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Girls stay homehe strikesBy MICHAEL MOKparents weepJuly 29, 1976: Sam’s first victim was Donna Lauria, 18, of The Bronx, left, who was shot in the back and killed instantly as she sat in aparked car. Jody Valenti, 19, right, was wounded, f,October 23,1976: _ Carl Denaro, 20, was shot in the back of the head while he sat in a parked car with his girlfriend in Queens. The woman was unharmed.Nov. 27, 1976: Joanne Lomino, 18, right, of Bellerose, Queens, was shot in the back as she sat with a friend, Donna DiMa-si, 17, left, on the porch of the Lomino home. Both girls survived the attack./nrvabout. In cases like this, the usual feeling is. ‘Oh, it could never happen to me.’ Here it is different. All the women believe it could happen to them.Nobody goes out at night and all the women come and have their hair cut short.”Long dark hair had been the trademark of the mass murderer’s victims. Then he struck StacyMoskowitz, a vibrant little blonde. My wife, a blonde, had drawn some solace from the fact that being a blonde would make her safe. Suddenly she was terrified.And so was I. Mindlessly, threeweeks ago, I found myself sitting in a car at 2 in the morning, talking to her after a long drive. Suddenly the hair on the back of my neck crawled as we sat there in Queens.My God, do you realize what we are doing?” It was like inviting the madman to strike us.New Yorkers don’t lay down and roll over and play dead inthese crises. The special Son of Sam manhunt force, headed b Deputy Inspector Timothy Dov have been working to exhaustion.NEVER before has New York been so close to a massive nervous breakdown.The crisis was triggered by a lone killer, the Son of Sam, who stalked from the shadows of the city and blasted to death and maimed the young and the beautiful.Even in wartime, cities under siege of terror learn to cope with death, horror and carnage. But those cities have always known their enemy — in New York it has been terrifyingly different.‘Son of Sam’ launced a frighteningly successful one-man guerrilla war against 10 million women and their male companions.As the toll of dead and the mained mounted from blasts of an ugly .44 caliber revolver, even the crack police force bitterly admitted he was winning the war.To be as close to the case as I have been in these last weeks has been traumatic.Death is not new to any street reporter, but when I held the short stocky figure of Jerry Mos-kowitz, from Brooklyn, in my arms at Kings County Hospital on July 31, the pain was transmitted from his body to mine as if we had been linked with an electric cord.It was 28 hours before his little girl, Stacy Moskowitz, 20, was finally to succumb to two bullet wounds from the madman’s She had been shot with her Doy friend Robert Violante as they sat in a car in Brooklyn.Already Jerry Moskowitz felt that he would never see his daughter laugh out loud in life again.What pierced my heart most was the look of a giant question mark on his face which cried out. “Why?” “How?” “Why my littlegirl?Pat Violante, father of youngBy STEVE DUNIEAVYWESTCHESTERhim the mission of killing these people. He was raised in an or phanage and has felt abandoned as long as he can remember.“He was in the service in Vietnam, but was discharged early because of his mental condition. Sam brought all that anger home with him, and he’s havinghis own little war right here.Mrs. Allison said she is sure that Sam’s customary job is as aEard or a policeman: I am sure is somehow connected with the police. But since he spends every day now on his rituals and prayers, he may have been laid off.By now we are at the scene of the most recent murder, a quiet service road with a park on one side and a footbridge crossing a major highway on the other.At the site in Brooklyn where the killer shot Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante, both 20. Mrs. Allison said: “He picked this place very carefully.“Sam very likely made his escape over the little bridge — so he could zoom off down the shore road, in the opposite direction from which pursuit could be expected.“I feel he gets more of a charge out of playing cat-and-mouse with the police than he does from killing.”Mrs. Allison said that Son of Sam has “crazy spells” in which he sees visions and ghosts. “He sees things that aren’t there and they talk to him,” she said.“To Sam, pulling the trigger is better than being in bed with a woman,” she added. I think he is impotent, but experiences a climax when he shoots someone.”According to Mrs. Allison, “Sam has a brother and sistersomewhere, and one of these will inform the cops, which is how they’ll get him.“Our mass murderer loves guns. He has two shotguns besides the two pistols he carries. He cleans the (runs a lot, and I canIJan. 30, 1977: Christine Freund, 26, a secretary, was shot to death as she sat in a parked car with her steady boyfriend in Forest Hills, Queens. With her, but unhurt, was John Diel, 30, who hadjust taken her to see the movieRocky.He told police the killer fired three times through the window on the passengerside while he was warmingthe car engine. “The windowon her side just came in,” Dielsaid. Miss Freund died fourhours later.gJL March 8, 1977: Only half «» block from the spot where Miss Freund was slain, Virginia Voskerichian, 19, a Russian language student at Columbia University, was shot to death near her home as she returned from school.She was found lying face down in the shrubbery near the sidewalk, herbooks scattered nearby.An excellent student whose grades put her on the dean’s list, Miss Voskerichian impressed those who knew her with her politeness.8RONXStar columnist Dunleavy has reported the Son of Sam reign of terror night and dav for the New York Post.HOURS after Son of Sam committed his sixth murder, psychic Dorothy Allison stood at the spot where he struck and said: “He will soon be captured — but not until he strikes again.”Mrs. Allison, whose psychic abilities have helped police locate the bodies of 14 murder victims, said she was certain he would strike again.This time the police will pounce, but not before he’s shot another couple in a car,” she said.“He will be wounded by police gunfire leaving the scene and try to kill himself with his second but he won’t quite make it,” !rs. Allison said.She explained that the killerkeeps his .44 caliber gun under his left arm in a shoulder holster. “But he’s got another gun, a smaller one, that’s always in his right hand trouser pocket. That’s the one he’ll turn on himself when he’s cornered.“He has strong suicidal tendencies,” said Mrs. Allison. She believes that Son of Sam was jilted by the women he lived with briefly, and it is this woman that he is trying to get even with.Very likely he caught her in a car with somebody else,” she said.According to the psychic, the sight of a young woman in a car with a man awakens “terrible feelings of rejection” in the murderer. “He is enraged at the sight of the girl with ‘another man.’ ”The mental picture Mrs. Allison gets of the killer is of a man in his late 20s or early 30s who is “not on drugs, but is taking prescription medication of some kind.“Sam has been a patient in a1PELHAM BAY PARKQUEENSLONG ISLAND SOUNDtrRobert, had just been told that one of his boy’s eyes had been blown out and they were fighting to save the other.“Such a good boy. Never smoked pot. Never gave me any trouble. An obedient, beautiful kid. Now, God, has his eyes.”I saw Mike I^auria at the St. Theresa Church in The Bronx as he knelt in prayer at a memorial mass for his beautiful child DonnaLauria.She was the first victim of the Son of Sam, who struck her down on July 29, 1976 I detected an identical look in his face: “Why?” “How?” Why My Uttle Girl?”John Diel a 30-year-old bartender knelt over the grave of Christine Freund whose beautiful life ended before her 28th birthday. John had been on a date and just kissed her on the lips when two .44 caliber bullets slammed into the back of her head.Again there was that same look on his face. Why?”While the victims cried their own personal grief, the rest of the city verged on paranoia.Listen to the words of Lisa Ma-digan, a 15-year-old schoolgirl from Queens: “I sometimes miss school. Why? Because I am afraid he will come up while I’m waiting for a school bus and kill me.”Andrew Petrides, who owns Andre’s Coiffures of Northern Boulevard, Bayside, Queens: “All women talk to their hairdressers. The killer is all the women talkN NASSAU \\FLUSHING*BAYSIDEBELLEROSEIPsychic Dorothy Allison: She saysSam is a gun lover.mental hospital at least twice, for three months at a time, when he was in an agitated state,” she said. “At such times he seems to be able to move with uncanny quickness and is very short-tempered.“He has a scar over his right eye and a tattoo on his left arm, which might be a bird—an eagleperhaps.”Mrs. Allison said that Son of Sam lives in a ground floor room cluttered with photographic equipment and with many pictures on the walls.“The place is near a burned out school,” she said.“During the day, he is quiet, dresses like a monk, and engages in private rituals of purification When he goes through the rituals he needs music. He has this special record he plays, and arranges fresh flowers on a table, as if it were an altar.“He loves flowers and balloons, too. He has some balloons in his room, and a wheelchair, too. I don’t know why. He loves the color yellow. Sam thinks God gave^'FOREST miS*BROOKLYNINEW YORK,' CONN. STATE iEighteen hours a day became routine.We’re going to get the sonofa-bitch,” Dowd told me. “There is no ifs or maybes. We’re going toSet him before he closes the town own.”The public reacted by flooding the police with theories, descriptions and leads. The policehave taken them all seriously. Says top cop Dowd: “Nothing is too whacky. We follow everything up. Nothing is too bizarre.”A young music enthusiast found that a number on a Jimi Hendrix album had the words: “Son of©April 17, 1977: Valentina Suriani, upper left, an 18-year-old acting student, was shot and killed as she sat in a parked car near her home in The Bronx with Alexander Essau, upper right, 20, who was also shot dead. On the scene, only a few blocks from the place where Miss Lauria and Miss Valenti were shot, the killer left a note.fered to join forces with the cops to catch the man.Mafia Boss of Bosses, Carmine Galente, ordered his force ofmobsters to get behind the searchand use everything in their power to bring him to justice or to the grave.While the town convulsed in fear, the most angering and frightening aspect was that somewhere in this giant city, sat a quiet, intelligent man drawing up his plans for his next round in the guerrilla war.He is an attic man, or a cellar man,” said cop Timothy Dowd at one stage. “He lives in a room somewhere all by himself.”There he has sat, manipulating the city with fear like some grotesque puppeteer. He wrote that we would “see more of my handiwork” and that cracks in the pavement of New York are filled with blood.You read the words, taunting words, over and over. Then you see his handywork. The bloodstained face of Stacv MoskowitzJune 26, 1977: Judy Pla-cido, 17, upper left, who was graduated that day from a parochial high school was wounded.Her companion, Salvatore Lupo, 20, upper right, was also wounded as the couple sat in a parked car.Both have since recovered from their injuries.\BENSONHURST(s\.AND\_ONGgun.bov-ATLANTIC OCEAN• Son of Sam’s trail of terror: Since July 1976 to July 1977 he struck eight times. Most of the shootings were in Queens—one of the five boroughs of New York. But in the eighth attack, Sam stunned police and New Yorkers by striking into the neighboring borough of Brooklyn.July 31, 1977: Exactly one year plus two days after his first attack, the .44 caliber gunman fatally wounded Stacy Moskowitz, 20, right, as she sat in a parked car with Robert Violante, also 20, left, in Brooklyn. Mr. Violante, who was shot in the face by the killer, is out of danger but may lose his eyesight.Sam, Son of Sam, Help Me, Help. The po the record over ana overMe,” in the lyrics. The policeplayed for ius‘or just a sliver of a lead.A history buff noted that one of the notes the killer wrote signed off with: “Sam’s Creation .44.” Immediately he pointed out that the man who invented the .44 caliber revolver was Sam Colt Jr. — also a son of Sam.Colt died in 1862, embittered over the death of his brother John who was murdered in jail while awaiting trial for killing. InstantlyKlice laid their hands on every ok written about Sam Colt.Blackouts, strikes, bombings hit the city within a two week period. There was periodic concern but New York came through it, as it always does in these cases, with a stoicism. The city is built to take shock.But the haunting shadow of an intelligent and brutal madman finally shook their psyche.My little five-year-old boy knows exactly what this man has done. He knows the name Son of Sam like it was that of his kinder-Kten teacher. That is how far it penetrated the life of New York.Cops have been offering to work overtime to beef up the forces. It might be the only time in this city where the bizarre is the ordinary where the Mafia actually of-Victim tries tohisailing nightterrorWHAT THE GUNMAN’S BIORHYTHMS FORECASTguns leaninidoes fds own body.”imind. He keee guns cleanerSon of Sam victim Carl Denaro: “Even I am starting to want to kill him.”five minutes away from the spot where Stacy Moskowitz died, told THE STAR following Sam’s eighth attack:“I don’t go out so much now ... I’d rather be safe.“There’s plenty of time for social life after they get this guy. Until then, I won’t be caught sitting in any cars on empty streets.I won’t be out late at night. If my friends and I go somewhere very far from my home I’ll be sleeping at one of their houses.”Nancy Sinopoli, a 21-year-old accounting clerk, also lives in the area. “I thought it was so safe,” she told THE STAR. “Now that he’s struck so close to home it frightens me. He can strike anywhere, anytime.“I don’t park in cars anymore — even coming to and from anyplace frightens me. The fear is there even if you are with a boyfriend or other friends.”Most of Son of Sam’s victims have had Ion brown hair, and many young women have ha their long locks cut off.“I have long brown hair and every! wants me to cut it,” said Nancy.“But it isn’t going to help. I really don’t think brunettes nave a lot to do with it. Not now that he’s killed a blonde . . .”THi SAN ANTONIOTHE 20-YEAR-OLD man who survived a bullet in the head from Son of Sam’s .44-caliber revolver lowered his eyes and said: “They gotta catch this guy.”Carl Denaro’s brush with death came in a quiet, Queens, N.Y., street in October 1976. Nine months later, Son of Sam struck again — gunning down Stacy Moskowitz as e sat in a parked car in Brooklyn.“I don’t think he’s a criminal — a criminal wouldn’t do something like that. He’s just sick,” he told THE STAR.“The way I look at it is, the guy has a weird hangup. About women — what else can it be?“What it comes down to, I guess, is he had a relationship with a female and it didn’t work out.”Carl added: “Most people want to kill this guy, but I personally don’t feel that way. I am against capital punishment. But he’s taunted the police, taunted the people — and it is getting to the point where even I am starting towant to kill him.”Carl tries not to “re-live” what happened to him. Now that he is back at work as a securiMrs. Allison looked at me grimly and added: “Sam is ambidextrous, if that’s the way you describe someone who can shoot to kill with either hand. . .”Leading psychiatrists who have studied the Son of Sam case build a portrait of the mass murderer remarkably similar to the one drawn by psychic Dorothy Allison for THE STAR.Dr. James A. Brussel, who worked on the Mad Bomber case, believes the motivation “has to be impotence.” He added: “Everyone else has sex. He can’t. He has a reason for removing these women he thinks of as vile beings. I don’t think he’s ever sat in the front seat of a car with any-onp.”According to Dr. Gabriel Koz, director of Manhattan State Hos-ving tlis hatred of women: “He’s infuriated by the intimation of being left out of sex, out of love.”STAR—Aub. M. 1977 PAOE 15The next triple critical point was 86 days later, Oct. 21, 1976. In fact, Son of Sam struck on Oct. 23.The next critical point was Nov. 23. Son of Sam shot two women on Nov. 27.Critical point Number Three was Jan. 28, 1977. Son of Sam killed on Jan. 30.Haslwanter has given his biorhythm analysis to the police.Another biorhythm expert, Bernard Gittelson, author of Biorhythm Sports Forecasting, pointed out that killers Gary Gilmore and Boston Strangler Albert de Salvo, were both at critical periods on their charts when theystruck.But, he added that it was impossible to do an accurate biorhythm chart without knowing the killer’s birthday.SON OF SAM could stnke again in mid-August, a leading biorhythm expert said shortly after the killer’s eighth attack.Joseph Haslwanter, a scientist in the research and development department of the American Chicle Co. in Long Island City, N.Y., studied the dates when the killer struck.The science of biorhythms is based on the theory that all humans are ruled by three cycles — a physical cycle of 23 days, an emotional cycle of 28 days and a mental cycle of 33 days, all of which start on the day of birth.Haslwanter did not have the killer’s date of birth, of course, but he assumed the first killing on July 29, 1976 was, what is caued, a triple critical point — a date when all three cycles intersect.ty guard in a downtown Manhattan bank, he is trying to forget the steel plate in his head, the stiffness in one of his fingers and the memory of “a crashing sound” when the killer struck.“Each time he hits someone,” he said, “I didn’t think about what happened to me so much. But I felt for those people. I am closer to what they went through, I guess.”Carl’s mother, Mrs. Catherine Jacobs, also feels for Sam’s victims. She retired to bed on hearing of Stacy Moskowitz’s death. “She gets pretty upset,” said Carl’s stepfather, Gustav Jacobs. “She knows how the people feel.”Jacobs tried to show understanding for the deranged killer — but that doesn’t work too well anymore. “I used to feel pretty much like Carl does, that I’d like to see this fellow and talk to him,” he said. “But now, as itSes on, I’m getting madder. Now I don’t ink I would want to meet up with him because I would do a job on him.”Meanwhile, Son of Sam has forced dramatic changes in the lifestyles of million of young New Yorkers. Leslie Cohen, 21, who lives justtaking her body you see Pat Vi his tears, and you see John Diel lean over the grave of his girlfriend and you see the face of Mike Lauria as he prays for his beautiful daughter.' When you do, goose pimples pop on your skin and your bones feel cold and as a man you make the ultimate admission: I am frightened, I am terrified. FOR GOD’S SAKE STOP.”'ou see Pat Violante’s face andypital, the force moving the killerPAOt 10THE SAN ANTONIO STAR —Aug. 14, 1 977* * A * * * ft* % * lb•»* Ot _ # x*_ •r„.* -K* .* ♦ ♦ * ♦ 'V' V##* «** ** »
Newspaper Details
San Antonio Express News
San Antonio, Texas, US
Sun, Aug 14, 1977
Page 147
Full Page
Clipped by
Elisabeth M.
USA 17 Oct 2018
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