a criminal's mind

a collection of known serial killers, what they did, who their victims were, and their stories.

warning: may contain nudity and gorey images

Mug shot

“Sudden death and bloodshed appealed to me”

—   David Berkowitz
Arrest

Arrest

“He (his neighbor’s “possessed” dog) won’t let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood.”

—   David Berkowitz

“I am deeply hurt by your calling me a women hater. I am no. But I am a monster. I am the ‘Son of Sam’ I am a little brat.”

—   David Berkowitz

The Terror Begins

The murder of Donna Lauria on July 29, 1976 was one of around 20,000 murders in the U.S. that year and did not merit a great deal of attention in New York, especially as it happened in an area of the Bronx in which the Mafia held power.

The city’s cynical journalists paid little heed to the killing, assuming perhaps that she had seen something or said something which had annoyed La Cosa Nostra.

Two more murder were committed, and several other people seriously injured, before a press conference at the NYPD’s headquarters at One Police Plaza on March 10 informed the nation that the same .44 caliber revolver had been responsible for the murders of Miss Lauria, and Virginia Voskerichian, a 19-year-old Armenian-American, who had been killed two days before.

Police Commissioner Mike Codd said the gun had also been responsible for the murder of Christine Freund and two other shootings in the Bronx and neighboring Queens. The New York tabloid press seized on the story and within days everyone in the city was aware of the existence of the man known at the time as The .44 Caliber Killer.

In the early hours of April 17, 1977, David Berkowitz blasted to death young lovers Alexander Esau and Valentina Suriani and left a handwritten letter in the middle of the street nearby, addressed to Cpatain Joe Borelli, the deputy chief of the task force, which had been set up to hunt down The .44 Caliber Killer.

The sender of the letter claimed he had been ordered to kill by his father, Sam, who he said was a vampire. The letter was not released to the public and only a handful of journalists were told of its contents.

One of them was New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin, who dropped several hints about it in his articles. On May 30, 1977, Berkowitz sent Breslin a letter and the Daily News published it and dubbed the killer The Son of Sam.

The summer of 1977 was sweltering and the heat only helped to raise the tension on the streets. In the early hours of June 26 a young Italian-American, Sal Lupo, left the Elephas disco in Queens with 17-year-old Judy Placido. They sat in Sal’s car nearby and Judy said “This Son of Sam is really scary. The way that guy comes out of nowhere. You never know where he’ll hit next.”

Suddenly the car’s window exploded and the couple were hit by three bullets from a .44 revolver. Sal staggered out of the car and ran to the disco for help as the killer fled. Miraculously neither Sal nor Judy were badly injured, and four weeks passed with no further incidents–but the detectives were no nearer finding out the identity of the killer.

On July 31, 1977, Stacy Moskowitz went out on a first date with handsome Bobby Violante. Son of Sam’s hunting grounds were known to be the Bronx and Queens so the young couple (who had been to the movies to see New York, New York) thought they were safe when they pulled up under a streetlight in a lovers’ lane in south Brooklyn just before 2:00 a.m.

Stacy and Bobby were kissing in the front seat when the windows shattered and she jerked forward. The gunfire had burst Bobby’s eardrums. He also lost his left eye and much of the vision in his right eyes, but he survived.

Stacy was taken to hospital and surgeons fought for 38 hours to save her life, but their efforts were in vain and Stacy became Son of Sam’s sixth victim.

But Berkowitz made a mistake which was to prove his undoing…He parked his white Ford Galaxy next to a fire hydrant and was given a parking ticket by an eagle-eyed police officer. When he returned to his car around 2:20 a.m. he was spotted by a local woman, Cacilia Davis, as he tore the ticket off his windscreen and threw it in the gutter.

When Ms Davis came forward her statement was initially ignored by police, who had been told by other witnesses that the killer was fair-haired and driving a yellow Volkswagen. She was also told no parking tickets had been issued that night.

But Ms. Davis persevered and 10 days after the shooting police finally unearthed a ticket which had been issued to a Ford Galaxy, registration number 561 XLB.

The registered owner was David Berkowitz, who lived at 35 Pine Street in the northern suburb of New York.

When armed police swooped on Berkowitz as he got into his car, they demanded to know who he was. He smiled manically and said “I’m Sam.”

He was taken into custody and confessed to all six murders and several other shootings during a thirty-minute interview. Detectives quizzed him about references he had made in his letters to Sam.

He claimed he had been ordered to commit the murders by a near neighbor Sam Carr, but said the messages were passed on by Carr’s “demon dog,” a black Laborador called Harvey.

The Carr family knew of Berkowitz and suspected he had been responsible for shooting Harvey (who survived) and hurling a Molotov cocktail through the window of their home.

Several court-appointed psychiatrists disagreed about whether or not Berkowitz was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

But it did not matter because he pleaded guilty to the murders and was jailed for 365 years.

After his conviction Berkowitz admitted the letters, and references to “demon voices” from a dog, were a hoax and attributed the killings to a loathing of women caused by his own sexual frustration.

But he has never fully laid to rest another theory which has many proponents, including the mother of his last victim–Neysa Moskowitz believes Berkowitz was involved in a coven, which carried out the killings as part of an occult ritual.

“I didn’t want to hurt them. I only wanted to kill them.”

—   David Berkowitz