Son Of Sam and Satanism in New York
Way Of The Ray
http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/161_sonofsam.shtml
I AM THE SON OF SAM!
David Berkowitz is serving six life terms for the Son of Sam murders in
New York 25 years ago. Before his June parole hearing Berkowitz, now a
born-again Christian with his own website, declared that he doesn’t want
to be released. JOHN VINCENT SANDERS re-examines the case, asking
whether Berkowitz was the only killer using the Son of Sam MO and if he
was linked to a Black Magic underground.
As you clear the trees after an uphill climb in New York’s Untermyer
Park, you cannot fail to notice what appears to be a rather
bizarre-looking rock formation. Closer examination reveals iron
handrails and other signs of human handiwork. Locals have always
referred to the large structure – more than 40ft (12.2m) high at its
west face – as the Eagle’s Nest. It was erected about 75 years ago as a
cascading fountain, and the gazebo at its summit offers a fine view of
the Hudson River and the New Jersey Palisades.
The park was once the estate of multi-millionaire Samuel Untermyer, who
had large stones from Great Britain incorporated into the fountain he
built for his daughter’s wedding. There is reason to believe that the
wealthy lawyer had an interest in arcane spiritual beliefs, and the
design of the Eagle’s Nest suggests a deliberate attempt to imitate
megalithic sites of Wiltshire. After Untermyer’s death in 1940, his
sprawling estate was donated to the municipality of Yonkers, just north
of New York City. At the north end of the park lay the classical gardens
with their impressive mix of Greek-style architecture and Assyrian-style
statuary. The gardens give way to the so-called Thousand Steps leading
down to other scenic viewpoints. Not far from the foot of the steps, in
a densely overgrown area behind nearby St John’s Hospital, there once
stood a large pump-house. For reasons never made public, it was knocked
down about 15 years ago, and not even a trace of its foundation can be
seen today.
Untermyer Park and the demolished pump-house – once known as Devil’s
Cave – are more than points of local interest. Along with other nearby
locations, they represent little-known pieces in a jigsaw puzzle of
mass-murder and ongoing controversy.
Twenty-five years ago, New York was in the grip of an unprecedented
homicidal menace. From July 1976 until July 1977, a brutal killer – who
identified himself only as ‘Son of Sam’ – perpetrated eight separate
handgun assaults; several of them were against amorous couples in parked
cars but, in all cases, the primary targets were young women in their
teens and twenties. Six of the 13 people attacked died of their
injuries: Donna Lauria, Carl Denaro (a long-haired male mistaken for a
woman), Christine Freund, Virginia Voskerichian, Valentina Suriani, and
Stacy Moskowitz. A survivor of the first assault, 18-year-old Jody
Valente, described her assailant as a white male in his thirties with
curly hair.
During the course of the next 12 months, two letters containing satanic
undertones and promises of further bloodshed were received by reporter
Jimmy Breslin and the New York City Police Department. The murderer –
dubbed ‘The .44-Calibre Killer’ by the New York press – triggered the
largest manhunt in US history, creating a wave of fear that peaked
during the summer of 1977. Police soon announced a “one gun, one killer”
theory but, in retrospect, that theory appears to have been inconsistent
with the facts available at the time, a time when, coincidentally,
popular interest in satanism was on the rise.
In America, the 1970s could be characterised as a transitional decade.
The Vietnam War finally ended and the Watergate scandal forced the
resignation of President Richard Nixon. Social movements like Greenpeace
and the National Organization for Women were busily codifying their
ideologies. Meanwhile, the world-consciousness of the hippies was
merging into the self-absorbed hedonism of the ‘Me Decade’.
At the same time, a shadowy sub-culture emerged. New Age philosophers
were challenging the validity of Judeo-Christian ethics and many
individuals were exploring alternative concepts of good and evil; for
some, the path of discovery led towards occultism or satanism.
Investigative journalist Maury Terry – author of the 1987 Son of Sam
exposé The Ultimate Evil – traces the rise of popular interest in
satanism to the arrival of the Process Church of the Final Judgment,
founded in England almost 40 years ago [see FT134]. According to Terry,
several famous rock bands were influenced by the Process’ strange
amalgamation of Christ and Satan.
In 1967, the Rolling Stones released an album called Their Satanic
Majesties Request; a year later, their song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’
topped the charts. Two of Led Zeppelin’s early albums suggested
influences from Arthurian legend, as well as from the myth-laden fantasy
of writers like JRRTolkien and Arthur Machen. Zeppelin’s guitarist,
Jimmy Page, expressed great interest in the occult philosophy of the
late Aleister Crowley, and later bought Crowley’s Boleskine House near
Loch Ness. Heavy metal progenitors Black Sabbath left no doubt as to
where their musical inspiration lay, and other bands also parlayed
syncopated satanism into commercial success. Hollywood, ever watchful
for the latest trends, responded with films like Rosemary’s Baby, Race
with the Devil, and The Omen.
David Berkowitz was born Richard David Falco on 1 June 1953. His birth
mother, Betty Falco, became pregnant as the result of an affair with a
married man, Joseph Klineman. When informed of the pregnancy, Klineman
refused to admit paternity and demanded that the child be given up.
Richard David was adopted only a few days after birth by Nathan and
Pearl Berkowitz, who reversed the order of his given names.
David’s childhood was somewhat troubled. Although of above-average
intelligence, he lost interest in learning at an early age and began an
infatuation with petty larceny and pyromania. His psychological state
deteriorated further when his adoptive mother died of breast cancer in
1967. A variety of frustrations, including several failed relationships
with women, resulted in him enlisting in the US Army in 1971. Although
the Vietnam War was still under way, he was sent to posts in South Korea
and the United States.
After his discharge in 1974, Berkowitz flirted with Christianity and
also began a search that resulted in meetings with his birth mother,
Betty, and his half-sister, Roslyn. He began lighting fires again, and
claimed to hear “voices” around this time. Although he would later
confess to assaulting a woman with a knife on Christmas Eve 1975, police
have no record of the crime he described.
It was a parking ticket that placed David Berkowitz in the vicinity of
the final Son of Sam shooting – the attack on 31 July 1977 that blinded
20-year-old Bobby Violante and took the life of 20-year-old Stacy
Moskowitz. After a complex sequence of events, he was arrested 10 days
later in front of the apartment building in which he lived, on Pine
Street in northwest Yonkers. Berkowitz immediately confessed to all of
the shootings and also took responsibility for the infamous letters.
Eventually sentenced to six consecutive life terms, he is currently
housed at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in upstate New York.
One of the ‘Son of Sam’ letters contained sinister references to other
individuals. Several years after his arrest, Berkowitz began accusing
other persons of involvement in a satanic group, headquartered near his
former Yonkers residence. Among them were two brothers, John and Michael
Carr. Two other satanists – referred to as the ‘Joker’ and the ‘Duke of
Death’ – lived on nearby Wicker Street. Another close neighbour, Sam
Carr, father of John and Michael, was accused of being a “high official
of the Devil’s Legion.” David also said that Sam Carr’s black Labrador,
Harvey, was used by evil forces to transmit messages to him.
In spite of the accusations, none of the persons accused by David
Berkowitz were ever arrested. Nevertheless, there are indications that
the so-called ‘Duke of Death’, and possibly others, fled before they
could be questioned by police. Berkowitz admitted that he tried to
bolster an insanity defence in the weeks before and after his arrest.
Although such an attempt would automatically raise issues of future
credibility, certain facts do suggest a conspiracy behind the ‘Son of
Sam’ murders.
It is a matter of public record that both Carr brothers died violently
within two years of Berkowitz’s arrest. John Carr, age 31, perished as
the result of a rifle shot to the face in Minot, North Dakota, in
February 1978. The number 666 was allegedly found carved into the drying
blood on one of the dead man’s hands. The probable murder was initially
ruled a suicide. And despite a clinical aversion to alcohol, 27-year-old
Michael Carr died in an apparent drink-driving accident on the West Side
Highway in New York City on 4 October 1979.
A chilling footnote is the death on 20 September 1977 of another local
man, Andrew Dupay, a 33-year-old postman who both lived in and delivered
mail to the Berkowitz-Carr neighbourhood for years. According to the
suicide note he left behind, Dupay had been threatened on more than one
occasion. As someone who spent an unusual amount of time in that
vicinity, it’s possible that he learned things he wasn’t meant to know.
Northwest Yonkers in the mid-Seventies was much the same as it is today.
Running like a thread through the district is the Old Croton Trailway
State Park. The 22miles (35km) path, known locally as the ‘Aqueduct’,
parallels the course of the Hudson River and was built over a water
tunnel that once served Manhattan Island to the south. The secluded
Aqueduct also offers discreet access, especially at night, to any number
of places, including Untermyer Park and the nearby Lenoir Nature
Preserve.
Twenty-five years later, the satanic activity that used to occur in this
area has become urban legend. The characteristics of Untermyer Park in
particular made it a perfect location for such things; even today, fully
half the grounds are densely wooded. Furthermore, several locations
there, including the Eagle’s Nest (above) and the so-called ‘temple’,
are still tagged with occult/satanic graffiti, much of it recently
applied. Population shifts over the last three decades have resulted in
a large Hispanic presence in the area. An individual familiar with the
neighbourhood today assured me that evidence of santeria ritual fowl
sacrifices are occasionally found in woods adjacent to the Aqueduct.
Former employees of nearby St John’s Hospital can still recall nights
when chanting and torch flames were seen and heard in the depths of the
woods, especially from the area of the now-demolished Devil’s Cave.
There are those who maintain that harmless teenagers were the only ones
frequenting the backwoods at night during the Seventies, but that belief
flies in the face of some disturbing facts. Over Christmas 1976, dead
Alsatian dogs, with their ears carefully excised, were found on the
Aqueduct just south of Untermyer Park. In November 1979, a Westchester
County Police Officer stumbled upon a sinister night-time gathering in
the Lenoir Nature Preserve: a group of robed and hooded figures carrying
torches and leading two leashed Alsatians.
Similar events were reported elsewhere in the region at the time. In the
upstate town of Walden, New York, 85 Alsatians were found skinned
between October 1976 and October 1977. Across the state-line, in
Fairfield County, Connecticut, an employee at a local radio station told
me of druid-like gatherings, at night, in the woods surrounding
Candlewood Lake, near Danbury.
I had the opportunity to interview journalist Maury Terry in April 2002
(see panel). His controversial book about David Berkowitz, The Ultimate
Evil, is currently available in an updated third-edition published by
Barnes & Noble. In addition to writing magazine and newspaper articles,
he has also made numerous radio and television appearances in connection
with the ‘Son of Sam’ murders. Terry also participated in police
investigations related to the Atlanta Child Murders of the 1980s and the
OJ Simpson case.
MAURY "ULTIMATE EVIL" TERRY INTERVIEWED
John Vincent Sanders (JVS): Do you still believe there was more than one
person involved in the ‘Son of Sam’ shootings?
Maury Terry (MT): Absolutely. In my opinion, the evidence is
overwhelming and conclusive. I conducted a televised interview with
David Berkowitz back in the 1990s. He claimed to have pulled the trigger
for only two of the ‘Son of Sam’ attacks, and publicly named John and
Michael Carr as two of the other ‘Son of Sam’ shooters. Even the New
York City police eventually conceded the likelihood of multiple
gunmen.Furthermore, if you compare the Lomino/DeMasi police composites
[a reference to two 1976 shooting victims] with a photo of John Carr,
the resemblance is striking.
JVS: Do you know the origin of the satanic group in Yonkers that David
Berkowitz became involved with?
MT: I trace it back to a physician who was forced to flee England after
World War Two. He arrived in Yonkers sometime around 1946 or ’47 and
established a practice on North Broadway, not far from the neighbourhood
where Berkowitz would eventually live. In addition to being a Nazi
sympathiser, the doctor was also a self-proclaimed demonologist who
utilised sex for occult purposes.
JVS: Something like the sexual ‘magick’ advocated by Aleister Crowley?
MT: Yes, but the man I’m talking about involved legal minors – boys – in
his sexual activities. He eventually organised a group of like-minded
people in Yonkers back in the 1950s. By 1970, this group had been
absorbed by a branch of the Church of the Final Judgment. A nucleus of
the local cadre probably still exists in some form, but it’s maintained
a very low profile over the last 25 years. Also, more than 20 of the
group’s original members eventually died under violent circumstances.
JVS: You’ve long maintained that child sexual abuse, child pornography,
and narcotics trafficking are among the objectives of those who organise
satanic groups. Law-enforcement agencies in England and the US have
conducted a sting operation against an Internet group called ‘The
Candyman’, with over 200 arrests made so far. US Attorney General John
Ashcroft announced that the group included thousands of people,
including lawyers, police officers, school bus drivers, and teachers. Do
you suspect a link between this sort of Internet activity and organised
satanism?
MT: I believe a link of some kind is possible. Twenty-five years ago,
the satanic motif was a convenient tool for certain individuals who
wanted to control groups of people for various ends; among them, child
pornography and narcotics distribution. The Internet would make it
possible to reach persons who are not necessarily interested in
satanism, but who share an interest in certain illegal activities.
JVS: As we speak, David Berkowitz’s first parole hearing will take place
two months from now [in June 2002]. You’ve maintained contact with him
over the years. Do you think he has any expectation of being paroled?
MT: Although Berkowitz has expressed a desire to be released, he also
admits that his life imprisonment is well deserved. He gives every
indication of being thoroughly institutionalised and furthermore, he
probably feels safer right where he is. I don’t think he expects to be
paroled, and I doubt he ever will be.
(He wasn't. FT)