was a working class neighborhood of Yonkers that was in transition.
08:15I was frustrated as hell.
08:19I felt really rejected.
08:21No job satisfaction.
08:23No social life satisfaction.
08:26There was nothing in the apartment.
08:27Nothing at all.
08:28Just my clothes, my guns, my bed.
08:31He was going to work every day.
08:34And then by night, many nights, he was stalking victims.
08:44He was constantly searching, you know, prowling, looking, you know.
08:49It was the situation, the circumstance that he found himself in.
08:54He was an opportunist.
08:57For days on end, you know, at nights, I was out every night, like clockwork, driving around.
09:02So I spotted more things happening, you know.
09:07He told me he began seeking out, middle of the night, with long walks, long drives, with a gun in his pocket, looking for women that he could kill.
09:17And he said before he could pull a trigger, he had to view his victims as what he wanted them to be.
09:30At that time, as angry as I was feeling, I had to reduce them to just objects of my, you know, anger, hatred, or whatever.
09:40If I put myself in a position where I saw that they were really, you know, humans, and I, in fact, if I engaged them in a conversation or something, then that would, immediately I would lose everything I psyched myself up for.
09:53When some of his intended victims would maybe ask him for help or smile, game was off.
10:02He couldn't, he couldn't harm them.
10:06One night, he was out with a gun in his pocket, intending to commit a murder.
10:10He came upon ideal victims who were stuck in a snowbank.
10:15He had the perfect target.
10:17And I had the gun in my pocket.
10:22And I, you know, they asked me, hey, could you give us a hand?
10:26Because we're, we're stuck.
10:27We can't get out.
10:28And I, I looked at these people, and I said, all right, yeah, I'm sure.
10:32And I, I helped them.
10:33You never thought at that time, just turning, turning the gun.
10:38I, I, no, because I wasn't worked up in that, in that state.
10:43I, I, I didn't want to do that, you know.
10:46I had contact with them.
10:47I saw them as persons.
10:49Even for that brief second, I, I looked at their faces, you know.
10:52And then I said to myself, oh, thank God, you know.
10:54I, I mean something to somebody, even if it's just for a second.
10:57You know, I'm, I'm called upon to, to help.
11:00I would have been, I've been more grateful for that incident, you understand,
11:05of my chance to help somebody than to go out and, and hurt somebody.
11:11And rather than kill them, he pushed them out.
11:14And they were very thankful.
11:16And he said, you know, my pleasure.
11:19Have a good night.
11:21Sent them on their way.
11:23Happy to have done a good deed.
11:26And then he went on and killed somebody else.
11:2818-year-old Valentina Suriani and her steady boyfriend, 20-year-old Alexander Esau,
11:43were parked in his car on the Hutchinson River Parkway service road.
11:47At 3 a.m., three shots tore through the side window of the car.
11:50Valentina died, a bullet wound in the head.
11:53Alexander was hit twice in the head.
11:55He died at 9 o'clock last night.
11:59It was in April of 1977.
12:01And this time with the sixth shooting, a lot of us took note
12:05because the killer went back to the Bronx.
12:07It was in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx,
12:11actually quite close to where Berkowitz grew up.
12:13Everybody knew everybody in that neighborhood.
12:18It was really close-knit and always felt safe there.
12:22I mean, I was walking to school by myself when I was 10 years old.
12:26I met Valentina when I first went off to school.
12:30We knew each other forever.
12:32We'd hang out at each other's houses.
12:35When Val and Alex met, they were destined to be together.
12:40Learning about Val was very tough.
12:44My sister Teresa and I worked that Sunday morning
12:47at a local supermarket somewhere between 9.30 and 10 o'clock,
12:51and I saw my father coming down.
12:54He got on my line and started shooing people away,
12:57telling them I was closed.
12:59I said, Dad, what's the matter? What did I do?
13:03And he just looked at me and he said, Gloria, Val was killed last night.
13:07I could feel the coffee and buns coming back up.
13:14And I remember splashing cold water on my face,
13:20and the anger hit.
13:23And there was a big picture in the newspaper.
13:27.44 caliber killer headline.
13:30Everybody knew Val. She wasn't some stranger.
13:33This was one of our own.
13:38As if they hadn't paid enough for the broken dreams
13:41or fantasies of this psychopathic killer,
13:44many of those that prayed for Valentina today
13:47will also be praying for her boyfriend of three years,
13:51Alexander Esau, as the fifth victim of the killers.
13:54He'll be buried tomorrow.
13:56After Val and Alex were killed,
13:59the neighborhood did start to believe
14:01that he was targeting our neighborhood.
14:04Val and Donna Lauria from the first shooting
14:09in July of 76 lived pretty much on the same block.
14:12So those shootings were just yards apart.
14:16That's when, you know, you relate everything back
14:19and you realize that they were that close.
14:24Girls started asking themselves,
14:26did I meet this guy at a bar or a disco?
14:30Did I rebuff him?
14:31Is he gonna come after me?
14:32Did they know this guy?
14:34You start to imagine, maybe it is personal.
14:37Maybe he does know us.
14:41This double homicide in the Bronx
14:43with Alexander Esau and Valentina Sirianni
14:46was a huge front-page headline,
14:49especially because the killer left a note.
14:53What did you get to note on it?
14:58One G-O or another?
15:00Right alongside the car.
15:01You know, I just dropped it.
15:02It was in a sealed envelope
15:04and I just dropped it by the car.
15:06When the police get there,
15:09the first patrolman sees a letter,
15:12an envelope on the street, picks it up.
15:15Did it have his name on it?
15:17No, it had the...
15:19the guy who was running the investigation.
15:22He had his name on it.
15:24Joseph Borelli.
15:29We're back in the war room
15:31in my squad office
15:33and there was a bunch of us there
15:35and Kevin Borelli came walking in.
15:38He had the letter in his hands
15:39and he said, I gotta read this.
15:41And he read it to us.
15:44Mr. Joe Borelli, Queens Homicide.
15:47I am deeply hurt by your calling me a woman hater.
15:51I am not, but I am a monster.
15:54I am the son of Sam.
15:56Sam loves to drink blood.
16:01Go out and kill commands Father Sam.
16:04I feel like an outsider.
16:07I'm on a different wavelength than everybody else.
16:10Programmed to kill.
16:12I love to hunt.
16:13Prowling the streets looking for fair game.
16:16Tasty meat.
16:17Mr. Borelli, sir, I don't want to kill anymore.
16:20No, sir.
16:21No more.
16:22But I must honor thy father.
16:24To the people of Queens, I love you.
16:26I want you to wish all of you a happy Easter.
16:30Police.
16:31Let me haunt you with these words.
16:34I'll be back.
16:35I'll be back.
16:36To be interpreted as bang, bang, bang.
16:40Yours and murder, Mr. Monster.
16:47Is that, is that crazy?
16:51Is that insanity?
16:53Is that, I don't have the words for it.
16:55It's just unbelievable.
16:57I'm getting annoyed just reading this, Dan.
17:04When that letter was read, it's like our jaws dropped.
17:08And it was a major concern because not only taunting us,
17:15but warning us that he's going to do it again.
17:20He was scarier than anybody else I can ever remember covering.
17:24In this letter, he goes from saying he doesn't want to kill people
17:27and have a nice Easter to I'm going to drink all these girls' blood
17:31and I'm going to be back and I'm going to kill anybody that tries to kill me.
17:35That's all in the space of one letter.
17:37Son of Sam.
17:40That's the first time we ever heard that name.
17:42What does that mean?
17:43Who is Sam?
17:44A lot of people in the Vietnam War refer to themselves as sons of Sam
17:47being sons of Uncle Sam.
17:49Of course, we have it also connected with Satanism, Diabolism.
17:53Some Sam being Sam the Devil.
17:57And we just don't know what he means.
17:59He knew that this Captain Borelli was, you know, a guy that was trying to find him.
18:05And it's a, you know, it's a catch me if you can.
18:09I'm smarter than you are.
18:10Be vale, vale, vale. I'm da monster.
18:14They don't print it in the newspaper, but they publicize that he did leave a note.
18:20The city was just horrified, terrified, in a frenzy of fear.
18:25In New York, the search continues for the .44 caliber killer.
18:29Some women in the area are terrified, particularly ones with shoulder length dark brown hair.
18:34I had the dark hair, and I would pin it back in a bun or a ponytail.
18:39When I went out at night, I would race into the house.
18:43We put our hair up so the guy can't see the length of our hair.
18:51Well, there weren't crazy letters, by the way.
18:54You see, people look at them and say, the man's the way you met me.
18:57But you see, they missed the whole point of the letters.
19:02The letters were actually to spur the police on, right?
19:05You see, to drive me harder.
19:07We pushed the police into doing more to catch me.
19:11It was a fun game for him.
19:15And he intended to keep it going as long as he possibly could.
19:20I think now he's into the kind of enjoying the publicity aspect of this.
19:25I see it as a kind of a becoming a cat and mouse thing.
19:30What's it going to take to break this?
19:33A lot of luck.
19:34We're going to have to be in the right place at the right time.
19:36But right now, there's really nothing to go on?
19:38Nothing.
19:40At this point, the case has exploded beyond just a single precinct captain handling it.
19:47So two days after this sixth shooting, the double homicide in the Bronx, the police commissioner decided, we have to make something very formal.
19:59So they announced the formation of a task force.
20:02Up until that point, it was kind of like unofficial.
20:04It was just a group of us together.
20:06When it was expanded, they gave it the name Omega Task Force.
20:11And this would have about 30 crack detectives that will develop some kind of psychological profile on who this killer could be.
20:19When you make an appeal to the public and to help, then I think we're obligated when they call that we have to go out and work on whatever they give us.
20:30You appreciate help from any source.
20:32Because we're out of state, we needed help.
20:35Joe Borelli is a captain.
20:38And in the hierarchy of police, that isn't a high enough rank.
20:42So the commissioner gives it over to Deputy Inspector Dowd, Timothy Dowd.
20:50Commissioner Claude calls me, Joe, I'm sending out Dowd.
20:54You're going to remain as his executive officer, because you're right there from the beginning.
20:59It didn't bother me at all.
21:00Yes, we've received a tremendous amount of calls from the public.
21:05The public's been very cooperative.
21:07The task force was like bedlam.
21:11There were seven phones in the task force opening.
21:14There was one call after another on all seven lines.
21:19They were taking down hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of leads from the public.
21:24We didn't have a face or an image or anything to work with.
21:30You know, the department artists who sketched out these here images from people's reckoning of somebody for a few seconds, they were off.
21:41But the press took it and ran with it.
21:44He was generally described as white between 20 and 35 years old.
21:48People were calling, you know, conspiracy theories all over the place.
21:54We always had three piles of information.
21:57I used to call it the three I's.
21:59It was immediate, important, ignore.
22:04The newspapers would be interviewing psychiatrists and anytime they mentioned something, some crazy things like, we think he's impotent.
22:16You know, we'd get calls of women giving up impotent friends or something like that.
22:21It was crazy, absolutely crazy.
22:25One of a million amateur psychologists who are attempting to figure out Son of Sam, each with his own theory.
22:31Dr. Harvey Schlossberg is a professional psychologist and a professional policeman.
22:36This individual is a, uh, uh, contrary to popular belief where people are looking for somebody with red eyes foaming at the mouth, uh, like a mad dog kind of thing.
22:47I think this is a normally, a normal appearing and apparently normal functioning individual for the most part.
22:54I think he doesn't stand out at all.
22:56He's a former cop.
22:57He's a cab driver or a priest or a sailor or perhaps even a television newscaster.
23:03Right now, he is anyone.
23:07Everybody just went absolutely nuts as amateur detectives trying to find out who this person was.
23:14But nobody had any clue as what was going on with this guy.
23:19People just think that maybe they, they either thought I was deranged bad man, totally out of contact with reality, which wasn't the case.
23:26Or they think I was, I'm just a cold-blooded visual person that just goes up to somebody, you know.
23:31How?
23:33But if they didn't know my, like, what was going on inside me, you understand.
23:38And it was just continuous succession, a whole lifetime of angers and frustrations coming out.
23:43In the late 1960s, after his mother died, at the age of about 15, David moved from the South Bronx up to this newly built neighborhood called Co-op City in the Bronx with his father, which was affordable housing for businessmen, firemen, cops.
24:01Taxi drivers, working people, and he just fell in with a group of kids.
24:20In 1970, I moved to Co-op City in the Bronx.
24:25And it was really a nice place to live at the time.
24:28We had a supermarket.
24:30We had a community center.
24:32You could hang out right there without ever having to leave the community.
24:35I was in my senior year of high school, didn't really know anybody at the time.
24:40One day, my younger brother came up and he said, hey, John, there's a bunch of guys you should meet down at the bottom of the building.
24:47I went down and there was a whole group of guys I met.
24:50David Berkowitz was one of them.
24:52Berkowitz became what's known as a buff, a fire buff and a police buff.
24:58The 70s, New York City was like the Wild West.
25:03There were fires all over the place.
25:05And fire buffs would take their scanners and they would ride around the Bronx.
25:11And if a big fire came in, they would go to the fire.
25:14Or if a major police incident happened, they would go.
25:18If there was a fire up the street with a building, a building in flames,
25:23and if people were trapped in there, I'd be the first one to run in there to help them, you know?
25:27Kids were playing football and baseball.
25:32We were responding to fires and police scenes.
25:35And Dave was an integral part.
25:36Dave was with us every single night, every weekend.
25:40We were inseparable.
25:42This was a guy who was able to present totally normal in the real world,
25:46have acquaintances, have social relations,
25:49but at the same time was harboring deep inner rage not only at himself
25:54and his situation and his circumstances in life.
25:57My hidden or repressed feelings or emotions or whatever you see
26:02that were below the surface, you can't see that.
26:04They didn't understand the motives.
26:06Even before he started killing people, he was, you know,
26:09a walking, seething cauldron of rage that was so well concealed.
26:15His entire life he'd been practicing that act of keeping that all inside this horrible side of himself.
26:27It wasn't so much them that I was trying to pull.
26:30It was myself.
26:32I wanted to do, you know, something good.
26:35I wanted to be needed by somebody.
26:37I'd have much rather been a hero than a villain,
26:40doing something spectacular every other week, you know?
26:43Rescuing people or something.
26:47David Berkowitz was always looking to be a hero and get attention for being a hero in his own mind.
26:55He was a patriot. He was an all-American boy.
27:12It was June of 71, Dave graduated Columbus High School.
27:15Couldn't wait, went down to the recruiter, signed up for the army.
27:19Meanwhile, in this jungle war, the United States is becoming more fully involved with each passing day.
27:24He wanted to go into infantry, and he wanted to go to Vietnam to fight for his country.
27:29Why did you feel like you wanted to go to Vietnam?
27:34Well, it was very patriotic, and it's so...
27:39I can't explain it.
27:40You didn't have any sort of bloodlust at that point that made you want to go to Vietnam.
27:46Perhaps subconsciously, but I wasn't aware of it.
27:51I think he probably reasoned that, you know, any son of a bitch as horrible as me
27:56would probably be a pretty damn good killer, so I should be in Vietnam.
28:01He would be able to go back to his childhood,
28:05where he gained some pleasure out of knocking over enemy soldiers.
28:10But instead of the chance for death and glory in combat,
28:19he was sent to the demilitarized zone, the DMZ, in South Korea.
28:26Where there was no shooting war going on, there's no action there.
28:34That desire to experience combat and perhaps become a hero was thwarted.
28:41His demons continued to eat away at him during these idle hours that he had on base.
28:46When you weren't in the field on maneuvers, around 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock, you were done.
28:52You showered up, you got your passion, you went into the village and you partied.
28:56And you got drunk on that cheap Korean wines they had, and all the grass that was available, you know, all the women.
29:03And for the next year, we all got letters from Dave.
29:09And it's just amazing how somebody could change.
29:13He said that he had to start using drugs to calm down,
29:17and the drugs he was using can totally warp your mind.
29:22You were, you were supposed to know when you were writing these letters?
29:25Yeah, they were kind of crazy themselves, because that was when I was like, used to get high a lot.
29:32You know, just smoke with all the guys.
29:34And we used to write, how would you call it, freaky letters to shock everybody, you know?
29:40Did you ever do anything with any acid or...?
29:42I tried that, yeah, a few times.
29:45But I don't, I never used any of those drugs or anything except, you know?
29:50He was changing. He was a changed person.
29:53And we knew he was shot, he was gone.
30:04He comes back from the Army in June of 1974.
30:09He was 21, with very little feelings of ambition or a future.
30:14Did you ever try to find a fire department in the police force?
30:17When I was a teenager, I wanted to join.
30:19But then I realized, you know, you gotta have almost a college degree majoring in the sciences.
30:25And types of, you know, hydraulics and that.
30:28I could never get into that.
30:30Meanwhile, of course, he's seeing all his friends go into their tracks of getting married.
30:36Becoming the cop that he wanted to become.
30:40And he had nothing.
30:41So none of the guys really had anything to do with him.
30:44So he came back and he was kind of alone.
30:46We never got together again.
30:47Berkowitz is left alone in the big city, which was a bad place to be for David Berkowitz.
30:57His father remarried and moved to Florida.
31:01And David took that as another sign of, uh, rejection.
31:04He had this rage that he'd carried since childhood and he could no longer control it.
31:12When did the moment come?
31:14I guess I made a decision to myself, almost unconsciously, to just begin prowling around looking for somebody to harm.
31:25He just had this need to kill to release frustration.
31:46So he experimented at first.
31:50Well, how am I going to do this?
31:51He didn't settle on the gun right away.
31:55Christmas Eve, 1975, his first violent experiment was with a 14-year-old girl on this overpass in Co-op City, quite near where he grew up.
32:08David is on that bridge walking, seeking to do harm.
32:15And a young lady walks in front of him.
32:17And this is the first attack.
32:21David will stab her.
32:24She screams and yells and claws at him.
32:28And David runs.
32:30She's wearing a heavy coat.
32:32That probably prevented the blade from getting deep, deep enough to do significant damage.
32:37But he stabbed her no fewer than six times.
32:40Why did you let her go after you had her?
32:43Because I didn't really want to do anything.
32:45You see?
32:47The one stabbing attack confirmed by police and investigators and by the hospital was a failure.
32:54I think he was shamed and outraged that she survived.
33:00He realizes at that moment that stabbing people is just too personal for him.
33:08It's too humanizing, too messy, too loud.
33:11He learned that wasn't a reliable methodology for murdering a woman.
33:18He needed to keep as much distance as possible in these killings.
33:22So in May of 76, he decides that he's going to take a road trip and he's going to get in his car and go visit his old army buddy Billy Dan Parker in Houston, Texas.
33:39That night, he said, you want to see a good movie?
33:43I say, a really good movie I like.
33:45This is my friend Dan, right?
33:47And I says, well, yeah, all right, I haven't been to the movie in a while.
33:51It's pretty popular.
33:52It's a movie called Taxi Driver.
33:56So he sees this movie and he immediately relates to it.
34:00Because all of a sudden it's about a guy who comes back from the army rejected with feelings of anomie and ennui and total alienation and rejection.
34:08From society like Berkowitz, the guy who was on a hero mission, he's shooting the bad guys, right?
34:17I do remember the scene where I think it was De Niro was standing in front of a mirror.
34:22You talking to me?
34:23And I think he's pulling out his gun saying, you talking to me? You talking to me?
34:27Well, I'm the only one here.
34:29The movies didn't cause it, but they reassured me of my feelings of self-destructive or destructive tendencies and, you know, reaffirmed the idea that I could take them out against society.
34:46Like, it's the proper thing to do in an American way or something.
34:49The guy from Taxi Driver did it. All these mass killers did it.
34:56It clarified for him this dark path that he had no choice but to go down.
35:03And he found not just the perfect narrative, but also the weapon.
35:08He buys the infamous .44 Charter Arms Bulldog in a pawn shop in Houston, Texas.
35:17He bought it under his neck. How about this gun, Dave? You think it's nice?
35:22I says, yeah, Dan, that's a good one. That was the .44 Bulldog.
35:25You know, because it was inexpensive, $125 then.
35:28And, you know, it was small and powerful. You know, it was .44.
35:34We filled out that silly form. And that was it. We walked out with the gun.
35:39In the movie Taxi Driver, the .44 becomes synonymous with the destruction of females.
35:46There's the very, very famous or infamous, depending on your perspective, scene with Martin Scorsese, who plays a character in the movie,
35:53sitting in the backseat of Travis's cab, looking up an apartment and talking about his wife being up there cheating on him.
36:01And he says the very now famous line.
36:04I'm going to kill her. I'm going to kill her with a .44 Magnum Pistol.
36:07Did you ever see what a .44 Magnum Pistol would do to a woman's face? I'm going to fucking destroy it.
36:12I got to think that Berkowitz was inspired by that in some capacity as well.
36:17Just after I got back to New York, from Texas, I put in the application to get a cab driver's job.
36:29I had the cab, and I was actually patterning my life after the movie Taxi Driver.
36:35I saw myself exactly as Robert De Niro, an outcast, a loser living in a cramped little apartment, which is just everything that was me in that movie, you understand?
36:46He became this egomaniac who could manipulate an entire city, which he did.
36:55April 1977 needs to be studied as one of the most pivotal months in the entire Son of Sam Spree.
37:09The month in which you realize that everything got ramped up a notch.
37:18At this point, Berkowitz has committed six shootings.
37:22You can say he lost it before, but he really started to lose his grasp of reality now.
37:28He is exhibiting the inability to handle noise, inability to handle life in general, the feelings of absolute rejection to the point of total paranoia about the world.
37:41He's now complaining about the neighbor downstairs making noise.
37:45He had issues with dogs barking.
37:50They were annoying sounds.
37:52I mean, it would annoy anybody, you know, the way it was.
37:56They were right down below my window.
37:58They roamed around the whole big yard.
38:00It was a series of neighbors with dogs that really were a trigger for him.
38:09But there was one that pushed him right over the edge of sanity.
38:14At 35 Pine Street, David's apartment has two windows.
38:21They faced the street behind.
38:25The house directly behind was owned by Sam Carr.
38:31Just an average Joe with his three children, owning a dog, keeping him in the backyard.
38:39The dog's name is Harvey.
38:42Harvey barks.
38:46Sam had nothing to do with this.
38:48But suddenly, with the howling of the dog and this constant tormenting of David, Sam suddenly gets to be important in David's life.
39:03In a sense, he was responsible for, you know, keeping me agitated in an agitated state all the time.
39:08Because that dog raised hell in my life, you know.
39:13Berkowitz just became obsessed with the Carr family.
39:17He harassed them like crazy.
39:19He's going in the middle of the night and throwing Molotov cocktails.
39:24He also sent them a whole bevy of threatening letters.
39:29David will actually go to the house, first setting a fire, then shooting the dog.
39:35Did he shoot the dog?
39:38Uh, no, with the rifle, .45, count of rifle.
39:42I admit it was pretty extreme.
39:44Uh, but, you know, his dog was inconsiderate.
39:49That doesn't work. The dog survives.
39:52Eventually, the Carrs will go to the Yonkers PD, but there was nothing to go on.
40:01At this point, Sam Carr can't identify who does it.
40:04He was reacting to Sam Carr and the noise that the barking dogs make, and Berkowitz was absolutely inspired by that.
40:13It happened about the same time, the identity of Sonny Sam.
40:18Yeah, well, that's where I got it from.
40:21And, uh, the idea of pulling myself Sonny Sam, I guess, just came to me.
40:26Because Sam Carr was causing me a lot of, uh, aggravation.
40:31This was a guy who was just wigging out in his apartment on Pine Street in Yonkers, and the waves of madness emanating from David Berkowitz's mind really ended up engulfing the entire city of New York.
40:54What the killer looks like, where he lives, what he does, why he kills, all of this, like the true identity of Jack the Ripper, is still unknown.
41:06We weren't making much progress, not because of effort.
41:09It was still because there was a lack of any legitimate lead that we could follow up on.
41:15Well, we are confirmed in our opinion of, uh, his method of operation.
41:21Any closer to his identity, Ron?
41:24Uh, to his actual name or, uh, I would say no.
41:30We were dealing not only with trying to solve a case, but we had to satisfy the press, you know.
41:37And the press, they were pushing and pushing.
41:40You couldn't feed them enough information.
41:42What is it about the courtship process that seems to attract him?
41:46Do you have any idea?
41:48I really have no idea.
41:50You couldn't satisfy them.
41:52Their appetite was such that they hadn't eaten in a month.
41:56That's the way it was.
41:57When Berkowitz realized the way that the newspaper stories were being played, he said,
42:05Wow, that's me.
42:07I'm doing things that are bringing a great deal of attention to this alternate personality of mine.
42:14But he wanted to control that narrative.
42:17He was always a character in search of an author.
42:20And Jimmy Breslin became the guy that sketched him in as the son of Sam.
42:27You don't know what he looks like.
42:28You don't know what he sounds like.
42:29You don't know where he lives.
42:30You don't know where he's gonna be tonight.
42:32Uh, we're helpless.
42:33Jimmy Breslin was the king of New York City tabloid journalism.
42:39He was a columnist.
42:40He was the most powerful journalist in New York City at the time.
42:45We've got 40,000 dead.
42:46Remember them while you walk the streets.
42:48God bless you.
42:50Jimmy Breslin was kind of the working man's columnist.
42:53He lived in Queens.
42:54And he was out on the beat.
42:56He wasn't afraid to go out and knock on doors.
42:59A walk around the convention floor at night is disheartening.
43:02But they are running a nearly all-white political party in the year 1968.
43:08There are people that bought Daily News every day because they wanted to read Jimmy Breslin.
43:15My father was known to care about the permanent underclass.
43:18And he used to tell me news travels east to west.
43:21And it begins in New York City.
43:23In the summer of 77, I was a student at New York University.
43:28I think I was 20, 21.
43:30I worked for the Daily News.
43:31I delivered the newspapers.
43:32I was the guy in the back of the truck throwing the bundles all over at newsstands.
43:36So it was part of a family business.
43:39Newspaper writing in our family in the column, everybody had to contribute whether you liked it or not.
43:44My father was paying acute attention to the murders.
43:47He said to me, you know, I want you to go to the Daily News to my office and I want you to check the mail.
43:54He had hundreds of letters coming in every day.
43:57I'm rummaging through and I find this one letter.
44:00And I looked at it and it was written with very cryptic, like the handwriting wasn't just normal.
44:06It was like all like zigzaggy almost.
44:10I showed it to the secretary and she said, oh my God.
44:13Take that home right now.
44:14Your father wants it.
44:15So I raced out of the Daily News building up 3rd Avenue to get the E train two hour home in Forest Hills.
44:23My father was in the bedroom.
44:25I brought it in.
44:26So let me see that thing.
44:27Dear Mr. Jimmy Breslin, hello from the gutters of NYC, which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood.
44:42Hello from the cracks in the sidewalk of New York City and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed on the dried blood of the dead that has seeped into these cracks.
44:54JB, I'm just dropping a line to let you know that I appreciate your interest in these recent and horrendous .44 caliber killings.
45:04Tell me, Jim, what will you have for July 29th?
45:07You could forget about me if you like, because I don't care for publicity.
45:11However, you must not forget Donna Lauria and you cannot let the people forget her either.
45:17She was a very, very sweet girl, but Sam's a thirsty lad and he won't let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood.
45:28Upon my capture, I promise to buy all you guys working on the case a new pair of shoes.
45:33If I can get up the money.
45:36Son of Sam.
45:38That's crazy.
45:43The letter was very eerie.
45:46You know, then you know that he read something that you wrote and that somewhere out there, he's reading again.
45:54The killer signs it, Son of Sam.
45:56In Borelli's letter, he used that phrase in the body of the letter.
46:00So now that seals the deal.
46:03This killer is Son of Sam.
46:05He's really no longer the .44 caliber killer.
46:07And the Daily News now, they publish it.
46:10This menace, this terror, this phantom that had just been something abstract to most people,
46:17now all of a sudden had a name that caught on like wildfire.
46:24It's a very, very interesting thing.
46:25It's a very interesting thing.
46:26Why didn't you choose Breslin to send the stuff to him?
46:29No, I selected Breslin.
46:30The reason was because he ran a few columns about the earlier crimes.
46:35You know, he expressed more interest than any one reporter from the other papers, you know.
46:42So I wrote to him.
46:43Berkowitz knew that if he could get Breslin, now the Son of Sam was world famous.
46:50Now the Son of Sam was Jack the Ripper.
46:52He would be remembered forever.
46:54Did you get the idea for this kind of writing?
47:01From the Jack the Ripper book.
47:03It said in the book that there was a great many of these so-called killers that have a
47:10need to flaunt their crimes and write the news media or police and things.
47:15And I got it right out of that.
47:17Because I had that book even before the shooting started.
47:22Several days after that letter went in, my father wrote the column for the killer to give himself up.
47:33The page one story afterwards was, you know, give yourself up.
47:36It's your only way out.
47:37Breslin to the killer.
47:39Berkowitz loved the attention that he was getting.
47:44He played with the media.
47:46He toyed with the media.
47:48David liked the response and he answered it.
47:51On June 26, 1977, just weeks after Jimmy Breslin gets a letter from the Son of Sam, just over two months after the sixth shooting in the Bronx, another young couple in Bayside Queens, Judy Placido, who's 17, Sal Lupo, who's 20.
48:16They are at a disco.
48:17They are at a disco.
48:18It was called Eliphas.
48:22And this was during the disco craze.
48:24And people wanted to go out and dance.
48:25Even though we have a serial killer on the loose, some people still wanted to go out.
48:29They just, you know, get along and click up that night and they end up in the bouncer's Cadillac.
48:44They're sitting in a car outside Eliphas, and Judy Placido had long dark hair.
48:51I'll lift a cigarette.
48:52I'll lift a cigarette.
48:53She'll lift a cigarette.
48:54I'm gonna put my arm around it.
48:56I'm gonna put my arm around it.
48:57They were mentioning about the fact, you know, the Son of Sam being around.
49:03Well, anyway, just as I put my arm around her, I seen a face by the passenger side window.
49:11It was, um, first shot, went through the window, hit my wrist, hit her.
49:26Uh, I slid down, and then two more followed after that.
49:45It was loud.
49:47You didn't really, you know, your ears were ringing.
49:51I tried to get out and get help.
49:53They're actually talking about the Son of Sam, this elusive killer.
49:58And then gunfire, and they both get hit.
50:01Sal Lupo got hit in the arm.
50:03Judy Placido is actually grievously wounded.
50:06She is shot in the head.
50:09The bullet traveled, hit her skull, and didn't penetrate it.
50:12And really, by all accounts, should have been mortally wounded.
50:15She survived.
50:18Did you give a description to the police for which they drew a sketch?
50:21Uh, no, they never...
50:23I always really never came, you know.
50:26Because what they did, they kept on showing me a lot of pictures,
50:28and all I was doing was jamming my head up.
50:29I couldn't think, you know, who, you know...
50:32I couldn't really think.
50:34Nothing that we received at the scene of the last incident
50:37will enable us to get a further description of his facial qualities.
50:42The hysteria at that point was that everybody was extremely afraid to even go out.
50:52It was like Jack the Ripper, you just didn't leave home after dark.
50:55One thing that I really don't do anymore is to park cars.
50:59I think I'm moving out of here.
51:02The police said they were trying to put a net over the city to catch this guy,
51:06but they didn't have a lot to go on.
51:09We're kind of searching for straws.
51:12We're doing everything you can think of.
51:14What else can we do?
51:16You know, that was a big topic.
51:18Some of the guys were coming up with different ways of drawing this guy out.
51:23We did some unusual things.
51:25We were going to set up a decoy unit
51:28with a female mannequin and a male detective and put them in lovers' lane.
51:33Everybody out all over, Queens and the Bronx.
51:39After a while, the detectives came to me and said,
51:42it's not working.
51:44There's no movement.
51:45Even if he was looking at us,
51:48all he had to do was send five minutes
51:50and then realize there was a dummy in the car.
51:54So we borrowed some wigs, female wigs.
52:01And we put the female wigs on the male detectives.
52:05And that made the couple in the car.
52:08Pretending to be lovers in a lover's lane,
52:11is it putting their lives in jeopardy? Sure.
52:14Definitely.
52:16You get driven, you know?
52:18I mean, you want it to end.
52:20You want it so badly that you'll do anything, you know?
52:23It was one hell of a mess.
52:29This anniversary's coming Friday.
52:31And, you know, if they...
52:33People just don't realize these things don't end until they catch this guy.
52:37You still got to be cautious.
52:39I mean, this guy's a nut.
52:41I was supposed to go to a party Friday night, and I'm not going.
52:44Not going?
52:45I'm scared.
52:46It's crazy.
52:47It's killing all these people.
52:48I'd be stupid to go out.
52:50So if you think New York City is in a bad way,
52:52with a serial killer on the loose, a financial crisis,
52:55a pretty bad crime rate,
52:56now the first anniversary of the first Son of Sam shooting is approaching.
53:00Everybody is geared up to, okay, he's going to hit again.
53:05Son of Sam alluded to that in the letter to Jimmy Breslin.
53:08What will you have for the 29th?
53:10And everyone's worried.
53:12And now Jimmy Breslin decided to write a challenge almost to the killer.
53:20On July 28th, the Daily News headline,
53:25to the .44 caliber killer on his first death day.
53:31Holy crow.
53:34Is that yellow journalism?
53:36I don't know.
53:38I wouldn't have written it.
53:40They egged the killer on.
53:43News sells.
53:45So my father was not a fool.
53:47It's his job to keep up a story.
53:49You don't bail on a story,
53:50especially where they haven't caught a killer,
53:52who wrote to you and the whole city,
53:54and it's a significant day of the anniversary.
53:57You have to write to him.
53:59And other journalists, of course, were irate over this.
54:02Well, that's too bad.
54:03Is that like taunting the guy into action?
54:06No, I don't think it was taunting.
54:08I mean, this man had just been going out,
54:10looking to kill at all times.
54:11And where did it begin?
54:13It started with him writing about it.
54:15The 29th, he was the one that brought up the date.
54:19You know, that's how I got attention from them.
54:23Not so much to serve something up,
54:25but the idea to feel taunting.
54:27They just see the letters and the guy terrorizing.
54:30Yeah, well, immediately, all her attention was
54:33the direction towards me, because all the press,
54:36you know, the media people from New York City went there.
54:38I mean, all I had to do was sit back at my own home.
54:41I saw everything right from the TV set.
54:44He was watching the press.
54:46He was reading it.
54:48And every word meant something to him.
54:51The press became the filter agent
54:54of what would get to the killer
54:56and what the killer would respond back.
54:59The anniversary is approaching.
55:01They're waiting for what he's going to do,
55:05what life is he going to shatter.
55:07Officially, police say they are confident
55:10they will catch the killer,
55:11that it is just a matter of time.
55:13However, privately, some say they fear
55:15that someone else's time may run out
55:17before the killer's does.
55:19New York City is awfully big.
55:22And cops are looking all over the city for me.
55:26Waiting for the grim reaper.
55:49It's a matter of time.
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