32 Unseen Photos of the Son of Sam Murders

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.

Less than two months after the first incident, on the evening of October 23, 1976, a young couple was shot in a secluded residential area in Flushing, Queens.

18-year-old Rosemary Keenan sustained only cuts from the broken glass, while her 20-year-old partner, Carl Denaro, was shot five times. Doctors had to use a metal plate to replace a part of Denaro’s skull that had been shattered by the bullets.

Fortunately, both victims survived the shooting.

Once again, police were baffled as there seemed to be no tangible motive for the shooting.

A month later, the Son of Sam struck again.

On November 27, 1976, two female high school students, Donna DeMasi and Joanne Lomino, were sitting on the porch of Lomino’s home in Floral Park, Queens, after a night out in Manhattan, when a young man dressed in military uniform approached them and asked for directions.

In a high-pitched voice, the man said, ‘Can you tell me how to get…’ but then quickly pulled out a revolver.

“He came up and asked questions; he pulled out a gun and shot,” DeMasi recalled.

“I never saw him before. He wasn’t with anyone else.”

The bullet struck DeMasi’s neck and grazed her spinal cord. The 16-year-old spent a month in the hospital and had to re-learn how to use her left side. Lomino was hit in the back and hospitalized in serious condition. The 18-year-old was ultimately rendered paralyzed.

Over two months later, Berkowitz was once again in Queens. And he was on a prowl.

On January 30, 1977, the “Son of Sam” shot a couple parked near Forest Hills railway station.

30-year-old John Diel sustained minor superficial injuries, while his fiancée, 26-year-old Christine Freund, was shot twice and died several hours later at the hospital.

For the first time, police publicly admitted that the four shootings might be connected.

NYPD Sergeant Richard Conlon said that all victims had been struck with .44 caliber bullets, and the shootings seemed to target young women with long dark hair.

Composite sketches were released based on the recollections of victims from the first and third shootings.

Following the publicity, the Son of Sam remained dormant for over a month before he committed his first isolated attack.

On March 8, 1977, Berkowitz confronted 19-year-old Virginia Voskerichian as she was walking home from school. In a desperate move to defend herself, Voskerichian tried to use her textbooks as a makeshift shield but succumbed to a single shot to the head.

After the fifth shooting, the media frenzy reached its peak. Tabloid newspapers, such as the New York Post and the Daily News, published graphic accounts of the attacks. Son of Sam’s crimes even made headlines in foreign newspapers, including the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano, the Hebrew newspaper Maariv, and the Soviet Izvestia.

Over a month later, the Son of Sam carried out his sixth attack.

On April 17, 1977, only a few blocks away from the scene of the first shooting, Berkowitz shot Alexander Esau and Valentina Suriani while they were sitting in a car on the Hutchinson River Parkway service road in the Bronx.

18-year-old Suriani died at the scene. 20-year-old Esau was transported to the hospital but succumbed to his injuries several hours later.

While working at the crime scene, the police discovered a handwritten letter addressed to NYPD Captain Joseph Borrelli.

Written by the “Son of Sam,” the letter expressed the killer’s determination to continue his work, and taunted police for their fruitless efforts to capture him.

On May 30, 1977, Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin received another handwritten letter from someone claiming to be the .44 Caliber Killer.

A week later, The Daily News published a portion of the letter, with Breslin urging the killer to surrender.

This was the highest-selling edition of the Daily News to date, with more than 1.1 million copies sold. Thousands of long, dark haired women in New York City acquired short cuts or brightly colored dyes fearing they might fall victim to the “Son of Sam.” The fear was so intense that beauty supply stores had trouble meeting the demand for wigs.

Basking in the media spotlight, the “Son of Sam” disappeared for more than two months.

On June 26, 1977, 20-year-old Salvatore Lupo and 17-year-old Judy Placido were sitting in a parked car after a night out at the Elephas discotheque in Bayside, Queens. At about 3:00 a.m., as the couple discussed the “Son of Sam” case, three gunshots blasted through the vehicle.

Once again, the female appeared to be primary target. Lupo was wounded in the right forearm, while Placido was shot in the right temple, shoulder, and back of the neck.

Fortunately, both victims survived their injuries.

Although the couple did not see their attacker, two witnesses reported a tall, dark-haired man in a leisure suit fleeing from the area in a car. One witness was also able to supply a partial license plate number.

With the first anniversary of the first shooting nearing, police established a substancial dragnet that emphasized past hunting grounds in Queens and the Bronx.

However, the Son of Sam’s next and final attack occurred in Brooklyn.

On July 31, 1977, 20-year-olds Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante were enjoying their first date, parked under a streetlight near a city park in Bath Beach.

All of a sudden, a man approached the passenger side of the car and fired four rounds, striking both victims in the head before escaping into the park.

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.

“He looked like he was trying to hide behind a tree. But the tree was too small, too narrow. He stood out. He kept staring in my direction. Then he began walking in my direction, smiling a peculiar smile. It wasn’t anything sinister, just a friendly kind of smile, almost.”

Davis felt concerned because he was holding some kind of “dark object” in his hand.

“I was frightened. I walked into my house and began to slip off Snowball’s collar. Just then I heard pops, or something that sounded like firecrackers. They were kind of loud, but far off. I didn’t think too much of it at the time.”

“The next morning, there were crowds of people at Shore Road. It was then that I learned what happened the night before. Suddenly I realized that I must have seen the killer. I panicked, and I couldn’t say anything.”

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.

Over a week after the Moskowitz-Violante shooting, NYPD detective James Justis called the Yonkers Police Department to ask them to schedule an interview wth David Berkowitz. Surprisingly, the dispatcher who first took Justis’ call recognized the name.

“Let me tell you about him. I know him. He lives right behind me,“ Wheat Carr said.

Carr also told Justis that Berkowitz had shot and wounded her father’s, Sam Carr’s, black Labrador Retriever, named Harvey.

When Justis heard “Sam,” he had a feeling that they had finally identified their culprit.

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.

Enjoy exploring the dark, uncensored side of true crime? Behind the Tape Photobook features a hand-picked collection of the most spine-chilling crime scene photos.

WARNING: THE PHOTOBOOK ISN’T FOR THE FAINT OF HEART.