Recalling a City in Fear During the Year of 'Son of Sam'
By COLIN MOYNIHAN and SEWELL CHAN
Published: August 7, 2007
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Yesterday, dozens of people revisited the facts and emotions surrounding those events during a symposium at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice, where three panels of speakers reminisced about the case and analyzed the killer and his impact.
Participants included criminologists, journalists, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly (a young lieutenant when the killings took place) and Edward I. Koch, who attributed his election as mayor in 1977 to the hysteria and paralysis partly created by the string of murders, which had begun in the summer of 1976.
"The reason I believe I ultimately won was because of the fear in the city — and what should be done about it," Mr. Koch said. "The fear was palpable."
Some of the accounts yesterday elaborated on well-known stories, including a description by former Detective Bill Clark of the thorough police work and odd twists of fate that solved the case. Detectives traced a parking ticket issued on the night of what turned out to be his final murder to a car registered to a 24-year-old postal worker living in Yonkers: David R. Berkowitz. He confessed to the crimes and is serving several life sentences.
Other scraps of information that emerged from the three panel discussions were far from familiar. Louis B. Schlesinger, a professor of forensic psychology at John Jay, said that Mr. Berkowitz had set nearly 1,500 fires in his life, a little-noted fact.
Later, Scott Weinberger, a television reporter for WCBS, said that Mr. Berkowitz had told him in an interview that if he was ever released from prison, he would want to live in Houston — the same city, Professor Schlesinger noted, where the pistol Mr. Berkowitz used had originated.
The panelists ruminated on the strange nature of serial killers and the hold their misdeeds often have on the imagination.
Mary Ellen O'Toole, a supervisory special agent at the F.B.I.'s behavior analysis unit in Quantico, Va., said, "When you sit across the table from one of these people, you want to touch them, you want to feel them, you want to hear what they have to say.
"The questions are enormous," she said. "I think all of us here feel that absolute fascination with how can someone who looks like you and me commit something that is so horrible."
Part of what separated Son of Sam from many other serial killers was the way he communicated with the public through letters sent to detectives and reporters.
One of the recipients of those communiques, Jimmy Breslin, then a columnist for The Daily News, described the energy and cadence of Mr. Berkowitz's literary style, saying his early letters were full of "the fear, the blood and the cracks in the sidewalk of the city."
Some attending the symposium said they remembered those dangerous days.
Joan Boyd, 49, a journalist from Belfast, Northern Ireland, said she was living in Sunnyside, Queens, when the murders were taking place. She said that one night in the summer of 1977, she went out for a walk and realized it was the first anniversary of Mr. Berkowitz's first killing. It was also a night on which, he had suggested in a letter to Mr. Breslin, he might strike again.
The normally bustling neighborhood was eerily silent.
"There was not one single person on the street," Ms. Boyd said. "I was terrified."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/nyregion...&ei=5087%0A
Letter to Jimmy Breslin
Hello from the gutters of NYC, which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine, and blood.
Hello from the sewers of NYC which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks.
Hello from the cracks in the sidewalks of NYC and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed in the dried blood that has settled into the cracks.
Mr. Breslin, sir, don't think because you haven't heard from me for a while that I went to sleep. No, rather, I am still here. Like a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest; anxious to please Sam.
I love my work. Now the void has been filled. He won't let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood. Tell me, Jim, what will you have for me July 29?
Not knowing what the future holds, I shall say farewell and I will see you at the next job. Or should I say you will see my handiwork at my next job?
P.S. Please inform all the detectives working on the case that I wish them luck. Keep them digging, drive on. Think positive. Here are some clues to help you along. The Duke of Death, The Wicked King Wicker. The 22 Disciples of Hell. John Wheaties, rapist and suffocater of young girls.
In their blood and from the gutter -- 'Sam's Creation' .44 Caliber
The Son of Sam.
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The Official Home Page of David Berkowitz - http://www.forgivenforlife.com/
