"Conversations with a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes" Fear City

1 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:12,074 Watch Online Movies and Series for FREE www.osdb.link/lm 2 00:00:12,804 --> 00:00:13,972 In 1980, 3 00:00:14,055 --> 00:00:16,850 I was a prison reporter 4 00:00:16,933 --> 00:00:19,310 at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. 5 00:00:20,145 --> 00:00:23,565 One morning when I came into my office, 6 00:00:24,065 --> 00:00:27,193 there was a letter there from Attica Prison, 7 00:00:27,277 --> 00:00:30,196 it had David Berkowitz's name penciled on the top. 8 00:00:31,406 --> 00:00:33,742 And I thought, "Is this a joke?" 9 00:00:36,703 --> 00:00:37,912 So I showed the letter 10 00:00:38,538 --> 00:00:40,999 to my Metro editor at that time, 11 00:00:42,333 --> 00:00:45,420 and he looked at it and said, "Holy shit." 12 00:00:48,423 --> 00:00:52,052 As a prison reporter, I had interviewed a number of murderers 13 00:00:52,135 --> 00:00:55,680 and some pretty bad people, but the Son of Sam killer, 14 00:00:55,764 --> 00:00:58,933 David Berkowitz, was a different wild card. 15 00:01:02,187 --> 00:01:06,900 He was a modern-day Jack the Ripper character with a gun. 16 00:01:08,818 --> 00:01:10,487 This is some crazy motherfucker. 17 00:01:15,241 --> 00:01:18,703 The summer of '77 won't be easily forgotten by New Yorkers. 18 00:01:18,787 --> 00:01:20,455 There's a killer on the loose. 19 00:01:22,040 --> 00:01:25,960 The .44 Caliber Killer who is known as "The Son of Sam." 20 00:01:28,421 --> 00:01:34,385 There was a killer roaming the streets, murdering. And nobody was safe. 21 00:01:35,136 --> 00:01:39,265 A psychopathic gunman has killed six people and wounded eight. 22 00:01:39,349 --> 00:01:43,895 Shot at very close range with a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver. 23 00:01:45,605 --> 00:01:50,485 Son of Sam simply shot people for no reason whatsoever. 24 00:01:50,902 --> 00:01:52,946 The killer has taunted authorities 25 00:01:53,029 --> 00:01:55,782 by writing letters signed "Son of Sam." 26 00:01:55,865 --> 00:01:57,367 "Sam's a thirsty lad." 27 00:01:57,450 --> 00:02:01,579 "He won't let me stop killing till he gets his fill of blood." 28 00:02:02,247 --> 00:02:03,748 Overnight, he hit again. 29 00:02:04,457 --> 00:02:08,962 The city was just horrified, terrified, in a frenzy of fear. 30 00:02:09,546 --> 00:02:13,007 I'm afraid to walk here. I'm afraid to be in this neighborhood. 31 00:02:13,091 --> 00:02:15,760 It could be me, I don't want to be the next victim. 32 00:02:16,678 --> 00:02:18,596 He's taunting the reporters. 33 00:02:18,680 --> 00:02:22,433 He's taunting the police. He's taunting all of New York. 34 00:02:23,017 --> 00:02:25,145 Like, "Yeah, try to catch me if you can." 35 00:02:28,273 --> 00:02:31,901 Working up to my first meeting with David Berkowitz, 36 00:02:31,985 --> 00:02:34,320 I think anybody would have been somewhat anxious. 37 00:02:42,871 --> 00:02:45,206 He was in the room when I entered, 38 00:02:45,707 --> 00:02:49,169 and Berkowitz just kind of bounds around this table 39 00:02:49,252 --> 00:02:51,087 he was sitting on the other side of. 40 00:02:53,047 --> 00:02:55,884 And to my astonishment, he sticks his hand out. 41 00:02:55,967 --> 00:02:59,179 "Hi, I'm David." And… big smile. 42 00:02:59,679 --> 00:03:01,890 It was, you know, totally disarming. 43 00:03:04,309 --> 00:03:08,897 He would be the last person you'd suspect of being a serial killer. 44 00:03:11,316 --> 00:03:15,069 All I ask of people, you see, is to be open-minded. 45 00:03:15,153 --> 00:03:19,115 You know, let them hate me as much as they want, you see, 46 00:03:19,199 --> 00:03:21,576 but at the same time be open-minded, 47 00:03:21,659 --> 00:03:24,245 so that they can learn something from this. 48 00:03:26,998 --> 00:03:29,584 He was a dangerous enigma to me, 49 00:03:30,126 --> 00:03:32,629 and I always liked to poke the snake. 50 00:03:33,671 --> 00:03:36,424 The line is just between thinking it and doing it. 51 00:03:37,467 --> 00:03:40,637 But to cross the line is… To me, it was frightening. You know? 52 00:03:41,387 --> 00:03:45,391 The feeling of power. I didn't enjoy it. I just needed to do it. 53 00:04:45,451 --> 00:04:46,786 City Hall, New York. 54 00:04:46,869 --> 00:04:48,288 Once the seat of power. 55 00:04:48,371 --> 00:04:50,623 Once, before the need for services 56 00:04:50,707 --> 00:04:53,584 so greatly outreached the city's ability to provide them. 57 00:04:57,755 --> 00:05:01,384 New York City in 1976 was in the middle of a financial crisis. 58 00:05:02,051 --> 00:05:03,761 We were struggling as a city. 59 00:05:05,638 --> 00:05:08,016 Graffiti was all over everywhere. 60 00:05:08,099 --> 00:05:09,559 The subways were a mess. 61 00:05:10,727 --> 00:05:13,438 There just seemed to be a general loss of control. 62 00:05:16,357 --> 00:05:20,320 It is with a sense of grievous urgency 63 00:05:20,403 --> 00:05:24,532 that I report to you today on the state of our city. 64 00:05:25,116 --> 00:05:28,745 Mayor Beame had asked President Gerald Ford for a bailout, 65 00:05:28,828 --> 00:05:29,912 a federal bailout. 66 00:05:29,996 --> 00:05:33,166 And the president was not keen on helping us. 67 00:05:34,375 --> 00:05:37,754 In fact, the famous 'Daily News' headline of the day said, 68 00:05:37,837 --> 00:05:40,506 "Ford to New York, drop dead." 69 00:05:43,301 --> 00:05:46,054 People once called New York "Fun City." 70 00:05:46,554 --> 00:05:51,184 Now the police and firemen's unions in New York are calling it "Fear City." 71 00:05:51,684 --> 00:05:55,730 The pamphlet says the city is so unsafe that visitors should stay home. 72 00:05:56,397 --> 00:05:59,108 The Fear City campaign is a protest by the unions 73 00:05:59,192 --> 00:06:02,362 against planned layoffs of thousands of policemen and firemen 74 00:06:02,445 --> 00:06:04,697 to ease New York's financial problems. 75 00:06:04,781 --> 00:06:06,199 They laid off police. 76 00:06:06,282 --> 00:06:08,159 There were less cops on patrol. 77 00:06:08,242 --> 00:06:09,869 Crime started to increase. 78 00:06:10,620 --> 00:06:14,290 At that time, I was the commanding officer of the Queens Homicide Squads. 79 00:06:14,374 --> 00:06:16,834 We were very busy in those days. 80 00:06:19,337 --> 00:06:20,338 It was nonstop. 81 00:06:20,421 --> 00:06:23,132 I mean, you would be running from call to call. 82 00:06:23,966 --> 00:06:28,304 Really, almost every call was shots fired, robbery in progress. 83 00:06:29,097 --> 00:06:30,139 It was the Wild West. 84 00:06:36,062 --> 00:06:39,190 There were many forces of nature happening in New York. 85 00:06:39,857 --> 00:06:41,859 A lot of us were coming of age. 86 00:06:42,443 --> 00:06:46,239 I was 17 years old, getting ready for my senior year of high school. 87 00:06:46,322 --> 00:06:48,699 We were in the middle of disco fever. 88 00:06:50,368 --> 00:06:52,203 People were going out to clubs. 89 00:06:53,913 --> 00:06:55,498 We still lived our lives. 90 00:06:55,581 --> 00:06:57,875 We still acted like young people. 91 00:07:00,294 --> 00:07:01,754 But we were in danger. 92 00:07:18,479 --> 00:07:21,357 On July 29th, 1976, 93 00:07:21,441 --> 00:07:23,317 Donna Lauria, 18 years old, 94 00:07:23,818 --> 00:07:28,239 had gone to a disco just north of the Bronx with her friend Jody Valente. 95 00:07:29,115 --> 00:07:31,451 Jody was a nursing student 96 00:07:31,534 --> 00:07:34,537 and Donna was studying to be a city medic. 97 00:07:48,634 --> 00:07:50,636 They were in Jody's car 98 00:07:50,720 --> 00:07:54,140 outside Donna's house on Buhre Avenue in the Bronx. 99 00:07:57,685 --> 00:08:02,106 And then all of a sudden, this strange guy comes about eight feet from the car. 100 00:08:06,402 --> 00:08:08,863 They got a little confused. Who is this guy? 101 00:08:15,661 --> 00:08:18,706 Donna was hit in the back and killed pretty much instantly. 102 00:08:18,789 --> 00:08:21,584 And Jody was hit in the leg. She survived. 103 00:08:24,128 --> 00:08:28,508 Later, Jody is able to give a police artist 104 00:08:28,591 --> 00:08:31,761 an idea of what the perpetrator looks like. 105 00:08:31,844 --> 00:08:33,513 Because they see him. 106 00:08:33,596 --> 00:08:36,682 They turn around and they actually see him. 107 00:08:37,808 --> 00:08:41,729 He was white, five foot nine or ten, 108 00:08:42,480 --> 00:08:43,814 curly hair, 109 00:08:44,565 --> 00:08:47,860 and gives that sketch to the police artist. 110 00:08:56,786 --> 00:08:59,330 My father woke me up at seven in the morning 111 00:08:59,413 --> 00:09:01,666 and told me that Donna Lauria died. 112 00:09:02,458 --> 00:09:04,961 She got killed. Somebody shot her. 113 00:09:06,420 --> 00:09:10,049 And I started bawling like a baby, crying. 114 00:09:13,553 --> 00:09:18,641 I was Donna Lauria's boyfriend from 1971 115 00:09:19,475 --> 00:09:22,019 till 1975. 116 00:09:22,853 --> 00:09:25,022 She lived two blocks away from me. 117 00:09:25,106 --> 00:09:27,775 It started out as puppy love and then it became love. 118 00:09:29,068 --> 00:09:30,528 I took her to my prom. 119 00:09:31,362 --> 00:09:32,863 She was such a nice girl. 120 00:09:34,490 --> 00:09:36,784 I used to call her Lady. My Lady. 121 00:09:38,536 --> 00:09:39,453 She liked that. 122 00:09:43,457 --> 00:09:45,918 They opened the wake up August 1st. 123 00:09:46,002 --> 00:09:48,254 My father called me up out of the basement, 124 00:09:48,337 --> 00:09:51,299 and he goes, "I don't think it's a good idea 125 00:09:51,382 --> 00:09:52,758 that you attend the wake." 126 00:09:52,842 --> 00:09:56,804 He felt that they were going to blame me 127 00:09:56,887 --> 00:09:57,930 for killing her. 128 00:09:58,014 --> 00:10:02,393 So I just… and I went downstairs and cried again 129 00:10:02,476 --> 00:10:04,020 because I couldn't go. 130 00:10:05,521 --> 00:10:08,482 And I started getting investigated by the police. 131 00:10:10,067 --> 00:10:12,778 With a homicide, you always look close. 132 00:10:12,862 --> 00:10:16,032 That's where you start. And then you branch off from there. 133 00:10:17,450 --> 00:10:19,744 So naturally, he's suspect number one. 134 00:10:23,164 --> 00:10:27,418 They would bring me down there, put me in a room like you see on TV, 135 00:10:28,044 --> 00:10:30,463 with a two-way mirror and a light and a table. 136 00:10:31,005 --> 00:10:32,256 I told them my story. 137 00:10:32,923 --> 00:10:34,759 I never diverted off my story. 138 00:10:36,636 --> 00:10:41,974 They investigated Donna's ex for months, but he had an alibi. 139 00:10:42,058 --> 00:10:44,644 And so that investigation went nowhere. 140 00:10:44,727 --> 00:10:47,938 You know, you can't put a square peg into a round hole. 141 00:10:48,022 --> 00:10:50,274 If something doesn't fit, it just doesn't fit. 142 00:10:51,025 --> 00:10:56,113 For the first six months after she passed, I was accused of murder. 143 00:10:56,947 --> 00:11:00,117 I was in disbelief. Nobody ever apologized to me. 144 00:11:01,952 --> 00:11:05,748 As time goes by, the case kind of peters out, 145 00:11:05,831 --> 00:11:07,458 and then there's no leads, 146 00:11:07,541 --> 00:11:09,960 and then it became a cold case. 147 00:11:10,961 --> 00:11:12,755 It was just one of many. 148 00:11:14,507 --> 00:11:17,885 I was a detective sergeant in a homicide squad in Brooklyn. 149 00:11:17,968 --> 00:11:24,517 Back then, there was over 1,600 homicides. The number of cases was overwhelming. 150 00:11:25,768 --> 00:11:28,854 The cops had no motive, no suspects, 151 00:11:28,938 --> 00:11:30,523 they could think of no reason 152 00:11:30,606 --> 00:11:33,234 why these kids were shot on New York City's streets. 153 00:11:34,193 --> 00:11:36,737 They had no idea, really, what was going on. 154 00:11:52,878 --> 00:11:55,506 In 1976, the murder rate was up. 155 00:11:55,589 --> 00:11:57,007 Crime was crazy, 156 00:11:57,091 --> 00:11:59,468 but we really didn't feel like it affected us. 157 00:11:59,552 --> 00:12:01,512 It wasn't happening in our neighborhood. 158 00:12:03,347 --> 00:12:06,267 I lived in North Flushing. Flushing's very big. 159 00:12:06,350 --> 00:12:09,478 Flushing's a very good neighborhood. It still is. 160 00:12:10,312 --> 00:12:12,690 You know, when you're 18, 19, 20 years old, 161 00:12:12,773 --> 00:12:14,483 you feel like you're invincible. 162 00:12:16,068 --> 00:12:19,321 I'd like to think of myself back then as a free spirit. 163 00:12:19,989 --> 00:12:22,450 Smoked pot, drank beer, chased girls. 164 00:12:22,950 --> 00:12:24,201 That was pretty much it. 165 00:12:28,622 --> 00:12:30,916 Friday night, a friend of mine picked me up 166 00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:32,877 and drove me to Peck's Bar and Grill. 167 00:12:33,377 --> 00:12:34,920 That was our hangout. 168 00:12:35,713 --> 00:12:38,716 And a bunch of girls were hanging out with us. 169 00:12:39,925 --> 00:12:42,052 And Rosemary Keenan was one of them. 170 00:12:42,887 --> 00:12:44,805 I knew her from college. 171 00:12:44,889 --> 00:12:46,766 I was friends with one of her sisters. 172 00:12:47,433 --> 00:12:49,351 I'm 20 years old, she's 21. 173 00:12:49,435 --> 00:12:52,813 One thing led to another. It's like, "You want to get out of here?" 174 00:12:52,897 --> 00:12:54,106 "Sure. Let's go." 175 00:12:54,607 --> 00:12:55,691 And we left. 176 00:13:00,696 --> 00:13:03,240 We find a dark spot to make out. 177 00:13:03,324 --> 00:13:04,325 We were parked, 178 00:13:04,408 --> 00:13:07,536 and I was in the passenger seat with long hair. 179 00:13:08,537 --> 00:13:11,874 Rosemary, she was in the driver's seat with short hair. 180 00:13:13,042 --> 00:13:16,796 So it's very easy to mistake me for a woman. 181 00:13:18,506 --> 00:13:20,758 I asked Rosemary if she wants to hit a joint. 182 00:13:20,841 --> 00:13:23,594 She says no. I'm sure I did. 183 00:13:24,303 --> 00:13:27,932 Then we took a swig of the Jack Daniel's bottle that I had with me. 184 00:13:30,768 --> 00:13:33,020 And, um, we started making out. 185 00:13:34,271 --> 00:13:37,525 And next thing you know, my world changed. 186 00:13:48,702 --> 00:13:50,287 The side window was blown out. 187 00:13:50,371 --> 00:13:52,581 I had glass shards all over my hands. 188 00:13:53,791 --> 00:13:57,670 I turned to Rosemary and said, "Start the car up. Let's get out of here." 189 00:14:01,340 --> 00:14:02,591 We drove back to Peck's. 190 00:14:03,092 --> 00:14:07,054 Believe it or not, I jump out of the car and walk to the front door. 191 00:14:07,137 --> 00:14:10,683 The guy checking proof, Vinny, says, "Carl, you don't look good." 192 00:14:10,766 --> 00:14:12,601 And I say, "I don't feel good." 193 00:14:13,143 --> 00:14:14,937 And he said, "You better sit down." 194 00:14:15,521 --> 00:14:18,274 And when he sat me down, my head went down, 195 00:14:18,357 --> 00:14:21,610 and my hair was apparently holding in a ton of blood, 196 00:14:21,694 --> 00:14:23,779 and my shirt just turned blood red. 197 00:14:24,488 --> 00:14:26,824 He said, "What happened?" "I think the car blew up." 198 00:14:28,158 --> 00:14:31,537 Three of my friends drove me to Flushing Hospital. 199 00:14:34,790 --> 00:14:39,920 A policeman comes up to the bed and says, "Son, you were shot in the head." 200 00:14:40,004 --> 00:14:43,382 And that's my first recollection of knowing I was shot. 201 00:14:44,258 --> 00:14:46,844 The bullet went through the roof of the Volkswagen 202 00:14:46,927 --> 00:14:49,680 and created a hole about that big, 203 00:14:50,264 --> 00:14:54,435 which obviously saved my life because it took the impact of the bullet. 204 00:14:55,561 --> 00:14:59,231 The bullet hit me in the back of the head and put a hole in it. 205 00:15:00,274 --> 00:15:02,943 The doctors inserted a metal plate in my head. 206 00:15:03,777 --> 00:15:09,116 Miraculously, Carl Denaro survived, and Rosemary escaped unscathed. 207 00:15:10,159 --> 00:15:11,785 I knew I was gonna live, 208 00:15:11,869 --> 00:15:15,289 but I'm struggling with who the hell shot me. 209 00:15:20,419 --> 00:15:25,883 I was assigned to the 15th Homicide Zone in Queens as a detective. 210 00:15:26,926 --> 00:15:28,385 I was the youngest guy on board, 211 00:15:28,469 --> 00:15:32,264 but I made my bones, solved a lot of homicides. 212 00:15:32,973 --> 00:15:35,392 That was the most interesting time of my life. 213 00:15:37,061 --> 00:15:39,355 I was in the office one night, 214 00:15:39,438 --> 00:15:43,776 and we got a phone call that a male was shot. 215 00:15:43,859 --> 00:15:45,945 "Where was he shot?" "Shot in the head." 216 00:15:47,071 --> 00:15:51,700 So I went to the emergency room, and there was Carl. 217 00:15:54,244 --> 00:15:58,040 They kept pounding me on, "Who did this?" I said, "I don't know." 218 00:15:59,124 --> 00:16:02,336 They kind of jumped to a conclusion of a drug deal. 219 00:16:03,504 --> 00:16:06,215 The squad thought it might be a drug thing. 220 00:16:06,298 --> 00:16:08,550 because he looked like a druggie at the time. 221 00:16:11,720 --> 00:16:13,555 Detectives were unaware 222 00:16:13,639 --> 00:16:17,518 that this case was related to a previous case in the Bronx. 223 00:16:18,602 --> 00:16:22,231 At that time, there was very little communication between boroughs. 224 00:16:22,314 --> 00:16:26,443 We were like separate cities. No communication, no computerization. 225 00:16:27,486 --> 00:16:30,030 And then stranger-on-stranger crimes, 226 00:16:30,114 --> 00:16:32,908 they're very difficult because there was no motive. 227 00:16:32,992 --> 00:16:36,745 You don't know why this guy would decide to kill somebody. 228 00:16:38,163 --> 00:16:42,251 And in the case of Carl and Rosemary, 229 00:16:42,334 --> 00:16:45,796 there was no description, so there was nothing to go on. 230 00:16:46,672 --> 00:16:48,882 These were two really nice kids, 231 00:16:48,966 --> 00:16:52,928 and yet someone was seeking them out to destroy their lives. 232 00:17:12,865 --> 00:17:15,534 When I first encountered David Berkowitz, 233 00:17:16,035 --> 00:17:17,995 it was clear from the beginning 234 00:17:18,078 --> 00:17:23,500 that he wanted to use me to promote himself as a good guy 235 00:17:23,584 --> 00:17:25,878 who had learned from his horrible crimes. 236 00:17:27,254 --> 00:17:29,923 This is why I tried so hard to say to society, 237 00:17:30,007 --> 00:17:31,258 I'm not a bad person. 238 00:17:31,341 --> 00:17:34,511 I'm not that bad, but it's impossible for them to know all this. 239 00:17:35,012 --> 00:17:36,388 Sometimes it bothers me, 240 00:17:36,472 --> 00:17:39,266 but I realize there's nothing I can do about it. 241 00:17:40,976 --> 00:17:45,022 I also had my agenda, which was to learn the full story. 242 00:17:45,939 --> 00:17:49,985 I wanted to work back to who he was as a human being, 243 00:17:50,694 --> 00:17:52,613 and where he went off the rails, 244 00:17:53,781 --> 00:17:58,452 feeling within myself that it's as important to study these guys 245 00:17:58,535 --> 00:18:01,205 as it is to study cancer cells. 246 00:18:02,623 --> 00:18:06,001 At some point during these, I'd like to talk 247 00:18:07,002 --> 00:18:11,507 as regards to the immediate events surrounding each crime. 248 00:18:13,175 --> 00:18:14,468 Immediate events? 249 00:18:15,844 --> 00:18:19,807 Well, I'm not gonna just go into detail about the crimes themselves. 250 00:18:19,890 --> 00:18:20,766 There's no need. 251 00:18:20,849 --> 00:18:26,146 I'm talking about the mental state leading up to the crimes, 252 00:18:26,897 --> 00:18:29,650 the day that they started out. You know? 253 00:18:30,234 --> 00:18:32,569 That's awful difficult. 254 00:18:34,279 --> 00:18:36,240 Say, I don't know where to begin. 255 00:18:38,242 --> 00:18:41,662 He was on edge when we talked about the specific shootings. 256 00:18:42,246 --> 00:18:45,040 At first he ruled out talking about them at all. 257 00:18:46,291 --> 00:18:51,421 If there was a technique in my getting David Berkowitz to open up, 258 00:18:51,505 --> 00:18:57,511 I think it was by showing a real interest in his childhood. 259 00:18:58,137 --> 00:19:00,848 In fact, he talked about it with more eagerness 260 00:19:00,931 --> 00:19:03,559 than I ever thought he would. 261 00:19:04,309 --> 00:19:07,312 I felt like I was always on another planet. 262 00:19:07,980 --> 00:19:09,898 I never seemed to really fit in. 263 00:19:10,399 --> 00:19:12,192 It all stemmed from this, you see. 264 00:19:21,660 --> 00:19:25,789 David Berkowitz was blessed with this face of an angel, 265 00:19:26,498 --> 00:19:30,711 this cherubic, smiling, curly-haired child 266 00:19:30,794 --> 00:19:33,755 that everybody sort of turned on to, adored. 267 00:19:35,632 --> 00:19:40,137 His mother had given him up for adoption three days after his birth. 268 00:19:41,388 --> 00:19:45,017 He was adopted by this very loving Jewish couple 269 00:19:46,226 --> 00:19:50,022 who were childless and very much wanted a child. 270 00:19:51,148 --> 00:19:53,567 World War II veterans, both of them, 271 00:19:53,650 --> 00:19:55,402 patriotic, caring people. 272 00:19:57,362 --> 00:20:01,950 My parents were decent, fair, kind, loving, everything positive. 273 00:20:06,121 --> 00:20:09,499 My mother used to tuck me in at night, every night. 274 00:20:09,583 --> 00:20:13,045 You know, kiss my forehead when I was a child. 275 00:20:13,754 --> 00:20:17,633 And she used to say, "God be with you, angels be with you, pleasant dreams." 276 00:20:19,384 --> 00:20:21,011 She used to say it every night. 277 00:20:24,556 --> 00:20:29,102 For some reason, his father, his adoptive father, Nathan Berkowitz, 278 00:20:29,186 --> 00:20:32,231 just decided one day, when Berkowitz was in elementary school, 279 00:20:32,314 --> 00:20:36,860 to drop the bomb on him that not only was he adopted 280 00:20:36,944 --> 00:20:39,947 but that his mother died during childbirth 281 00:20:40,030 --> 00:20:42,616 and his father was in too much grief to keep him, 282 00:20:42,699 --> 00:20:45,077 so that's why he ended up being adopted. 283 00:20:46,536 --> 00:20:48,664 My whole life I was wracked with guilt. 284 00:20:49,331 --> 00:20:51,208 I'd walk around with this death wish 285 00:20:51,291 --> 00:20:54,086 because I felt I now had to pay for her death, you see. 286 00:20:54,169 --> 00:20:57,631 And that somewhere I thought that there was a man out there 287 00:20:58,674 --> 00:21:01,760 that hated me and was possibly going to try to kill me 288 00:21:02,261 --> 00:21:04,304 for causing the death of his wife. 289 00:21:06,265 --> 00:21:08,392 I didn't really belong in the world. 290 00:21:10,018 --> 00:21:16,066 And so this created a definite shock to the system with Berkowitz. 291 00:21:16,149 --> 00:21:18,527 It created a hole inside of him. 292 00:21:18,610 --> 00:21:22,447 All of a sudden, he doesn't have a clue who he is, where he comes from. 293 00:21:23,407 --> 00:21:27,869 And by all accounts, he changed a little bit after that. 294 00:21:27,953 --> 00:21:30,831 He became a little darker, a little bit more quiet. 295 00:21:30,914 --> 00:21:34,793 That's when his true antisocial acts started. 296 00:21:38,588 --> 00:21:42,259 Pearl Berkowitz, she was so happy to have a child, 297 00:21:42,843 --> 00:21:46,305 so she would overlook these horrible things he would do. 298 00:21:47,723 --> 00:21:51,393 I used to do things sneaky, in a sneaky way. 299 00:21:52,728 --> 00:21:56,023 I used to, like, rip up her clothes or something, you know, 300 00:21:56,106 --> 00:21:58,525 tear a hole in her blouse or something. 301 00:21:59,276 --> 00:22:01,236 If she had lipstick or something, 302 00:22:01,737 --> 00:22:04,990 I used to turn up the thing so all the lipstick comes out, 303 00:22:05,073 --> 00:22:08,368 you know, her favorite lipstick, and then break off the lipstick, 304 00:22:08,452 --> 00:22:10,329 and turn it back down here'd be nothing in there. 305 00:22:10,412 --> 00:22:13,790 And when she went to use the lipstick, there'd be nothing there. 306 00:22:15,000 --> 00:22:17,294 I was very vicious and mean towards her. 307 00:22:17,377 --> 00:22:20,297 And she didn't understand it because I wouldn't stop. 308 00:22:20,881 --> 00:22:24,801 She was such a decent person, and here I was, one mean guy. 309 00:22:28,138 --> 00:22:32,267 Like, I used to go off alone and just do acts of vandalism and things. 310 00:22:35,270 --> 00:22:38,315 Nobody would ever suspect me because I don't seem the type. 311 00:22:43,278 --> 00:22:45,489 My whole life was set around punishment. 312 00:22:47,783 --> 00:22:49,868 I got to a point where I'd do something wrong 313 00:22:49,951 --> 00:22:51,995 solely to be punished, you know. 314 00:22:52,079 --> 00:22:55,707 Set a fire. This is sure to bring on punishment, you know. 315 00:23:00,170 --> 00:23:01,797 Did you set a lot of fires? 316 00:23:02,881 --> 00:23:06,510 Well, yeah, but not any that really caused any damage. 317 00:23:08,887 --> 00:23:13,225 Just the firemen would have to come and extinguish the fire, you know. 318 00:23:17,437 --> 00:23:20,107 At some point, seven, eight, nine years old, 319 00:23:20,190 --> 00:23:23,276 his antisocial behavior became something 320 00:23:23,360 --> 00:23:25,612 that the parents could not ignore. 321 00:23:27,489 --> 00:23:29,866 So they looked up a psychologist 322 00:23:30,617 --> 00:23:32,994 and brought him in for sessions 323 00:23:33,078 --> 00:23:37,249 to find out what was going on to make him do 324 00:23:37,332 --> 00:23:39,584 these mischievous things he was doing. 325 00:23:49,302 --> 00:23:52,431 In the process of interviewing David Berkowitz, 326 00:23:52,514 --> 00:23:55,434 the therapist introduced toy soldiers 327 00:23:55,517 --> 00:24:01,690 that he could use for symbolically reenact his interrelationships with other children 328 00:24:01,773 --> 00:24:03,567 that he had problems with. 329 00:24:05,235 --> 00:24:07,070 I remember distinctly. 330 00:24:08,947 --> 00:24:12,951 She'd sit there, "And now, David, who is that you're shooting?" 331 00:24:13,493 --> 00:24:17,080 I'd mention that was the person I was angry at that day. 332 00:24:17,998 --> 00:24:21,626 I'd say, "Well, that's Jeffrey, you know, I'm shooting at." 333 00:24:24,004 --> 00:24:27,048 All those toy soldiers, she had dozens of them, right? 334 00:24:27,841 --> 00:24:30,677 They all represented people. "Now who are you shooting?" 335 00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:33,138 She used to ask all these questions, you know. 336 00:24:33,221 --> 00:24:34,598 She was understanding. 337 00:24:36,183 --> 00:24:40,854 So an adult, for maybe the right reasons, gave him the wrong message, 338 00:24:41,563 --> 00:24:44,274 a gun, to target his enemies 339 00:24:44,858 --> 00:24:49,696 or take out something which caused him mental disturbance. 340 00:24:51,448 --> 00:24:53,992 Which was exactly the wrong thing you wanna do 341 00:24:54,075 --> 00:24:57,078 with a kid like David Berkowitz. 342 00:25:09,674 --> 00:25:12,427 On November 27th of 1976, 343 00:25:13,094 --> 00:25:15,180 which was Thanksgiving weekend, 344 00:25:15,931 --> 00:25:18,767 very close to my home in Floral Park, Queens, 345 00:25:19,559 --> 00:25:21,561 there were two girls had just come home, 346 00:25:22,562 --> 00:25:25,315 Joanne Lomino and Donna DeMasi. 347 00:25:28,318 --> 00:25:30,028 They had gone to the movies, 348 00:25:30,111 --> 00:25:32,781 and they were standing outside Joanne Lomino's house, 349 00:25:33,281 --> 00:25:35,158 and were just chatting on the stoop. 350 00:25:37,244 --> 00:25:41,248 And then this strange guy approaches, asking for directions. 351 00:25:51,091 --> 00:25:53,510 And then all of a sudden, opens fire. 352 00:26:05,939 --> 00:26:07,774 I was home sleeping. 353 00:26:07,857 --> 00:26:09,359 I heard the shots go off, 354 00:26:09,442 --> 00:26:15,031 and soon after that I heard my mother kind of getting hysterical. 355 00:26:15,115 --> 00:26:18,326 So I got up, and I saw that, you know, 356 00:26:18,410 --> 00:26:20,996 they had some kind of accident on the porch. 357 00:26:22,497 --> 00:26:25,458 There was blood. Donna was bleeding pretty good. 358 00:26:25,542 --> 00:26:26,876 She got shot in the neck, 359 00:26:27,836 --> 00:26:31,381 and my sister was basically curled up in front of the front door, 360 00:26:31,464 --> 00:26:33,383 and she couldn't move. 361 00:26:36,094 --> 00:26:39,848 And that was the beginning of, you know, the horrible night. 362 00:26:42,934 --> 00:26:46,896 We tried to get her to the hospital to get the attention she needed. 363 00:26:48,064 --> 00:26:49,941 She was in pretty bad shape that night. 364 00:26:51,526 --> 00:26:54,613 She couldn't feel her legs. She couldn't feel from the waist down. 365 00:26:55,614 --> 00:26:58,074 My parents and I were afraid she was gonna die. 366 00:27:02,287 --> 00:27:05,665 My sister was, uh, two years and four months older than me. 367 00:27:06,333 --> 00:27:09,628 We were pretty tight, and we were a pretty close family. 368 00:27:11,254 --> 00:27:16,468 She, uh, got in a little bit of trouble with my mom and dad from time to time. 369 00:27:17,010 --> 00:27:20,013 But, you know, that was how it was in Queens back then. 370 00:27:21,348 --> 00:27:23,600 She was 18 years old when it happened. 371 00:27:24,434 --> 00:27:27,062 She loved to dance. She really loved to dance. 372 00:27:27,145 --> 00:27:29,481 She had a lot of friends who really loved her. 373 00:27:30,565 --> 00:27:33,610 She was anxious to get to the next phase of her life. 374 00:27:35,570 --> 00:27:37,322 Donna DeMasi, remarkably, 375 00:27:37,405 --> 00:27:39,949 she survived and did well with her recovery, 376 00:27:40,033 --> 00:27:44,788 but Joanne Lomino got shot in the back, and she was paralyzed. 377 00:27:48,458 --> 00:27:51,378 When we found out she wasn't gonna walk, it was… 378 00:27:51,461 --> 00:27:53,421 pretty devastating to the family. 379 00:27:55,215 --> 00:27:57,092 She was very depressed. 380 00:27:58,176 --> 00:27:59,010 She couldn't walk. 381 00:27:59,094 --> 00:28:02,347 She couldn't do the things she loved to do, dance or anything. 382 00:28:03,723 --> 00:28:07,602 The initial wounds from the shooting, she healed from those, 383 00:28:07,686 --> 00:28:10,939 but she still had permanent problems with her health. 384 00:28:11,523 --> 00:28:16,695 And some of those health issues became pretty severe as her life went on. 385 00:28:16,778 --> 00:28:19,906 And ultimately, that's how she passed away. 386 00:28:21,199 --> 00:28:24,744 She was in the prime of her life when she got shot. 387 00:28:24,828 --> 00:28:28,039 And she just suffered the rest of her life. 388 00:28:33,086 --> 00:28:36,381 They only lived six blocks from where I lived. 389 00:28:36,464 --> 00:28:38,883 And one of them was paralyzed. That stood out to me. 390 00:28:40,719 --> 00:28:43,054 I was aware of the Flushing shooting, 391 00:28:43,138 --> 00:28:47,517 and that had only happened a month before, so I started getting a little bit nervous. 392 00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:51,479 These young people in pairs are getting shot. 393 00:28:51,563 --> 00:28:53,189 Why? What's going on? 394 00:28:54,357 --> 00:28:57,068 It's a middle-class neighborhood, family-oriented. 395 00:28:57,152 --> 00:29:00,155 There's not much crime here, especially violent crime. 396 00:29:00,238 --> 00:29:04,075 This happened late at night, at the steps of the Lomino household. 397 00:29:04,159 --> 00:29:06,411 The two girls were saying goodnight 398 00:29:06,494 --> 00:29:08,329 when they saw an unidentified male, 399 00:29:08,413 --> 00:29:11,499 white, approximately 30 years old. 400 00:29:11,583 --> 00:29:14,294 The man all of a sudden started firing. 401 00:29:14,377 --> 00:29:16,421 He fired approximately five shots. 402 00:29:18,506 --> 00:29:22,302 At this point, we now have three shootings, 403 00:29:22,802 --> 00:29:26,264 and still the police have not linked anything together. 404 00:29:27,557 --> 00:29:31,603 And since there's no perpetrator that they even have in mind, 405 00:29:31,686 --> 00:29:33,229 they're on the back burner. 406 00:29:34,773 --> 00:29:38,485 People assume because you worked as a detective in New York City, 407 00:29:38,568 --> 00:29:42,197 you automatically were aware of the circumstances of other cases. 408 00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:45,825 But the volume of cases and the fact that the city was five boroughs, 409 00:29:46,409 --> 00:29:48,995 it was very difficult to coordinate cases. 410 00:29:49,788 --> 00:29:51,122 So at that point, 411 00:29:51,206 --> 00:29:54,959 the department is unaware that there was a pattern developing. 412 00:29:56,836 --> 00:29:58,338 We were freaked out. 413 00:29:59,172 --> 00:30:02,008 He was going to working-class neighborhoods, 414 00:30:02,091 --> 00:30:04,761 and he was shooting two at a time. 415 00:30:05,637 --> 00:30:08,515 The way he operated scared us so much. 416 00:30:27,325 --> 00:30:30,745 You got to understand, no one thing that led up to this. 417 00:30:31,579 --> 00:30:33,873 People are apt to… 418 00:30:34,916 --> 00:30:37,877 just find, like, one superficial reason and say, 419 00:30:37,961 --> 00:30:42,382 "Well, that was probably his motive," you know? This wasn't the case at all. 420 00:30:44,384 --> 00:30:46,845 It might have been two, three months total 421 00:30:46,928 --> 00:30:49,472 when we were meeting on a regular basis. 422 00:30:49,556 --> 00:30:52,350 I actually took vacation from the paper 423 00:30:52,433 --> 00:30:56,104 and went into the prison on weekends on my own time. 424 00:30:57,397 --> 00:30:59,941 Little by little, we actually formed, 425 00:31:00,024 --> 00:31:03,194 I guess you might call it, a mutual regard for one another. 426 00:31:04,028 --> 00:31:05,655 It's hard to relive this 427 00:31:05,738 --> 00:31:09,826 because I haven't told anybody about, you know, these things. 428 00:31:11,953 --> 00:31:18,877 David was 14 when his mother Pearl had a recurrence of breast cancer. 429 00:31:19,919 --> 00:31:24,007 My father told me that my mom was sick, 430 00:31:24,090 --> 00:31:26,634 that she's in the hospital undergoing tests. 431 00:31:27,427 --> 00:31:29,178 And then after about a month, 432 00:31:29,262 --> 00:31:31,806 I found out she had cancer, and she was gonna die. 433 00:31:34,183 --> 00:31:36,936 She was everything for him. She was his world. 434 00:31:37,437 --> 00:31:41,274 And she gets cancer and dies, so his world collapses. 435 00:31:43,067 --> 00:31:44,694 You feel a lot of guilt? 436 00:31:45,236 --> 00:31:47,989 Yeah, there were so many times I was angry. 437 00:31:48,573 --> 00:31:51,951 I used to curse her out and say, "I hope you die." 438 00:31:53,578 --> 00:31:55,496 And then one day she never came back. 439 00:31:56,623 --> 00:32:00,126 That caused him to retreat within to himself. 440 00:32:00,209 --> 00:32:04,380 Here he is, having love, he loves this woman, 441 00:32:04,464 --> 00:32:06,966 then all of a sudden she's just ripped from him. 442 00:32:08,134 --> 00:32:11,638 Did you continue to live alone with your father after she died? 443 00:32:11,721 --> 00:32:14,057 Yep, just me and him. 444 00:32:16,476 --> 00:32:18,895 And then we went to Co-op City, 445 00:32:18,978 --> 00:32:22,774 a big modern housing development in the North Bronx. 446 00:32:24,734 --> 00:32:29,072 At Co-op City, David did develop a small group of friends, 447 00:32:29,155 --> 00:32:33,368 but he's continued to maintain, you know, his aloofness. 448 00:32:34,994 --> 00:32:39,707 And at this time, he was a master of deceiving almost anybody. 449 00:32:43,252 --> 00:32:47,507 As a child, a lot of David's problems related to aggression. 450 00:32:50,093 --> 00:32:55,682 He'd been practicing that act of keeping that horrible side of himself all inside. 451 00:32:59,018 --> 00:33:01,062 He had a nice face. 452 00:33:01,813 --> 00:33:05,066 He could always fool people with his face and his smile. 453 00:33:06,025 --> 00:33:07,652 It hid the inner demons. 454 00:33:09,112 --> 00:33:11,906 What about dates and things like that in high school? 455 00:33:11,990 --> 00:33:14,867 Did you go out regularly on the weekends with somebody? 456 00:33:14,951 --> 00:33:19,372 I had a lot of girlfriends, but they were very shallow relationships. 457 00:33:20,081 --> 00:33:21,207 Never lasted long. 458 00:33:22,959 --> 00:33:27,255 He says that he wanted, above all else, a woman to love. 459 00:33:27,338 --> 00:33:34,012 He wanted a woman to have a normal sexual relationship with, 460 00:33:34,095 --> 00:33:36,806 but he never found that woman. 461 00:33:37,849 --> 00:33:39,934 I was going with this girl, Iris. 462 00:33:41,310 --> 00:33:43,229 Then my friend told me 463 00:33:43,312 --> 00:33:48,526 that he saw her in the park making out with this guy, Gary something. 464 00:33:51,779 --> 00:33:54,615 And after that, we broke up. She went with him. 465 00:33:56,159 --> 00:33:57,493 Did you feel like… 466 00:33:59,162 --> 00:34:00,872 hurting her, hurting him? 467 00:34:01,497 --> 00:34:05,668 Yeah, but, you see, at that time, I was always Mr. Control. 468 00:34:05,752 --> 00:34:09,297 I'd never think of… I thought of it, but I never did it. 469 00:34:10,298 --> 00:34:12,425 -This was in high school? -Yeah. 470 00:34:14,927 --> 00:34:17,930 I found out later she played around a lot on a lot of guys. 471 00:34:18,014 --> 00:34:20,725 She wasn't that sweet and innocent. 472 00:34:22,185 --> 00:34:24,812 I should have yelled at her good or something 473 00:34:25,313 --> 00:34:27,523 and smacked this guy in the head. 474 00:34:27,607 --> 00:34:29,817 They've both had it coming, you know? 475 00:34:30,777 --> 00:34:33,362 He was incredibly sensitive to the… 476 00:34:34,655 --> 00:34:39,327 least slight against his fragile ego. 477 00:34:40,703 --> 00:34:42,455 Everything was internal, 478 00:34:42,955 --> 00:34:46,292 and the internal kept on growing and growing and growing. 479 00:34:47,627 --> 00:34:52,298 When he actually tries to have a relationship, 480 00:34:52,799 --> 00:34:54,175 they're not interested. 481 00:34:55,384 --> 00:35:01,224 He got deeper and deeper into this morass of "me against women." 482 00:35:03,976 --> 00:35:07,939 His desire, his loathing of them, 483 00:35:08,856 --> 00:35:10,066 his fear of them. 484 00:35:11,526 --> 00:35:13,569 He saw them as the enemy. 485 00:35:14,946 --> 00:35:17,115 I didn't forgive them, you understand? 486 00:35:17,907 --> 00:35:20,284 They might've thought that because I shrugged it off 487 00:35:20,868 --> 00:35:22,161 and just went on my way… 488 00:35:24,705 --> 00:35:26,833 But it just stayed inside. 489 00:35:49,605 --> 00:35:54,527 It was close to midnight, and over the radio, shots fired. 490 00:35:55,111 --> 00:35:57,989 We got a female shot, got a male injured. 491 00:35:59,073 --> 00:36:02,201 The location was in a very exclusive area of Queens, 492 00:36:02,285 --> 00:36:03,411 Forest Hills. 493 00:36:03,995 --> 00:36:05,246 Looks pretty bad. 494 00:36:07,999 --> 00:36:11,919 I arrived at the scene, there was a car parked at the curb. 495 00:36:13,129 --> 00:36:17,675 There was a uniformed police officer, radio cars covering the area. 496 00:36:19,093 --> 00:36:23,514 The female, Christine Freund, was sent to the hospital immediately. 497 00:36:23,598 --> 00:36:24,765 She was still alive. 498 00:36:25,641 --> 00:36:29,604 John Diel, the fellow Christine was with, he had blood all over him. 499 00:36:30,688 --> 00:36:34,275 I spoke to him, and he was distraught. He was crying. 500 00:36:35,610 --> 00:36:39,197 The girl in the car was his girlfriend, 501 00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:44,118 and they were talking about getting married very shortly. 502 00:36:44,869 --> 00:36:46,537 So they were out that night. 503 00:36:46,621 --> 00:36:49,707 They were in a wine bar, and they went to the movies. 504 00:36:50,708 --> 00:36:53,794 They were on their way home, they got in the car, 505 00:36:53,878 --> 00:36:55,588 and he fired right into the car. 506 00:36:58,424 --> 00:37:00,509 I revved the engine once or twice. 507 00:37:00,593 --> 00:37:03,095 And then, uh, all of a sudden, there was a crash. 508 00:37:03,179 --> 00:37:06,724 You know, I turn, and I seen Chris falling towards me. 509 00:37:06,807 --> 00:37:09,602 And I grabbed her. I started screaming, "Chris!" 510 00:37:09,685 --> 00:37:13,022 And I heard one more bang, and I pulled her towards me. 511 00:37:15,650 --> 00:37:18,694 Looking in the car, there was blood on the window, 512 00:37:19,403 --> 00:37:22,198 blood on the seat, on the steering wheel. 513 00:37:22,281 --> 00:37:25,868 It was scattered throughout the front of the car. 514 00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:29,830 Looking in the car, 515 00:37:29,914 --> 00:37:31,999 on the dashboard, there was this fragment, 516 00:37:32,792 --> 00:37:35,127 and I said, "Boy, that's a big hunk of lead." 517 00:37:36,712 --> 00:37:39,298 It was a very large lead bullet. 518 00:37:39,382 --> 00:37:41,842 It was larger than I've ever experienced before, 519 00:37:41,926 --> 00:37:42,927 which was unusual. 520 00:37:44,053 --> 00:37:47,306 And that's when Detective Bernie Judge came over. 521 00:37:47,807 --> 00:37:50,434 He had one of the cases in Queens, 522 00:37:50,518 --> 00:37:53,771 and Bernie said, "You know, we had a similar shooting." 523 00:37:54,605 --> 00:37:56,857 "And we had a big hunk of lead there too." 524 00:37:57,858 --> 00:38:01,529 He then mentioned they had another prior shooting in Queens 525 00:38:01,612 --> 00:38:03,030 in a different precinct. 526 00:38:04,156 --> 00:38:09,537 And he said he thinks there was a homicide up in the Bronx with a big hunk of lead. 527 00:38:10,871 --> 00:38:14,834 That's when I became aware that there might've been other incidents. 528 00:38:18,713 --> 00:38:21,507 Christine Freund was taken to the hospital. 529 00:38:21,590 --> 00:38:25,219 I went to see if I could talk to her, see if she saw anything. 530 00:38:27,221 --> 00:38:30,558 When I arrived at the hospital, I spoke to the nurse. 531 00:38:31,142 --> 00:38:33,269 She said she's not gonna make it. 532 00:38:34,145 --> 00:38:35,146 Christine died. 533 00:38:39,275 --> 00:38:42,028 She was 26 years old. A beautiful woman. 534 00:38:43,404 --> 00:38:47,575 There was nobody that had a disparaging remark about her. 535 00:38:48,993 --> 00:38:51,829 I learned an awful lot about her from the family, 536 00:38:52,580 --> 00:38:56,125 and that's what gives us the drive… 537 00:38:57,543 --> 00:39:00,129 to, uh, go beyond. 538 00:39:02,298 --> 00:39:05,426 Christine Freund, 26 years old, soon to be married, 539 00:39:05,509 --> 00:39:08,304 is dead in a shooting that has no apparent motive. 540 00:39:08,804 --> 00:39:11,390 It got in the papers about the shootings, 541 00:39:11,474 --> 00:39:14,685 particularly Forest Hills because that's an upscale neighborhood. 542 00:39:14,769 --> 00:39:17,104 And it raises a lot of eyebrows. 543 00:39:17,730 --> 00:39:19,273 And for it to happen 544 00:39:19,357 --> 00:39:22,360 so soon after these other shootings had happened in Queens, 545 00:39:22,443 --> 00:39:24,153 people were getting nervous. 546 00:39:24,236 --> 00:39:27,239 When something like this happens, you don't know what to think, 547 00:39:27,323 --> 00:39:29,408 what's going on. Uh… 548 00:39:30,159 --> 00:39:32,787 This is supposed to be a quiet, low-crime area. 549 00:39:33,454 --> 00:39:34,789 I thought so too. 550 00:39:34,872 --> 00:39:37,458 It's really a lovely area to live, I enjoy it here. 551 00:39:38,084 --> 00:39:41,629 The following days were quite busy. 552 00:39:42,838 --> 00:39:45,049 It was a matter of speaking to people 553 00:39:45,132 --> 00:39:47,927 that were in the neighborhood at the time of the shooting. 554 00:39:48,010 --> 00:39:50,513 We needed some leads, and we had no leads. 555 00:39:51,389 --> 00:39:56,018 You're looking for witnesses, you'd like to establish a motive. 556 00:39:56,102 --> 00:40:00,689 In this case, the absence of a motive is what triggered everything. 557 00:40:01,524 --> 00:40:03,901 It's the second time in a few months 558 00:40:03,984 --> 00:40:06,237 that an incident like this has happened in Queens. 559 00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:08,739 We had an incident in another precinct in Queens 560 00:40:08,823 --> 00:40:10,241 that we're looking into. 561 00:40:11,784 --> 00:40:14,412 Whether there's a connection, we can't say at this time. 562 00:40:14,912 --> 00:40:19,208 You said you weren't the kind of person people would suspect. 563 00:40:19,291 --> 00:40:22,670 You feel like, "A-ha, I put another one over on those stupid bastards." 564 00:40:23,337 --> 00:40:25,881 Yeah.… I can admit that. 565 00:40:29,135 --> 00:40:31,303 The next day, when I went into work, 566 00:40:31,387 --> 00:40:33,055 I went to my borough commander. 567 00:40:33,556 --> 00:40:36,058 I said, "It's strange. There was a couple shootings." 568 00:40:36,142 --> 00:40:39,937 I said, "I'd like to get a couple of detectives together who had the cases." 569 00:40:40,020 --> 00:40:43,232 "I'd like to work on it as a group." 570 00:40:46,026 --> 00:40:51,282 With Joe Borrelli, we all gravitated to him because he was seasoned. 571 00:40:51,365 --> 00:40:53,325 He knew his men, 572 00:40:53,409 --> 00:40:57,121 and he knew how to treat detectives. He knew how to use them. 573 00:40:59,540 --> 00:41:01,917 We sat in the office, kicked it around. 574 00:41:04,170 --> 00:41:08,007 Big question was, had ballistics compared the bullets? 575 00:41:08,090 --> 00:41:09,884 At that time, they hadn't done it. 576 00:41:11,177 --> 00:41:13,596 We had the four shootings, Donna Lauria, 577 00:41:14,889 --> 00:41:16,223 Carl Denaro, 578 00:41:17,850 --> 00:41:19,435 Donna DeMasi, 579 00:41:20,352 --> 00:41:21,729 and Christine Freund. 580 00:41:23,063 --> 00:41:25,065 Bullet A, B, C, and D. 581 00:41:26,942 --> 00:41:30,362 The ballistics detectives were able to determine 582 00:41:30,446 --> 00:41:33,407 from the fragments the make of the gun. 583 00:41:33,491 --> 00:41:35,409 Because of the striations, 584 00:41:35,493 --> 00:41:37,745 each gun has its own signature. 585 00:41:37,828 --> 00:41:42,124 They determined it was a Charter Arms .44 caliber Bulldog. 586 00:41:43,375 --> 00:41:46,837 The .44 is a gun with a big kick. 587 00:41:46,921 --> 00:41:48,881 To fire it, you hold on tight with two hands 588 00:41:48,964 --> 00:41:51,050 and brace yourself or it could knock you down. 589 00:41:51,133 --> 00:41:53,093 The .44 bullet is big, 590 00:41:53,177 --> 00:41:56,805 nearly twice as big as the conventional .38 caliber police handgun ammo. 591 00:41:57,306 --> 00:42:00,017 The .44 is designed, they say, to kill. 592 00:42:00,100 --> 00:42:04,813 The .44 will take off your arm, it'll take half of your head off. 593 00:42:05,481 --> 00:42:09,777 That's how powerful the size of this bullet and cartridge is. 594 00:42:11,070 --> 00:42:12,404 It was a rare gun. 595 00:42:12,488 --> 00:42:15,616 There were only 28,000 of them in the United States. 596 00:42:16,408 --> 00:42:17,826 A very unusual gun. 597 00:42:18,911 --> 00:42:21,539 I belong to a gun club. I shoot all the time. 598 00:42:22,122 --> 00:42:26,335 And I've never seen anybody with a .44 before that. 599 00:42:28,921 --> 00:42:31,048 It started to build so much 600 00:42:31,131 --> 00:42:35,302 that we all started to realize that we may have a serial killer. 601 00:42:46,146 --> 00:42:51,151 Sometime in 1975, Berkowitz is left alone in the big city. 602 00:42:51,235 --> 00:42:54,029 His father remarries, moves to Florida. 603 00:42:54,738 --> 00:42:58,951 And like most people, he wants to become a part of something. 604 00:42:59,034 --> 00:43:03,372 He wants to feel like he has a center, so he decides he's going to go out 605 00:43:03,455 --> 00:43:05,457 and try to find his birth father. 606 00:43:06,875 --> 00:43:09,503 So he goes to these meetings called ALMA. 607 00:43:09,587 --> 00:43:13,716 It's an organization where they help you find your biological parents. 608 00:43:16,302 --> 00:43:18,846 At that time, I was 22 years old. 609 00:43:19,513 --> 00:43:24,560 There were about 20 people in there or so, around these big tables. 610 00:43:25,185 --> 00:43:29,982 And I said, "Well, my mother died while giving birth to me." 611 00:43:30,065 --> 00:43:33,277 "And I'm trying to locate them," and they all started to laugh. 612 00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:35,613 You know, like… 613 00:43:36,238 --> 00:43:40,743 And I was, like, shocked, "What are you laughing at?" You know? 614 00:43:41,619 --> 00:43:45,039 And they say, "Well, we were all told the same thing." 615 00:43:45,623 --> 00:43:49,043 And then somebody says, "Yeah, they're probably not dead.", 616 00:43:50,961 --> 00:43:54,923 So it penetrates, he's like, "Wait, my mother might still be alive." 617 00:43:55,007 --> 00:43:57,051 He has no idea who he really is. 618 00:43:57,134 --> 00:43:59,345 He's searching for his identity. 619 00:43:59,428 --> 00:44:02,848 This guy goes on a hunt for his biological mother. 620 00:44:03,641 --> 00:44:05,017 And from that day on, 621 00:44:05,100 --> 00:44:07,603 I launched an all-out campaign to find her. 622 00:44:07,686 --> 00:44:09,396 I made it my business to find her. 623 00:44:14,193 --> 00:44:16,945 He found from his own birth records 624 00:44:18,322 --> 00:44:22,034 that when he was born, he wasn't named David Berkowitz. 625 00:44:22,117 --> 00:44:24,411 He was named Richard Falco. 626 00:44:26,664 --> 00:44:30,793 He starts this search where he's going to public libraries. 627 00:44:30,876 --> 00:44:32,670 He's looking in phone books. 628 00:44:32,753 --> 00:44:35,673 He's cross-referencing different addresses 629 00:44:35,756 --> 00:44:38,425 to different phone books from different years, 630 00:44:39,051 --> 00:44:43,472 until finally he comes across the right person, Betty Falco. 631 00:44:44,473 --> 00:44:45,933 His biological mother, 632 00:44:46,016 --> 00:44:49,311 who he had always been told died giving birth to him, 633 00:44:49,812 --> 00:44:53,816 was still alive and living somewhere in the New York City area. 634 00:44:55,651 --> 00:44:59,571 And he leaves a letter in her postbox. 635 00:45:01,448 --> 00:45:04,618 And so she ends up calling him a couple days later. 636 00:45:05,619 --> 00:45:10,374 And he goes out to Queens and meets his biological mother. 637 00:45:18,382 --> 00:45:21,510 What was it like when you first met your real mother? 638 00:45:22,177 --> 00:45:26,181 When I first met her, I saw a short, fat woman, you know, 639 00:45:26,265 --> 00:45:32,104 with stringy hair and all this old, ruined makeup from, like, 20 years ago, 640 00:45:32,938 --> 00:45:36,275 sitting there, you know, homely dress, ill-fitting dress. 641 00:45:37,568 --> 00:45:41,447 I was kind of confused. It wasn't what I had pictured. 642 00:45:41,530 --> 00:45:45,367 I was hoping for maybe a more attractive mother, you know? 643 00:45:47,453 --> 00:45:53,125 She… I don't know, she impressed me as kind of, just kind of phony, you know? 644 00:45:53,834 --> 00:45:56,962 Homely on the outside, but inside she was very… 645 00:45:57,546 --> 00:45:59,965 I don't know, she wanted something. 646 00:46:01,425 --> 00:46:06,054 Unfortunately, he finds that even though she's the biological mother, 647 00:46:06,138 --> 00:46:09,349 the father was married to another woman. 648 00:46:09,433 --> 00:46:12,019 This was an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. 649 00:46:13,937 --> 00:46:16,523 And he became utterly disgusted 650 00:46:17,024 --> 00:46:21,945 and totally wrote off his mother as, you know, a hopeless, horrible person. 651 00:46:24,114 --> 00:46:26,492 It brings me back to the idea of… 652 00:46:26,575 --> 00:46:31,038 women, young girls having sex in a car with guys. 653 00:46:31,663 --> 00:46:32,998 Carelessness… you know? 654 00:46:33,081 --> 00:46:37,461 It's kinda, like, degrading to me to know that I was an accident, you see? 655 00:46:38,253 --> 00:46:42,090 I had to be honest with myself and admit that I was an accident. 656 00:46:42,174 --> 00:46:45,928 So now anger took over to replace the guilt. 657 00:46:46,970 --> 00:46:49,598 It's something that just built up, uncontrolled. 658 00:46:50,265 --> 00:46:52,226 It's like a volcano erupting. 659 00:46:55,604 --> 00:46:57,105 "This inferno of rage, 660 00:46:57,898 --> 00:47:00,567 men and women having sex in cars, 661 00:47:00,651 --> 00:47:02,486 creating unwanted children, 662 00:47:03,111 --> 00:47:06,573 children evil like me who should not be born." 663 00:47:09,117 --> 00:47:14,081 And he began, the middle of the night, long drives with a gun, 664 00:47:15,415 --> 00:47:19,253 looking for stand-ins for his horrible mother and father. 665 00:47:21,046 --> 00:47:23,632 When he couldn't find the ideal target, 666 00:47:23,715 --> 00:47:26,426 he would randomly select targets, 667 00:47:26,510 --> 00:47:31,390 women who reminded him in some way of his mother at a younger age. 668 00:47:32,683 --> 00:47:35,686 The first one was hard because it was the first, 669 00:47:35,769 --> 00:47:42,401 and I was finally doing the act that I had been wanting to do for so long. 670 00:47:46,363 --> 00:47:48,615 I felt like this was what I had to do. 671 00:47:48,699 --> 00:47:50,492 Like I felt I was getting revenge. 672 00:48:08,927 --> 00:48:11,305 Okay, fifth crime? 673 00:48:13,307 --> 00:48:17,728 That was about 50 feet past the last one. 674 00:48:20,397 --> 00:48:23,650 I was prowling that neighborhood. I was there for about an hour, 675 00:48:24,443 --> 00:48:25,819 just walking around. 676 00:48:28,030 --> 00:48:31,700 And I saw her, and I just, uh… did it. 677 00:48:35,871 --> 00:48:38,874 She wasn't sitting in a car. She was walking home. 678 00:48:40,083 --> 00:48:42,794 Virginia Voskerichian had been walking on Dartmouth Street, 679 00:48:42,878 --> 00:48:45,422 police say, around 7:45 in the evening. 680 00:48:45,505 --> 00:48:49,301 A 19-year-old college girl, a block and a half from her home, 681 00:48:49,885 --> 00:48:52,763 suddenly a shot was fired at point-blank range. 682 00:48:53,555 --> 00:48:55,307 He shoots her right in the face. 683 00:48:55,974 --> 00:48:57,976 He destroyed her face with that bullet. 684 00:48:59,311 --> 00:49:00,771 How close to her were you? 685 00:49:01,605 --> 00:49:03,231 About a foot away. 686 00:49:04,024 --> 00:49:09,613 There wasn't a moment when she was aware that you had a gun in your hand? 687 00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:13,784 Just a few seconds before that, but it was too late. 688 00:49:15,077 --> 00:49:18,914 She had her books in her hands, so she put her books up here, 689 00:49:18,997 --> 00:49:20,415 and that's when he shot. 690 00:49:20,499 --> 00:49:23,961 And it went right through the book, and that was it. 691 00:49:25,921 --> 00:49:28,507 She's laying there, pretty, young girl. 692 00:49:29,341 --> 00:49:32,302 My oldest daughter was just maybe a year or two younger, 693 00:49:32,803 --> 00:49:37,349 so I'm looking down at the body, and it really… it affected me, you know? 694 00:49:38,934 --> 00:49:40,769 The image that will stay with me 695 00:49:40,852 --> 00:49:43,522 is the caramel-colored boots that she was wearing. 696 00:49:44,189 --> 00:49:47,317 And she's stretched out on the sidewalk, and her life is over. 697 00:49:49,152 --> 00:49:52,072 This was not an isolated, out-of-the-way spot. 698 00:49:52,155 --> 00:49:54,449 This was a brazen shooting. 699 00:49:54,992 --> 00:49:59,246 So this indicates that something is unraveling in this guy's brain. 700 00:50:01,373 --> 00:50:07,045 When Virginia was shot, that bullet was a .44 caliber. 701 00:50:09,673 --> 00:50:11,591 Okay, it's game on. 702 00:50:13,427 --> 00:50:17,806 Mayor Beame came to the 112th Precinct in Queens for a briefing. 703 00:50:17,889 --> 00:50:21,727 This following Tuesday's killing of 20-year-old Virginia Voskerichian 704 00:50:21,810 --> 00:50:22,769 in Forest Hills. 705 00:50:23,270 --> 00:50:25,564 That's when the case blew sky-high. 706 00:50:26,732 --> 00:50:29,151 The mayor and police commissioner, Michael Codd, 707 00:50:29,234 --> 00:50:31,403 they knew they had to notify the public, 708 00:50:31,486 --> 00:50:33,238 and that's when it was first stated 709 00:50:33,321 --> 00:50:37,743 that these series of shootings that had started in July of 1976, 710 00:50:38,410 --> 00:50:39,411 were all related. 711 00:50:40,162 --> 00:50:41,621 We have determined 712 00:50:41,705 --> 00:50:45,459 that there has been a .44 caliber revolver used in every one of them. 713 00:50:46,251 --> 00:50:48,545 They acknowledged, "We have a problem." 714 00:50:48,628 --> 00:50:50,839 "We have a serial killer on our hands." 715 00:50:51,715 --> 00:50:54,676 Up until then, there were no other serial killers 716 00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:57,637 in New York City getting the attention that he was. 717 00:50:57,721 --> 00:51:01,433 They were dealing with a lone gunman randomly shooting, 718 00:51:01,516 --> 00:51:06,354 really, the middle-class youth of New York City, which was unheard of. 719 00:51:06,438 --> 00:51:09,524 The general description that we have is of a male, 720 00:51:09,608 --> 00:51:12,152 white, 25 to 30 years of age, 721 00:51:12,694 --> 00:51:15,572 five feet ten inches to six feet in height. 722 00:51:15,655 --> 00:51:19,534 Putting that information out there, that it was a .44 caliber, 723 00:51:20,118 --> 00:51:22,662 I'm not sure that was a good thing or a bad thing. 724 00:51:22,746 --> 00:51:24,998 Maybe you're giving out too much information. 725 00:51:25,749 --> 00:51:27,542 Maybe he'll stop for a while. 726 00:51:27,626 --> 00:51:30,045 Maybe he will change his MO. 727 00:51:30,128 --> 00:51:34,716 Maybe he will change his gun, which is not what we want. 728 00:51:36,009 --> 00:51:38,136 We had no idea who he was, 729 00:51:38,220 --> 00:51:41,014 where he was, what he was up to next, 730 00:51:41,598 --> 00:51:43,517 other than creating carnage. 731 00:51:44,768 --> 00:51:47,979 I had so much anger, that one attack against society 732 00:51:48,063 --> 00:51:53,110 wasn't going to extinguish it or quench it. 733 00:51:54,069 --> 00:51:57,906 It makes you want to go out and find this guy really bad. 734 00:51:58,615 --> 00:52:00,742 I just would keep rekindling. 735 00:52:02,452 --> 00:52:05,664 He's not gonna stop. The only way we stop him, we get him. 735 00:52:06,305 --> 00:53:06,902