AP PSYCHOLOGY CASE STUDY 3: SON OF SAM
I.DISCOVERY OF THE CRIMINAL
On the morning of July 29, 1976, no one could expect that a serial killer was making his début. Two young women, Donna Lauria, an eighteen-year-old brunette, and her nineteen-year-old friend Jody Valenti, were talking in Jody's car near the entrance of the Lauria's apartment building inNew York City. Because it was one o’clock in the morning, her parents stopped by the car on their way home from an evening out and told her it was time to come upstairs.
Donna promised she would. But, after her parents went inside, Donna noticed a man standing alongside the passenger side of the car. "Who is this guy?" She asked. "What does he want?" Jody scrambled from the car, screaming for help. Donna's father raced his car to the hospital, hoping that doctors could save his Donna.
Police could find no motive for the attack. Finally, they theorized that it may have been either a mob execution with mistaken victims or a lone psycho. Jody, semi-shocked, did manage to give something of a description of the assailant. But, under duress, her description lacked.
On the night of October 23, 1976, three months after the Lauria girl’s senseless murder, twenty-year-old Carl Denaro drank beer with his friends. Among his friends was a girl, Rosemary Keenan, whom he knew from college.
The party broke up after 2:30 A.M and Carl drove Rosemary home. The couple parked near her home and talked. Suddenly, a man appeared outside the passenger side. He drew a gun and fired five times into the car, wounding Carl in the head. Terrified, Rosemary drove the car back to the bar from where friends rushed Carl to the hospital. There, surgeons replaced a part of his damaged skull with a metal plate.
A little more than a month later, on the evening of November 26, 1976, sixteen-year-old Donna DeMasi and her eighteen-year-old friend Joanne Lomino were coming home from a movie late at night. The bus stopped close to Joanne's house. Joanne noticed a man standing nearby. She urged her friend to walk faster. He began following them.
"Do you know where..." he addressed them as though he was about to ask directions, but he never finished his sentence. Instead, he pulled a gun from beneath his jacket and fired at them. Both girls were hit. Then their assailant emptied his gun by firing at a house.
Hearing the girls’ screams, Joanne's family rushed from their house to help the girls. When they reached the hospital, surgeons determined that Donna would be okay. The bullet had passed within a quarter inch of her spine and exited her body. Joanne was not so lucky. Her spine had been shattered by the bullet. She would live, but was now paraplegic.
Things quieted for two months. Then in the early hours of January 30, 1977, the killer went hunting for his next victim.
Twenty-six-year-old Christine Freund and her finance John Diel left. The Wine Gallery in Queens around 12:10 A.M. and strolled towards his car. They were too absorbed in each other to observe that man who had been watching them.
As they sat in the car listening to the Partridge Family’s song “I think I love you”, two shots broke the night, shattering the windshield. Christine grabbed her head; both shots had struck her. John rested her head on the driver's seat and ran for help, trying to flag down passing cars, but to no avail. People in nearby homes had heard the shots and had called the police.
A few hours later Christine died in the hospital.The police had two theories: that the killer was either a psycho or someone who had something personal against Christine Freund.
Coffey could see that the bullets used to kill her were not typical. They had come from a powerful, large caliber gun. Investigating further, he discovered that her murder matched those other assaults on Donna Lauria, Donna LaMasi and Joanne Lomino.
Coffey had a hunch that they were dealing with one psycho packing a .44, stalking women in various parts of the city. As his investigation began to bear fruit, a homicide task force was formed under Captain Borrelli. Ballistics reported that the weapon employed was a .44 Charter Arms Bulldog -- an unusual weapon.It was beginning to look as though a psycho had randomly targeted attractive young women for assassination.
On the evening of Tuesday, March 8, 1977, an attractive young BarnardCollege honor student named Virginia Voskerichian was walking home from classes in the affluent Forest HillsGarden area. Virginia was a very talented and hardworking young woman who had fled Bulgaria with her family in the late 1950's.
As she followed Dartmouth Street towards her home, a man approached her from the opposite direction. When they were very close, he pulled out a .44 and aimed it at her. She raised her books to protect herself, but a single shot hit her in the face. Virginia died
The policewere nowlooking for a psycho and they knew he was going to kill again. Some random shooting of an attractive young woman. How would they ever prevent it?
The following day, the police commissioner held a press conference to announce to the City of New York that they had linked the various shootings. The commissioner stated that the only description of the murderer was that of "a white male, twenty-five to thirty years old, six feet tall, medium build, with dark hair."
This psycho would keep on killing until he could be found among the millions of men who fit his description.But -- this time there was something different: the killer's letter left at the scene of the murders addressed to Captain Borrelli. The letter in which the killer gave the police his "name" -- the Son of Sam.
Captain Joseph Borrelli of the New York City Police Department was one of the key members of the Omega Group. Operation Omega was the task force assigned to find the psycho who was killing women in various parts of the city with a .44 caliber handgun.
The ".44 Caliber Killer" was getting a great deal of press and Borelli's name had appeared frequently. Now on April 17, 1977, he was looking at a letter addressed to him that had been left at the scene of the latest in this series of murders: With misspellings, it read:
Dear Captain Joseph Borrelli,
I am deeply hurt by your calling me a wemon hater. I am not. But I am a monster. I am the 'Son of Sam.' I am a little brat.When father Sam gets drunk he gets mean. He beats his family. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. Sam loves to drink blood.'Go out and kill,' commands father Sam.'Behind our house some rest. Mostly young -- raped and slaughtered -- their blood drained -- just bones now.Papa Sam keeps me locked in the attic too. I can't get out but I look out the attic window and watch the world go by.I feel like an outsider. I am on a different wavelength then everybody else -- programmed too kill.However, to stop me you must kill me. Attention all police: Shoot me first -- shoot to kill or else keep out of my way or you will die!Papa Sam is old now. He needs some blood to preserve his youth. He has had too many heart attacks. 'Ugh, me hoot, it hurts, sonny boy.'I miss my pretty princess most of all. She's resting in our ladies house. But I'll see her soon.I am the 'Monster' -- 'Beelzebub' -- the chubby behemouth.I love to hunt. Prowling the streets looking for fair game -- tasty meat. The wemon of Queens are prettyist of all. It must be the water they drink. I live for the hunt -- my life. Blood for papa.Mr. Borrelli, sir, I don't want to kill anymore. No sur, no more but I must, 'honour thy father.'I want to make love to the world. I love people. I don't belong on earth. Return me to yahoos.To the people of Queens, I love you. And I want to wish all of you a happy Easter. MayGod bless you in this life and in the next.
The second page of the letter is to the left.:
The letter did not have any useful fingerprints and the envelope had been handled by so many people that if there were any of the murderer's prints, they were lost.
On June 10, a man named Jack Cassara, who lived in New Rochelle, found an odd get-well note in his mailbox from someone named Carr in Yonkers. The card included a picture of a German shepherd dog. It read: "Dear Jack, I'm sorry to hear about that fall you took from the roof of your house. Just want to say 'I'm sorry' but I'm sure it won't be long until you feel much better, healthy, well and strong: Please be careful next time. Since your going to be confined for a long time, let us know if Nann needs anything. Sincerely: Sam and Francis."
Cassara had not fallen off his roof nor had he ever met Sam and Francis Carr. He called them up. The Carrs told the Cassaras about the strange letters they had received about their dog Harvey and how Harvey had been shot. Sam Carr told them about a German shepherd in the neighborhood that also had been shot.
Later, Cassara's nineteen-year-old son Stephen drew an interesting conclusion. He remembered the odd guy, David Berkowitz, who had briefly rented a room in their house in early 1976. "He never came back for his two-hundred dollar security deposit when he left. Well, he was always bothered by our dog, too."
Nann Cassara called the New Rochelle police. When they did contact her, she was sure that Berkowitz was the Son of Sam. The detective mentioned that Craig Glassman, a deputy sheriff and neighbor of Berkowitz, had received an anonymous letter talking about a demon group composed of Glassman, Cassaras and the Carrs. All this proved, however, was that Berkowitz was a little strange, but not a killer and not the Son of Sam. Police are often confronted with odd, yet perfectly legal, behavior on the part of citizens, but cannot do much about it.
In the meantime, Chamberlain and Intervallo of the Yonkers police put Berkowitz's name into their computer and learned his address, the registration number of his Ford Galaxy and the fact that his license had just been suspended.
In the early morning of Sunday, July 31, 1977, a pretty, vivacious young woman named Stacy Moskowitz sat with her handsome young boyfriend Bobby Violante in his dad's car. They had gone to see a movie and had ended the evening parked in a quiet spot near GravesendBay.
"How about taking a walk in the park?" He suggested. Stacy was reticent. "What if the Son of Sam is hiding there?" "This is Brooklyn, not Queens. Come on," he urged her. They got out of the car and walked over to the park swings. Bobby leaned forward to kiss her and she saw something. "Someone's looking at us," she whispered. Bobby saw a man nearby, but the stranger turned away and disappeared behind the parked cars. Stacy was frightened and wanted to go back to the car. When they got to the car, Stacy wanted to leave, but Bobby persuaded her to stay for another few minutes.
"All of a sudden," Bobby recalled, "I heard like a humming sound. First I thought I heard glass break. Then I didn't hear Stacy any more. I didn't feel anything, but I saw her fall away from me. I don't know who got shot first, her or me."
Bobby Violante had been shot twice in the face. Stacy had been shot once in the head. Bobby could hear her moaning. He hit the car's horn and then pulled himself from the car and cried for help.Together, the parents of Bobby and Stacy waited for hours as surgeons worked to save their children. Thirty-eight hours later, Stacy Moskowitz died. Bobby Violante survived
In the meantime, several traffic tickets that had been written the night of the shooting, outside witness Davis’ apartment, were at last found. All but one were investigated and yielded nothing. One final ticket was yet to be investigated -- one belonging to a Yonkers man named David Berkowitz.
Detective Jimmy Justus called the Yonkers Police Department and talked to Wheat Carr, She gave him a real earful about David Berkowitz. On August 10, the police put Berkowitz’s apartment at 35 Pine Street under surveillance. The number of cops grew as everyone wanted to be in on the arrest.
A figure emerged from the apartment building, carrying a paper bag. The man was heavy with dark hair and he walked slowly toward the Ford Galaxy. This time, the police waited for the man to get into the car and put the paper bag on the passenger seat.
"Freeze!" he yelled. "Police!"
The man inside the car turned around and smiled idiotically at them.
"Now that I've got you," the cop said, "who have I got?"
"You know," the man said politely.
"No, I don't. You tell me."
Still smiling his moronic smile, he answered, "I'm Sam. David Berkowitz."
II BACKGROUND
David grew up in a middle-class family with doting adoptive parents who showered him with gifts and attention. His real mother, Betty Broder, grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Her family was poor and she had to struggle to survive during the Depression. Her Jewish family opposed her marriage to Tony Falco, who was Italian and a gentile.
The two of them scraped some money together to start a fish market in 1939. Then, Betty had a daughter Roslyn. After that, things did not go well with the Falco's marriage and Tony left her for another woman. The fish market went bust and Betty had to raise Roslyn by herself.
Betty began an affair with a married man named Joseph Kleinman. Things went awry when she became pregnant. Kleinman vowed to leave her unless she gave up the baby. Even before David was born on June 1, 1953, she had arranged for his adoption.
David was adopted by Nat and Pearl Berkowitz, a childless couple who were devoted to their new son. He had a normal childhood in the Bronx with no clear warning signs of what was yet to come. Perhaps the most significant factor in his life was that he was a loner. His parents weren't particularly socially oriented and neither was David.
He was always big for his age and always felt different and less attractive than his peers. All through his youth he was uncomfortable with other people. He did have one sport -- baseball -- which he played well.
His neighbors remember him as a nice-looking boy but with a violent streak, a bully who assaulted neighborhood kids for no apparent reason. He was hyperactive and very difficult for Pearl and Nat to control.
David did not realize that Pearl had suffered from breast cancer before he was born. When it recurred in 1965 and again in 1967, David was shocked. Nat hadn’t kept his adopted son very well informed about the prognosis and David was therefore shocked to see how badly Pearl dissipated from the chemotherapy and the illness itself. He was devastated when Pearl died in the fall of 1967.
David began to deteriorate after Pearl's death. His grade average nose-dived. His faith in God was shaken. He began to imagine that her death was a part of some plan to destroy him. He became more and more introverted.
In 1971, Nat remarried a woman that did not get along with David. The couple moved to a Florida retirement community without him, leaving him to drift, absent of a purpose or a goal. He just existed until his fantasy life had become stronger than his real life.
He did have one relationship with a girl named Iris Gerhardt. The relationship was more fantasy on Berkowitz's part. Iris considered him only a friend. He attended a few classes at BronxCommunity College, more to appease Nat than anything else.
David joined the Army in the summer of 1971 and stayed there for three years. He was an excellent marksman, particularly proficient with rifles. During his time in the Army, he briefly converted from Judaism to the Baptist faith, but then lost interest.Returning to civilian life, he worked briefly as a security guard.
At one point, David found his biological mother Betty Falco. She and her daughter Roslyn did everything they could to make David feel welcome in their family. For a while, it worked and David seemed happy in their company, but eventually he drifted away from them too, making excuses for not coming to visit.