On July 29, 1976, shortly after 1 a.m., Donna Lauria and her friend Jody Valenti were sitting in a double-parked, two-door, blue Oldsmobile Cutlass, in Pelham Bay, Bronx, chatting about their evening at the disco and discussing their summer plans.
They had been talking for about 15 minutes when, out of nowhere, a man in a striped shirt approached the car and fired four shots through the right window.
18-year-old Lauria, who trained to be a New York City medic, was shot once in the back and killed instantly. 19-year-old Valenti was shot in the left thigh but survived.
The surviving victim provided the police with a description of the killer: a white male in his thirties with curly hair, someone she had never seen before in her life.
Little did the police and Valenti expect, this marked the start of the reign of terror of one of the most notorious serial killers in history – David Berkowitz.
Between 1975 and 1977, Berkowitz killed 6 people and injured 11, including two young women he claimed to have stabbed prior to his “Son of Sam” attacks.
Son of Sam’s reign of terror ended on July 31, 1977, when Berkowitz shot 20-year-olds Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante, who were enjoying their first date, parked under a streetlight near a city park in Bath Beach.
The couple was rushed to the hospital. Moskowitz died from her injuries later that night. Violante lost his left eye, but fortunately survived.
A couple of days after the incident, a woman named Cacilia Davis, who lived a block from the scene of the shooting, reluctantly came forward claiming that she had seen the man who shot the couple.
Davis told the police she was walking her dog Snowflake early in the morning, when she noticed a man was following her. The woman felt concerned because he was holding some kind of “dark object” in his hand.
Police closely checked every car that had been ticketed in the area that night. Berkowitz’s yellow 1970 Ford Galaxie was among the cars that they investigated.
Berkowitz was arrested sitting in his car the next day. While searching his car, police found a gun, a duffel bag filled with ammunition, maps of the crime scenes, and a threatening letter addressed to Inspector Timothy Dowd.
24-year-old Berkowitz was keen to confess to the shootings and expressed an interest in pleading guilty.
When asked about the motives behind the shootings, Berkowitz claimed that his neighbor’s dog, Harvey, demanded the blood of pretty young girls. The “Son of Sam” also claimed the Labrador Retriever was possessed by an ancient demon which issued irresistible commands to kill people. In his later interviews, Berkowitz admitted that the dog-and-devil story was a hoax.
After being found mentally competent to stand trial, Berkowitz pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences in state prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
As of 2023, Berkowitz is 70 and is currently incarcerated in Shawangunk Correctional Facility.
