TrueCrime: Son of Sam

The Beginning of the Nightmare

My name is Tomás Rivera, retired homicide detective from New York City. It's been years, but I still have nightmares about that bloody summer of ’76-’77. It all started the night of July 29, 1976. I was on duty when we got the call about a shooting in the Bronx. When I arrived, I found a car riddled with bullets and two young women inside. One of them, Donna Lauria, had been shot in the head and died instantly; her friend, Jody Valenti, was wounded but alive, in complete shock. The scene was chaos—shattered glass, blood on the seats, and Donna’s father sobbing uncontrollably as he learned what had happened. Through her tears, Jody kept repeating, "A man came out of nowhere and just started shooting." She couldn’t give us much more—everything happened in a matter of seconds. That night, as I pulled the sheet over Donna’s lifeless body, I felt a chill run down my spine. There was no clear motive, no connection—just a savage, random act. The kind of crime that keeps you up at night. At first, we thought it might’ve been a one-off. Maybe a personal vendetta, or some lunatic on the loose. But in the months that followed, the nightmare only got worse. In October 1976, another shooting: Carl Denaro and Rosemary Keenan were gunned down while talking in a parked car. Miraculously, they both survived, though Carl suffered a severe head wound. A month later, in November, two teenage girls—Donna DeMasi and Joanne Lomino—were shot near their home in Queens. Both were seriously injured, and Joanne was left paralyzed from the waist down. The city started to panic. Was it the same shooter? The witness descriptions were vague, but every bullet matched the same caliber: .44. Forensics recovered deformed slugs at each scene and confirmed they all came from a .44 caliber Charter Arms Bulldog revolver—the exact same model every time. This wasn’t a coincidence anymore. We had a serial killer roaming the streets of New York. My superiors put together a task force to hunt him down. Meanwhile, the media latched onto the pattern: young couples or lone women in cars, attacked at night, without warning. They started calling him the “.44 Caliber Killer”—a name that echoed in headlines with growing fear.

A Killer Stalks the City

As 1977 began, the city was gripped by panic. Every few weeks brought new reports of nighttime shootings with the same chilling pattern. January 1977: a couple, Christine Freund and her fiancé John Diel, were shot while sitting in their parked car, getting ready to go dancing. Christine died a few hours later at the hospital; John survived with injuries. March 1977: a college student, Virginia Voskerichian, was shot in the face and killed while walking home at night. At every scene, we collected .44 Special shell casings or bullets—no fingerprints, no reliable witnesses. The shooter was like a ghost: appearing out of nowhere, firing at close range, and vanishing into the night. He never stole anything. Never touched the victims. His sole purpose was to kill. As a detective, that helpless feeling—always arriving minutes too late, always finding only blood and silence—ate away at my soul. The pressure on the NYPD kept building. A special task force was created: Operation Omega, made up of more than 200 officers whose only job was to catch the ".44 Caliber Killer." I was part of that unit, and I still remember the endless briefings, staring at maps of the city marked with the locations of the attacks, trying to guess where he'd strike next. The pattern was maddening—Bronx, then Queens, then Queens again… It was like he was hunting across the whole city, targeting quiet residential neighborhoods late at night. Witnesses all gave similar descriptions: a young man, dark hair, working alone, quick and silent. Some newspapers speculated, "He hates happy couples," suggesting the killer might be a loner with a grudge. We considered every theory: was he a misogynist with a thirst for blood? A mentally unstable loner? One thing was certain—he seemed to focus on young women and couples parked in cars. The entire city lived in fear. Nightclubs and bars saw their female patrons heading out in groups rather than with dates, and the streets emptied before midnight. I remember those early morning patrols, the police radio buzzing nonstop with tips, sightings, and false alarms. Every time a 10-10 code came through—shots fired—my heart would race. We knew it was only a matter of time before he struck again. He never left a message, never left a trace—and since he used a revolver, there were no spent shell casings to collect. The only constants were that terrifying .44 caliber and the fact that every victim had long, dark hair. We eventually leaked that last detail to the press as a public warning. What followed was chaos. Thousands of women across New York started cutting their hair short or dyeing it blonde, terrified of becoming his next target. Wig shops ran out of blonde wigs. The fear was very real—and you could feel it everywhere.

Letters from Hell

The killer broke his eerie silence in the early hours of April 17, 1977. That night saw another horrifying attack. Two young lovers, Valentina Suriani and Alexander Esau, were kissing in their car in the Bronx when a man approached and, without saying a word, shot them both twice at point-blank range. Valentina died instantly; Alexander clung to life for a few hours before dying at the hospital. But this time, as we inspected the scene under the light rain of dawn, we found something unexpected: a letter in a plastic bag, addressed to the police. It was handwritten in jagged block letters and began with a sentence that burned itself into my memory: “I am not insane. But I am a monster. I am ‘Son of Sam’...”. It was the first time the killer gave himself a name. In that deranged letter, he called himself “Son of Sam” and rambled about a “Father Sam” who commanded him to kill, about bloodthirsty demons, and his twisted desire to keep hunting. He threatened us directly: “Police, shoot me first — or else... you will die!” he wrote, boasting that he was a demon no one could catch. I froze reading it. No serial killer in New York had ever dared to mock the police like that—taunting us, playing games. My boss, Inspector Timothy Dowd, chose not to release the full contents of the letter immediately. We only confirmed to the press that the “.44 Caliber Killer” had sent a message and was calling himself “Son of Sam.” From that moment on, the world knew him by that name—a name as disturbing as the content of his letters. We analyzed every inch of that note. Who was Sam? Why call himself his “son”? Religious delusions? A coded message? Some colleagues floated the theory that it might refer to Sam Carr, a man in Yonkers whose dog had been shot months earlier, but at the time we had no solid connection. One of the department’s psychologists said the tone reeked of resentment and paranoia. In fact, just days later, we consulted several forensic psychiatrists and developed a preliminary psychological profile of the suspect: a young male, deeply neurotic, possibly suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, with delusions of receiving demonic orders. The profile also suggested the killer got a thrill out of terrorizing the city and playing cat and mouse with us. That idea made my stomach turn—this person was enjoying watching us chase shadows, feeding off the fear he was spreading across millions of lives. It didn’t take long for him to send another letter, this time to the press. On May 30, 1977, famed Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin received a handwritten letter in the mail from someone claiming to be the .44 caliber killer. It started in a spine-chilling way: “Hello from the gutters of New York City, which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood. Hello from the sewers…” The tone was sarcastic and mocking; the author praised Breslin for his coverage of the murders and warned him not to forget Donna Lauria, his first victim. He also mentioned “Sam, the Terrible,” and ominously asked, “What will you have for July 29?” — the anniversary of the first murder. At the end, he signed off as “Son of Sam,” and included a series of grim nicknames like “The Duke of Death” and “The Wicked King Wicker.” He even promised that once he was caught, he’d buy new shoes for all the detectives “for digging so hard.” It was a bizarre mix of madness and twisted humor that made our skin crawl. Breslin, shaken but professional, handed the letter over to the NYPD immediately. We decided to publish most of the text in hopes the public might help, though we withheld some of the more disturbing lines. The response was instant—over a million copies of that edition of the Daily News were sold. Everyone was reading the grotesque words of the Son of Sam, and thousands of tips poured into headquarters—none of them actually helpful, sadly. But the letter had one clear effect: it escalated the fear. Many women believed the line about “the prettiest women are in Queens” meant the killer was targeting brunettes from that borough. Salons were flooded with women asking to dye their hair blonde. The fear was everywhere, and it was overwhelming. I remember one night in June, patrolling with my partner, when I found myself talking out loud: “Who are you, you bastard?” I muttered into the night. “What the hell do you want?” The truth is, deep down, we were starting to understand what he wanted: attention, fame, control through fear. His letters made it clear. We were dealing with someone cunning but unstable, desperate to be seen—a monster who had clawed his way out of hell and wanted the world to know his name.

The Hunt Intensifies

After the Breslin letter, we doubled down. On June 26, 1977, he struck again. That early morning, Sal Lupo and Judy Placido had just left Elephas nightclub in Queens. They got into their car and, ironically, were talking about the Son of Sam case when three shots rang out. Both were hit—Judy was shot in the head, and incredibly, she survived. For the first time, there were no fatalities. Fortunately, the injuries were minor. Some of us began to think maybe the killer was losing his grip—or perhaps he had fired from a bad angle. In fact, witnesses said he ran off quickly, possibly startled by a barking dog nearby. Could it be that the terrifying Son of Sam was actually afraid of something? That detail gave us a glimmer of hope. Maybe the psychologists were right: his craving for fame and blood might cause him to slip up. By July 1977, we were bracing ourselves. The anniversary of his first attack was approaching, and we feared he was planning something big. Undercover surveillance was ramped up across the city. The Omega task force deployed dozens of plainclothes officers to the usual hot spots: lover’s lanes, nightclubs, dark parks. It was a brutal summer—I remember those stifling nights spent sitting in cars with no air conditioning, binoculars fogged up from sweat. On top of everything, New York was dealing with chaos: a massive blackout in July had triggered widespread looting, and we still hadn’t caught the killer. The tension was unbearable—you could cut it with a knife. Finally, on July 31, 1977, Son of Sam struck for the last time. Around 2 a.m. in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, a couple on their first date—Stacy Moskowitz, a 20-year-old blonde, and Robert Violante, also 20—were sitting in a parked car near a park. Despite our warnings that he might be targeting brunettes, Stacy was blonde. Maybe the killer was so bloodthirsty by then that he no longer cared. He crept up to within a meter of the car and fired four shots through the window. Stacy was fatally struck in the head. Robert lost one eye, and the other was severely damaged. When the call came in over the radio, I felt my stomach knot. Another young woman dead—despite everything we had done. But this time, fate—or maybe the killer’s own arrogance—was finally about to give us the break we desperately needed.

That same night, a local resident named Cacilia Davis had taken her dog out for a walk. As we later learned, Mrs. Davis saw a young man lurking around the street shortly before the shooting. She also saw a traffic officer writing a ticket for a car illegally parked next to a fire hydrant. Seconds after the officer left, that strange man walked past Mrs. Davis, staring at her dog in a disturbing way, holding something dark in his hand. She got spooked and rushed back into her house—just as she did, she heard gunshots behind her. At first, out of fear, Davis didn’t report what she’d seen. But four days later, she gathered the courage to call the police. She described the man—and most importantly, she mentioned the parking ticket. As soon as we heard that, everyone in the precinct exchanged looks: the ticket! It was a brilliant lead. We quickly pulled records of all traffic citations issued near the scene on the night of July 31. One license plate jumped out at us: a yellow 1970 Ford Galaxie with New York plates. It was registered to someone named David Berkowitz, a resident of Yonkers. I remember the chill that ran through me when I read that name. Who the hell was David Berkowitz? He didn’t have a homicide record, but Yonkers is just north of NYC, so we called the local police to see what they knew. That phone call changed everything. Detective James Justis from our team got in touch with the Yonkers precinct, and the dispatcher who answered was a woman named Wheat Carr. As soon as Justis mentioned the name “Berkowitz,” she reacted: “Berkowitz?! Let me tell you something… I know him. He lives right behind my house.” I was in the office that day and saw Justis go pale. Wheat Carr kept going. She said something like, “That guy... he shot my dad’s dog a few months ago. My dad’s name is Sam—Sam Carr—and Berkowitz had been sending him threatening letters.” When I heard the name Sam Carr, my heart nearly stopped. Sam. Son of Sam. It all came together in the most disturbing way. Berkowitz hated the neighbor’s dog—a black lab named Harvey—and claimed it was possessed by a demon that commanded him to kill. The Carr family even told us they had received anonymous notes before the dog was shot. That was powerful evidence. There was no way it was a coincidence that the killer called himself “Son of Sam” and lived behind a man named Sam. We had found our guy.

The Red Night

With that information, the judge quickly issued a search warrant. On August 10, 1977, we headed to Yonkers in several unmarked cars. I was in one of them, heart pounding. Berkowitz’s address was 35 Pine Street, a modest apartment building. We arrived at dusk. Parked at the curb outside, we spotted the yellow Ford Galaxie with the suspicious license plate. Through the rear window, we could clearly see the stock of a rifle sticking out of a bag. He was armed. We decided to proceed with extreme caution—confronting him inside the building, surrounded by civilians, could be dangerous. So we set up a quiet surveillance, hoping Berkowitz would come down to the car. Meanwhile, a couple of officers kept an eye on the vehicle. One of them shone a flashlight inside and saw something even more incriminating: in a duffel bag were bullets, maps of the crime scenes, and a letter addressed to Inspector Dowd, head of Operation Omega. It was like a “serial killer kit.” We didn’t need any more proof—Berkowitz was Son of Sam. Just after 10 p.m., we saw movement. From my car, I watched a heavyset man in his twenties walk out of the building. He had a strange, satisfied smile on his face. It was him. I recognized him from the limited descriptions we had: dark, curly hair, stocky build. He calmly walked toward the Ford Galaxie, keys in hand. We got ready to move. Detective John Falotico and I approached the car from opposite sides. Just as Berkowitz slid into the driver’s seat, Falotico lunged forward and aimed his gun at his head. I did the same from the passenger side, flinging the door open and pointing mine at him. “Don’t move!” we shouted. In that critical moment, everything went eerily quiet. Berkowitz didn’t resist. In fact, he slowly turned to John Falotico and, in a strangely soft voice, said his first words: “Well, you got me.” He had a paper bag on his lap containing a loaded .44 Bulldog revolver—the murder weapon—which we immediately confiscated. As we cuffed him, Falotico, adrenaline pumping, asked him, “Now that I’ve got you… who the hell are you?” The man chuckled and replied, “Don’t you know? I’m Sam.” Falotico frowned: “Sam? Sam who?” “Sam… David Berkowitz,” he answered calmly. Son of Sam himself, smiling like the whole thing was some kind of twisted game. We pulled him out of the car and patted him down for more weapons. Shockingly, Berkowitz seemed relieved. Some of the officers later said he even looked content, as if he’d finally gotten the attention he craved. That smile haunted me in my sleep. As we read him his rights, curious neighbors peeked out their windows, unaware they were witnessing the end of the biggest manhunt in the city’s history. “We got him! He’s the Son of Sam!” I called out over the radio, and a wave of jubilation and relief surged through the police frequency. We searched his apartment that very night. What we found inside was straight out of a nightmare. The walls were covered in bizarre graffiti—references to Satan, strange symbols, and cryptic messages. There were piles of notebooks and diaries; later, we’d learn that Berkowitz had meticulously documented thousands of fires he’d set across the city in previous years. He called himself “The Phantom of the Bronx” for the string of arsons he committed. His apartment was a disaster—trash everywhere, holes in the walls, windows covered—it was the hideout of a disturbed mind. Despite the mess, hanging neatly on a coat rack was the sawed-off shotgun he’d used to shoot Sam Carr’s dog. That image—a weapon used to harm an innocent animal—turned my stomach. In the early morning hours, as we drove him in handcuffs to the precinct in Coney Island, Mayor Abe Beame came in person to get a look at the monster. I remember Berkowitz being escorted by two officers, looking around with curiosity as if he were on a sightseeing tour. The mayor emerged after a brief glance and told the press, “You can sleep soundly tonight. We’ve captured the man we believe to be the Son of Sam.” The entire city let out a collective sigh of relief.

Face to Face with the Monster

Interrogating David Berkowitz was one of the most surreal moments of my entire career. It happened in the early hours of August 11, 1977, just a few hours after his arrest. I was allowed to observe from behind the glass as Inspector John Keenan and a few other detectives interviewed him. Against all odds, Berkowitz confessed with startling ease. In less than thirty minutes, he admitted to being the one behind the .44 caliber attacks. He spoke calmly, like he was recounting someone else’s story. When they asked him why he did it, he lowered his gaze and said, "The dog... the demon dog wouldn’t leave me alone." He explained—almost apologetically—that his neighbor Sam Carr had a black Labrador that was possessed by an ancient demon, and that this entity demanded the blood of young women. According to Berkowitz, “Sam” wasn’t him, but Sam Carr, the dog’s owner, and “Father Sam” (as he called him in the letters) was the demon speaking through the animal. The story was completely delusional: he claimed the dog’s barking were commands to kill. “He ordered me to go out and kill, and I obeyed,” he said in a flat voice. Hearing that explanation, I felt a mix of rage and disgust. Was he truly insane, or was he just playing us? One of my colleagues muttered, “He’s nuts, poor bastard.” But some of us weren’t so sure. Berkowitz seemed to enjoy telling the demonic fable, as if it gave his crimes a kind of mythic quality. In the weeks that followed, psychiatrists examined him thoroughly and determined that despite his talk of demonic voices, David Berkowitz was sane and mentally competent to stand trial. In fact, over time, Berkowitz himself would admit the whole possessed-dog thing was a lie—a smokescreen. I was present at several later proceedings. Berkowitz pled guilty to all counts of murder and attempted murder in May 1978. In court, his eyes were blank; when the victims’ families shouted at him in anguish, he barely reacted. He was sentenced to six life terms—one for each life he took—equivalent to a minimum of 25 years per murder. In practice, he would never leave prison. I remember the eruption of applause in the courtroom on the day of sentencing, June 1978: justice, at last. Berkowitz was sent to Attica, the maximum-security state prison. Over the years, more details emerged. His birth name was Richard David Falco—an unwanted child born to a troubled mother. He was adopted as a baby by the Berkowitz family and grew up feeling abandoned and rejected. He had briefly served in the Army, and even before his murder spree, he was showing antisocial behavior: setting fires around the city and sending anonymous threatening letters to neighbors. In prison, from what I’ve heard, he found a twisted kind of peace by becoming religious—ironically, he now calls himself the “Son of Hope,” as if that could erase his past. But the scars he left on New York will never fade. I still wonder which parts of his story were real. Did he truly believe in a demon, or was he just pretending to be insane? In one later letter from prison, he hinted that “there were other Sons out there”—possibly accomplices or copycats—but later denied it. There were theories about satanic cults and unidentified collaborators… none of it was ever proven. In my opinion, David Berkowitz acted alone. He was a bitter loner, a mind fractured between reality and fantasy. Maybe the imaginary figure of “Sam” was just the embodiment of his inner demons: his hatred for society, for young women who symbolized what he never had, for other people’s happiness. He wanted revenge on a world he believed had mistreated him, as he told his psychologists—and he took it in the cruelest way possible: by stealing away the loved ones of innocent families.

After the Horror

With the case closed, New York could finally breathe again. But the lessons from the Son of Sam case still endure. New laws were enacted, for instance, to prevent criminals like Berkowitz from profiting by selling their stories for books or movies; these provisions became popularly known as the “Son of Sam” laws. The fear this killer unleashed also led to improved coordination among law enforcement agencies—our Operation Omega became a model for future high-profile task forces. We will never forget those nights of terror, nor the victims whose lives were stolen. Six people murdered, seven more wounded in just over a year of madness. Behind every name was a life cut short: Donna, Christine, Valentina, Virginia, Alexander, Stacy… I’ve never been able to erase their faces from my mind, frozen in the crime scene photos. Today, nearly five decades later, David Berkowitz remains behind bars. He has spent most of his life in prison, where, according to reports, he has claimed to feel remorse and now calls himself a born-again Christian. Remorse—who could believe him? His repeated requests for parole have been denied again and again; the latest, in 2024, was his twelfth rejection. Berkowitz is now over 70 years old and will die locked up, as he should. He will never again walk freely through the streets of the city he once terrorized. For me, as a detective who lived through the case, Son of Sam isn’t just a newspaper headline—it’s a collection of memories burned into my mind: the wailing sirens on sweltering summer nights, the tears of a father identifying his daughter’s body, the bullet holes in blood-stained car windows, and the chilling laugh of a man who believed he was untouchable—until the moment we cuffed him. People often ask me why I tell this story in such detail. I do it because it’s important to remember how deep the darkness can go in a human heart—and how, even in the face of horror, there was courage and determination to overcome it. I close my memoirs with a thought that has haunted my dreams since that time: in the sewers of this great city, among vomit, stale wine, urine, and blood—as that letter once said—there will always be cockroaches feeding on fear. Our job as police officers was to shine a light into that darkness and hunt down the biggest cockroach of them all. Catching the Son of Sam was my duty—and my curse. And though the years have passed, when night falls in New York, I can still hear the faint echoes of those shots—“bang, bang, bang”… and I remember that in facing that monster, we also faced the demons that dwell in the shadows of the human soul. May those shadows never blind us to the light of justice.