Is there really a demonic cult behind the terrorist killer who randomly shoots citizens?
"I'm a monster, I'm the son of Sam... Pay attention to the police, shoot me first—shoot me to death or kill me some other way. Get away or you'll die!"
New York City in 1977 was a terrible mess, with 8 million people across the city, engulfed in the horror of the .44 Caliber shooter, wondering if they would one day become his victims. To make matters worse, another new shooting occurred, also by the "Point 44 Killer", and he also left a provocative threatening letter for the detective who was handling the case, declaring his name to "Son of Sam"!
Who is the "Son of Sam"? Why did he shoot innocent citizens everywhere in new York at night? Perhaps, every big city will have its own anti-social killer. If Taipei City is Zheng Jie, then New York City is probably the "son of Sam", and the psychological trauma they leave on the citizens is difficult to forget even after time has passed. Tonight, let's tell the dark story of Son Sam.
On June 1, 1953, 24 years before the "Son of Sam" massacre, a man named Richard Scott was killed. David. Richard David Falco's baby boy fell to the ground, unaware that his birth parents didn't want him, would send him to an adoption agency, and never cared about his fate ever since.
The poor boy was not unheard of, and when he was about 4 or 5 years old, a Jewish couple surnamed Berkowitz adopted him and raised him as an only child. The boy's name was changed to David. Richard. David Richard Berkowitz, whose adoptive father told him that his birth mother had died in childbirth while giving birth to him.
As a young man, he did not know that his adoptive father's words were actually lies, and that his birth mother was still alive in the world; he probably did not think that 20 years later, he would become a killer who called himself "Son of Sam", taking pleasure in random killing in the city where he was born and raised.
The young Berkowitz is already a little troublemaker, he does not like to study, but he likes to go around causing trouble, arson and theft. His adoptive parents were so worried that they once took him to a psychotherapist. Did psychotherapy help him? It's hard to say, at least in Berkowitz's formative years, there were never serious bad records or court problems. His bad behavior can be seen as a sign of future development, but it can also be explained as the frivolous past of many teenagers.
Berkowitz's adoptive mother died of cancer when he was 14 years old, and his adoptive father remarried, which seemed to have had some negative effects on him, but he stayed at home to finish high school, joined the U.S. military after graduation, stationed in South Korea, and was honorably discharged at the age of 21.
From these experiences, although Berkowitz has some bad deeds, he is not yet a great evil, and his life looks ordinary and he has received the care he deserves. Where did he start to break down? It's a mystery that can't be found in his upbringing.
The pain of abandonment is mixed with anger at society
If there is a problem in the course of Berkowitz's life, it is probably that he has a complicated heart knot about his adoption. After retiring from the army, he found his birth mother, met her, and learned the details of when he was born — including the fact that his biological father didn't want him.
It wasn't a touching reunion, but an encounter with her birth mother that had a huge impact on Berkowitz, who had been abandoned and unloved by her biological parents. What a cruel truth!
If Berkowitz's life had been splendid, perhaps he could have survived the onslaught. However, his life after he was discharged from the army was not very happy. He tried to get into a community college for a year, then came out to find a way out, could only do some non-professional work, and changed positions seven times in two or three years. The jobs he drove in taxis and eventually became a letter sorter at the post office apparently did not bring him a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, let alone help him on a blank path of affection.
Life was so unsatisfactory that a wave of anger accumulated in his heart and became a dark driving force.
We don't know which one of the frustrated things was the last straw that pushed him to the killing. All we know is that from 1976 to 1977, New Yorkers will face a year of terror.
Donna. Loria, the first victim of Son Sam
Kill for no reason! New York is shrouded in nightmares
New York City in the 1970s was not a safe place, robbery, rape, murder... Every day in this bustling city on the outside, but constantly collapsing on the inside, citizens have long been accustomed to the daily life that cannot be safely lived. Despite this, being shot outside his home for no reason is too much.
Donna. Donna Lauria probably didn't expect her 18-year-old life to end on July 29, 1976. Although it was early in the morning, she was not far from the house, sitting with her friend Joti. Jody Valenti's car chatting in the car, shouldn't there be any danger? Who knows, the moment Loria opened the door and got out of the car, a man suddenly appeared next to him.
"What's going on now..." Loria, frightened by the man, began to utter her last words.
The man raised his pistol in a paper bag, fired a shot at Loria, then fired a second shot at Valenti, and when he saw the two girls being shot, he fled the scene quickly. Loria died on the spot, and Valenti was shot in the thigh and survived. Loria's parents heard the gunshots and went out to see their daughter die tragically, and they were devastated.
Who took Lorria's youth? Valenti could not recognize the murderer, knowing that it was not a revenge hunt or a robbery. The reason why the murderer killed people is completely without the motive that ordinary people can understand. The police are powerless to solve the case, and can only let the case get stuck here, which has become one of the proofs of low law and order in New York.
A series of strange random shootings occurred one after another in the Case of Loria: couples who were hump in the car were inexplicably shot by guns and ran away in panic; high school students walking together on the road were seriously injured by the shooting of the man who asked for directions, and one of them was paralyzed for life; the fiancée was about to rush to the ball, but the sudden deadly bullets left them forever; the female college students who were about to go home tried to block the incoming gunfire with their textbooks, and their heads were still hit and killed.
Each case, on the surface, is inexplicable, leaving the police clueless, and because the Loria case occurred in the Bronx and other cases in Queens, the police failed to connect them for a while. However, after comparing the ballistic analysis of these cases, they found a surprising fact: the bullets used in these cases were all point 44 caliber bullets and came from the same gun! It turned out that in the chaotic New York City, there was a random murderer who did not play his cards according to the card, and committed crimes everywhere across different areas. And he may continue to attack...
The couple Isu and Suliani murdered by Sam's son
"Son of Sam" is here, and demons are lurking in the city?
Although they know that many shootings were strange cases, which turned out to be random killings committed by the same serial killer, the police still have no idea about the appearance and characteristics of the murderer, and the sketches of the murderer drawn from the testimony of the surviving victims are somewhat different, and it is difficult to lock in a range. The media has reported heavily on the existence of the "point 44 caliber killer", which has made the city, which is already suffering from law and order, even more into panic. New Yorkers began to buy self-defense equipment, and did not dare to go out at night.
Their fears were not unreasonable, as the shootings soon recurred.
At 3 a.m. on April 17, 1977, a young man and woman sat in the car in the Bronx, Namely Alexander. Alexander Esau and Valentine. Valentina Suriani, after four gunshots, a neighbor reported the incident to the police and found the two dead in the car. The police examined the bullets left at the scene and found that this was the same as a series of Point 44 bullet murders, which were committed by the same murder weapon.
And this time, not only the bullets identified the murderer, but also a letter with a crooked handwriting left next to the deceased, indicating that the recipient was Detective Joseph. Joseph Borrelli, who was the one who investigated the "Point 44 Killers" series of murders. The letter reads:
You call me an enemy, it makes me very sad, I am not, but I am a monster, I am "Son of Sam". I'm a little "devil." Sam's dad gets bad when he gets drunk, and he beats up the whole family. Sometimes he tied me to the back of the house and sometimes locked me in the garage. Sam is very bloodthirsty, "Go out and kill," Sam's father ordered... (Excerpt)
The police did not publish the letter at first, but the media preemptively exposed some of it, and the police had to follow. The bizarre name "Son of Sam" soon replaced the boring "Point 44 Caliber Killer" as the new code name for serial killers. The letter is filled with chilling rhetoric, provocative to the investigators, and mentions the name of the demon "Beelzebub", adding a hint of demonic madness to the horrific random murders. Could it be that behind the random killing, there is an ulterior motive...?