Wednesday, 5th May 2021 at 5:39 pm
Netflixâs true crime documentary series The Sons of Sam re-examines a series of shootings that took place in New York in 1976 and 1977.
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David Berkowitz â who called himself âThe Son of Samâ in letters to the press and police â was convicted of the eight random shootings that killed six and injured a further seven people, but many people â including author Maury Terry, whose investigations are the focus of The Sons of Sam â believe he did not act alone.
Berkowitz himself has claimed that he was part of a group of satanists, and according to NBC journalist John Hockenberry, he told Terry in 1997 that the group were âworking with Satan to try to bring a lot of chaosâ.
A four-part docuseries available Wednesday on Netflix. Berkowitz looked nothing like the police sketches drawn from the memories of surviving victims. He had a neighbor in Yonkers named Sam Carr owner of the supposedly Satanic dog who ordered Berkowitz to commit the crimes. Sam Carr had two sons, John and Michael, who died in separate incidents within two years of Berkowitz’s arrest. Berkowitz claimed the Carr brothers had taken part in the killings. (They were never charged.) Building blocks are laid down to form the foundation for a credible argument there were others involved. Around the three-quarters mark, we’re still fairly certain Berkowitz didn’t act alone, but we’re also nearly lost in the weeds of an expanding web of murders and suspicious deaths that expand to the West, not to mention a thicket of conspiracy theories involving Satanic cults and a controversial church and literally dozens of tangential storylines and characters.
Did Son of Sam serial killer act alone? New Netflix documentary suggests the man who terrorized New York City during 1977 s summer of fear, killing six and wounding seven, had help from two friends - and they were all tied to a Satanic cult
Between July 1976 until his arrest on August 10, 1977, David Berkowitz, known as the Son of Sam, killed six people and wounded seven in New York City
His first shooting was on July 29, 1976: Donna Lauria, 18, and Jody Valenti, 19, were parked in a car in the Bronx. Lauria died but Valenti survived
He continued his random shootings. It took time for the NYPD, which had layoffs and budget cuts due to the city s deep financial woes, to connect the cases
Thursday, 6th May 2021 at 5:04 pm
Arguably one of the most infamous serial killers in history has to be David Berkowitz – a.k.a The Son of Sam. Berkowitz’s crimes are looked at in detail in Netflix‘s brand new docuseries The Sons of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness – a four-parter which examines whether the convicted killer worked alone or as part of a satanic cult as he claims.
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Through archive footage and interviews, the new series dives into the investigation of Maury Terry – a journalist who became obsessed with the Son of Sam case and believed Berkowitz acted alongside other murderers between 1976 and 1977.
I’ve been a member of two unconventional congregations in New York.
One was in the East Village and was financed by several lawyers in the Bronx. Hardly anyone paid dues but our Hasidic rabbi still fed his gaggle of converts, Baal Tshuvahs and crusty Lower East Side geezers, including a Jew known as Murphy who once had a pushcart in the neighborhood. The shul’s caretaker was a veteran of the East Village squatter scene. He scared the bejeezus out of me one shabbos: after drinking a few l’chaim’s, he showed me an AK-47 he kept at the shul.