(Letters are attached at the bottom of the article)
New York was already on edge. The heatwave hadn’t helped. The blackout had made it worse. But it was the killings that turned everything inside out. Couples in parked cars. Late nights.
Always a .44 caliber revolver. Always a clean getaway. It was like someone had studied the city, figured out its blind spots, and started using them as a hunting ground.
On July 29, 1976, Donna Lauria and Jody Valenti were sitting in a parked car in the Bronx. They had just come back from dancing.
A man walked up, pulled a gun out of a paper bag, and fired. Lauria died instantly. Valenti was shot in the thigh. The man walked away without saying a word.
Three months later, another couple was shot in Queens. This time, neither of them saw the attacker. Carl Denaro took a bullet to the head. His girlfriend Rosemary Keenan had minor injuries.
Keenan’s father was an NYPD detective, so the investigation ramped up fast. But there was no motive, no connection, and no real clue except for a .44 caliber bullet that couldn’t be matched to a specific gun.
Then came the third. And the fourth. Donna DeMasi and Joanne Lomino were shot on a front porch. Christine Freund and John Diel were shot in a car near the Forest Hills train station. Christine died.
None of the victims knew each other. No one could identify the shooter. But the stories were starting to line up. All young women. Most had long, dark hair. Most were near cars or in them. And the killer was getting bolder.
Police didn’t want to panic the public. But they admitted the pattern was real. All the bullets were .44s. The killer seemed to be stalking different boroughs without leaving a trace. There was no robbery. No personal reason. Just killing.
Then another woman was shot in March. Virginia Voskerichian was walking home from Columbia University. She held her textbooks up in front of her as the man raised his gun. It didn’t stop the bullet.
At this point, New York wasn’t sleeping. Women dyed their hair. People stopped parking in lovers’ lanes. Gun sales spiked. The headlines started to name him. The .44 Caliber Killer. The press was circling. So was the public. But the man was still out there.
He didn’t just want to kill. He wanted to be seen
The real name came from him.
In April 1977, another couple was shot and killed. Alexander Esau and Valentina Suriani had been sitting in a car near the Hutchinson River Parkway. Valentina was studying to be an actress.
A neighbor heard the gunshots and called the police. Both victims were shot in the head. But this time, the killer had left something behind.
Near the car, police found a letter. It was addressed to Captain Joseph Borrelli. The writer called himself the “Son of Sam.” He said he was a monster. He said he had been commanded to kill by his father figure, “Sam,” who drank blood and locked him in the attic.
The letter was disturbing, erratic, filled with odd phrasing and violent imagery. He talked about women as prey. He said he didn’t want to kill, but had to. He signed off as “Mr. Monster.”
The press only got fragments of it, but it was enough. The new name stuck. Son of Sam.
The letter wasn’t just a threat. It was a performance. Experts said whoever wrote it was probably a paranoid schizophrenic. He wanted attention. He was playing with the police and the media. And he had found the right stage.
Then, on May 30, journalist Jimmy Breslin received a second letter. This time, the writer sent it directly to the Daily News. It was postmarked from New Jersey. The back of the envelope said:
Blood and Family
Darkness and Death
Absolute Depravity
.44
Inside, the killer said hello from the gutters of the city. From the cracks in the sidewalk. From the ants that fed on dried blood. He said he read Breslin’s column every day. He hinted at more killings. He asked what the paper had planned for July 29, the anniversary of his first known attack.
The Daily News ran it. Copies sold by the million. The Son of Sam was now more than a killer. He was a headline. A ghost with a pen.
They followed every lead but kept circling shadows
The task force was huge. Hundreds of officers. Dozens of precincts. Tips flooded in. People claimed to know the killer. Some were convinced it was a cult. Others said it was a postal worker. A man with a dog. A man with a grudge. A man who hated women.
Sketches varied. Some said he was blond. Some said dark-haired. Some said he limped. Others said he ran. It didn’t help that the crime scenes were spread out across boroughs. Queens. Bronx. Brooklyn. Each one with its own detectives and theories.
What they had was this: all victims were shot with .44 bullets. Most of them were women with dark hair. The shooter worked fast and left no prints. There were no stolen items, no signs of struggle, no patterns except the gun and the setting.
The killer sometimes returned to the scene. One witness later claimed he saw a man watching as police worked. But the case stayed cold.
Even when the police tried to narrow suspects by gun registrations, nothing came up. The .44 Bulldog wasn’t rare, but it also wasn’t common enough to make this easy.
And then, as quickly as it began, it got quiet.
But only for a while.
He was writing his own ending, but the city caught up
In July 1977, there was another attack. Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante were sitting in a car in Brooklyn.
A man walked up to the passenger side and fired. Moskowitz died. Violante survived but lost an eye. It was the first shooting in Brooklyn and the first with a real witness.
A woman nearby saw a man removing a parking ticket from his yellow Ford Galaxie. That ticket became the crack in the case.
The car was traced to David Berkowitz of Yonkers. Local police had already gotten complaints about him—something about threatening neighbors, something about a barking dog and strange letters.
NYPD moved fast. They staked out his building. On August 10, they found him walking to his car. Inside it, they found a rifle, maps of the crime scenes, and the .44 Bulldog.
When they knocked on his door, he didn’t run. He just smiled and said, “You got me.”
He confessed. But then he kept talking.
The arrest was neat. The story wasn’t.
Berkowitz confessed right away. He admitted to the shootings. All of them. He even said he had stabbed someone back in 1975. A girl named Michelle Forman. It had never been connected to him until now.
He said he was obeying orders from a demon that lived inside his neighbor’s black dog, Harvey.
The dog, he claimed, was possessed by “Sam,” a spirit who told him who to kill. It sounded absurd, but it gave the story weight. The public leaned in. The tabloids leaned harder.
The court didn’t buy the dog story. Psychiatrists ruled him fit to stand trial. In May 1978, he pleaded guilty to six counts of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences. He would be eligible for parole in 25 years, but no one expected him to ever walk free.
It should have ended there. But it didn’t.
He changed the story years later
By the 1990s, Berkowitz had changed his story. He said the dog story was fake. A cover. Something he made up to sound insane and shorten his sentence. Now, he claimed he hadn’t acted alone.
He told investigators that he had been part of a violent cult. That the killings were planned ritual murders. That others were present at some of the shootings. He said he had only pulled the trigger a few times.
The rest were carried out by cult members. He didn’t name names. He didn’t offer proof. But he seemed serious.
Journalist Maury Terry believed him. Terry had been obsessed with the case for years. He said the cult theory made sense. He believed the murders were part of something bigger. More calculated. More structured. He published a book called The Ultimate Evil. It connected Berkowitz to satanic groups, other killings, even other cities.
NYPD looked into it. For a short time, they reopened the case. But nothing stuck. There were no charges, no new arrests, no confirmed accomplices. The theory faded. Berkowitz stopped talking about it. But the rumor stayed.
The letters kept working even after prison
The public never let go of the image they had built. The smirking man with thick glasses. The monster who called himself “Beelzebub” and wrote about tasting blood. He had made himself into a character and handed it to the media. And they ran with it.
That public attention had a price. Publishers started offering money. TV producers wanted interviews. Berkowitz was already locked up, but the idea of him profiting off the murders triggered outrage.
New York moved quickly. Lawmakers passed what became known as the “Son of Sam law.” It blocked convicted criminals from earning money through book deals, films, or other media projects related to their crimes. It was the first law of its kind. Other states followed.
Years later, the law was challenged and ruled too broad. But new versions were written. Today, many states have similar rules in place. Berkowitz never profited from his story. But the system made sure no one else would either.
He found religion and stopped asking to be free
Sometime in the 1980s, Berkowitz said he found God. He became a born-again Christian and started calling himself the “Son of Hope.” He began writing letters to victims’ families. He worked with prison outreach programs. He even launched a personal blog through a church group, where he posted spiritual messages and apologies.
He no longer claimed he was innocent. He said he deserved to be in prison. He said he would never ask for parole. And for the most part, he didn’t. He attended a few parole hearings, but always said he didn’t believe he should be released.
He is now held at Shawangunk Correctional Facility. He has been behind bars for nearly five decades. The man who once described himself as a monster now reads the Bible and talks about forgiveness. But the name he gave himself—Son of Sam—still follows him.
A city built the myth with him
The Son of Sam case was never just about the murders. It was about how a city collapsed into fear. About how the press created a killer. About how that killer helped them do it.
The letters were real. The fear was real. The victims were real. But the version of Berkowitz that the public knows—the one with demons, cults, and dogs—is only part of the story.
He wanted to be famous. He succeeded.
But what he left behind was more than terror. He left laws. He left books. He left theories that never quite disappeared. And a city that still remembers what it felt like to be hunted by someone it couldn’t see, and couldn’t understand.
