David Berkowitz was arrested in New York on August 10, 1977. Photo / AP
David Berkowitz was arrested in New York on August 10, 1977. Photo / AP
It was the summer of 1976, around 1.10am on July 29, when two young women were sitting in a car in Pelham Bay, a neighbourhood of the Bronx, in the northern part of New York City.
Jody Valenti, 19, and Donna Lauria, 18, a nursing and a medical student, were sitting in Valenti's Oldsmobile in front of Lauria's home, discussing the holidays and their futures.
Lauria's parents had just arrived home after an evening out, inviting Valenti upstairs before they went inside.
The girls spent another 15 minutes chatting until a hulking man materialised out of the dark and fired four rounds into the car.
Lauria was shot in the back and died instantly. Valenti, a bullet in her left thigh, was bleeding and in shock.
She would later describe the shooter to police as a white male aged in his 30s, around 90kg, with short, dark curly hair.
The Son of Sam murder spree had begun and for the next 13 months, fear about the unknown serial killer gripped New York.
Netflix's new true crime hit The Sons of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness looks at the city's most terrifying year of violence and how one man's obsession with a deranged killer led him into a deep abyss.
All the victims were targeted as pairs, until college student Virginia Voskerichian, 19, was walking home from an evening class at college.
It was March 8, 1977 and Voskerichian was alone when she was confronted by a man pointing a gun.
Christine Freund, Virginia Voskerichian and Stacy Moskowitz were all victims of convicted serial killer David Berkowitz, known as "Son of Sam".
She lifted a textbook to shield herself, but he shot her in the head and she died.
On April 17, 1977, tow truck operator Alexander Esau, 20, and aspiring actress, Valentina Suriani, 18, were each shot twice as they sat in a car near their home in the Bronx.
Both died before being able to describe their attacker.
All the shootings had so far occurred in the Bronx and Queens, and New York police established a dragnet in those boroughs.
But the whole of New York was terrorised and no one was taking any chances, the spree emptying bars, clubs and streets of night-life.
The victims appeared to be young women with dark hair and couples in parked cars, and women began buying blonde or red wigs to disguise their appearance.
The killer had also began sending letters to the press, taunting the police as to why they hadn't caught him.
He wrote to Jimmy Breslin at the New York Daily News, and to the legendary Australian journalist who worked on the New York Post, Steve Dunleavy.
The letters were signed with the killer's self-appointed nickname, Son of Sam, which he wrote with a symbol formed by a cross and the symbols for male and female.
One of his first letters had read, "Police, let me haunt you with these words. I'll be back! I'll be back!
"To be interpreted as bang, bang, bang, bang, bang – ugh!
"Yours in murder, Mr Monster."
Police mug shot showing the front view and profile of convicted New York City serial killer David Berkowitz, known as the "Son of Sam". Photo / Getty Images
One of the most alarming notes, sent to Dunleavy and reprinted by the New York Post in full, read, "Hello from the gutters of NYC, which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood.
"Sam's a thirsty lad and he won't let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood."
For his final attack, the killer crossed over into the borough of Brooklyn.
On July 31, 1977, secretary Stacy Moskowitz and clothing store salesman Robert Violante, both 20, were parked in a lovers' lane at Bath Beach, Brooklyn.
Before that happened, a man named David Berkowitz, from the upper New York State borough of Yonkers, had come to the notice of police.
Neighbours complained the 24-year-old was a "nut" and one of them, Sam Carr, believed Berkowitz had shot his dog Harvey.
On August 6, 1977, Carr complained to Yonkers and then Queens police, who duly noted it, but took the inquiry no further.
A letter written to Daily News reporter and columnist Jimmy Breslin by "Son of Sam". Photo / Getty Images
The police had been tracing every owner of a .44 calibre Bulldog revolver and had 12 suspects.
Pressure was mounting on investigators – Son of Sam's latest missive to Breslin had promised more blood on July 29, 1977, the anniversary of his shooting Lauria dead.
Meanwhile, he carried out the attack in Brooklyn which killed Moskowitz and permanently blinded Violante.
Just before that attack, at 2.05am on Bay 17th Street, Brooklyn, a woman had been walking her dog when she saw a man on the street walking oddly with his arm holding a piece of metal stuck up his sleeve.
When she returned home she heard a loud bang and then a car horn as Violante slumped on his car wheel, shot through the eye.
The next day a friend told her that Son of Sam had struck in her street, but the frightened woman refused to speak until the friend informed detectives who visited her.
The woman told the detective that the only possible witnesses she had seen in the area was a cop issuing tickets.
Over several days task force detectives reviewed every ticket issued on vehicles parked in the street that night, eliminating all owners until they came to one, David Berkowitz of Pine Street, Yonkers.
Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz is interviewed at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Wallkill, New York. Photo / AP
They called the Yonkers cops, who revealed Berkowitz was known as a local nutter, suspected of shooting a man's dog, firebombing a home and sending around strange letters.
On the afternoon of August 10, 1977, squads of detectives surrounded the suspect's home, waiting for a warrant to search it.
At 10.30pm a man believed to be Berkowitz walked out and approached the vehicle which had earned him a ticket in Brooklyn on the night Moskowitz was murdered.
Police surrounded him. In his vehicle they found a single-shot rifle and a .44 calibre pistol.
Berkowitz was arrested and his premises searched.
Inside his filthy Yonkers studio where quilts were hung over the lights, police found evidence of his fascination with guns and pornography.
Handwritten messages found on the wall of his apartment included Satanic messages. Notebooks were full of meticulously detailed arsons in New York he later claimed credit for.
The following morning, he was questioned for just 30 minutes during which he confessed to the shootings.
He said he was the Son of Sam, and Sam was really Harvey, Sam Carr's black Labrador Retriever, which Berkowitz explained gave him the mysterious "commands" to kill.
Berkowitz explained that Harvey was possessed by an ancient demon.
Berkowitz included this mysterious symbol on some of his letters.
While in custody, Berkowitz was permitted to write to the press.
He sent a letter to Dunleavy at the New York Post suggesting, about the demonic possession, there were criminal accomplices, saying "there are other sons out there, God help the world".
Berkowitz would later retract the claim, saying the demonic possession claim by him was a hoax.
He told a prison psychiatrist he murdered to counteract his feelings of hurt and rejection by the world.
In 1978, he pleaded guilty to all the shootings, having refused to plead not guilty by way of insanity, and was sentenced to six consecutive terms of 25 years to life in prison.
Meanwhile, IBM salesman Terry and others had seized upon the idea that Berkowitz was part of a wider Satanic cult responsible for the killings.
Terry didn't believe Berkowitz's confession was the end of it.
Based on eyewitness sketches and Berkowitz's own letters, Terry began to put together a theory that there was not just a single Son of Sam, but "Sons of Sam".
He wrote a book, The Ultimate Evil, that chronicled his theories on a Satanic killer network, hitting the talk show circuit which lapped up ratings gold conspiracy.
New York City police officer Edward Zigo displays a .44-calibre revolver at a news conference, early in the morning after the arrest of David Berkowitz in 1977. Photo / AP
The Ultimate Evil's subtitle was "an Investigation of America's Most Dangerous Satanic Cult With New Evidence Linking Charlie Manson and the Son of Sam".
Terry believed Berkowitz was a member of a chapter of a satanic cult that met in Untermeyer Park in Yonkers.
He claimed the Son of Sam letters to media contained clues pointing to at least two of the cult's members.
They were, he said, John and Michael Carr, whose father Sam had owned Harvey, the dog Berkowitz claimed had commanded him to kill.
Terry's preposterous and defamatory allegations would continue for decades, and in 1997 he gained an interview with Berkowitz.
The killer told Terry that John and Michael Carr had indeed pulled the trigger in several of the killings he had previously confessed to.
"My gut was telling me there was more to this demon dog story … probably two other people, maybe three other people," Terry said.
"It makes sense to go another step and say John and Michael were possibly involved in the Son of Sam shootings."
The front page of the Newsday newspaper after the arrest of David Berkowitz.
Terry fought for the reopening of the case and in 1996, Yonkers police did reinvestigate, before suspending it for lack of evidence.
Among his conspiracy theory supporters was one of the victims, Mr Denaro, who had been shot in the head and survived.
"I truly believe that he was involved in a cult and there was more than one shooter," Mr Denaro told a 2017 Discovery Channel event for the documentary, Son of Sam: Hunt for a Killer.
"I've spent basically the last years researching, talking to cops, doing whatever I can to get to the bottom of the case. I think there's probably about 150, 200 pieces of circumstantial evidence that proves that he didn't act alone."
Terry searched for a filmmaker who would share his theories and found Josh Zeman.
Before his 2015 death, Terry gave his entire case file to Zeman who would use it to create The Sons of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness.
The hit four-part series presents the story of the killings and Berkowitz's capture, Terry's theories about what happened, and the disastrous effect his obsession with the case had on his life and work.
In his years in prison, Berkowitz became a born-again Christian and now calls himself, Son of Hope.
Criminologist Dr Scott Bonn, author of Why We Love Serial Killers, interviewed Berkowitz in 2013 after lengthy correspondence with the killer.
Police investigate Cadillac where man and woman were shot by David Berkowitz at 211th St. Bayside, Queens. Photo / Getty Images
"The prison interview that I had with him … lasted about four-and-a-half hours, at Sullivan Correctional Facility (in New York State)," he said.
"He went through a self-alleged Christian rebirth … in 1987, and he now says his primary purpose is to serve God in the best way that he can. He believes that he's been fully redeemed and God has forgiven him for his crimes."
Bonn said Berkowitz told him, "Scott, I truly was an evil man. I know that. But God has forgiven me, and if God can forgive someone like me, then anything is possible."
As a serial killer, Bonn said, Berkowitz "loved to kill and needed to kill – it was like a drug addiction".
Asked why he did it, Bonn said it could be traced back to Berkowitz's fearful childhood.
"He had been abandoned and adopted as a child … by his birth mother, and he grew up to be a frightened and ultimately angry and rageful individual," he said.
"He was striking back at society is the way I would express it, and he did it in a way that held the entire city of New York captive, hostage for a year. So, in his own mind, he was an insignificant individual who had been shunned and victimised by society."
