“The next morning…there were crowds of people at Shore Road. It was then that I learned what happened the night before. Suddenly I realized that I must have seen the killer. I panicked, and I couldn’t say anything….
“I would never forget his face until the day I die. It was frightening.”
There was some initial skepticism about whether Davis had seen the killer. Her description of what he wore was at odds with another likely eyewitness who had been parked near Bobby Violante’s car. Doubts increased when Davis claimed that at the time of the murder, there were officers giving out parking tickets in front of her building. This information was very much at odds with the information that Strano got from the police on duty that night, who claimed that they did not write any tickets at that time in that area.
Davis was adamant. Her boyfriend decided not to escort her to the door because he saw the cops writing tickets, she insisted.
She described the two patrolmen to Strano. Two names came up that checked out with Davis’s description. Sergeant Jimmy Shea began to follow up on the matter.
In the meantime, things seemed to be popping all over. Officer Chamberlain of the Yonkers PD responded to a call about a suspected arson at Berkowitz’s apartment house at 35 Pine Street. The call had been made by Craig Glassman, a male nurse and part-time sheriff’s deputy. (Glassman had been the fellow descibed in Berkowitz’s letter as one of a group of demons along with the Cassaras and the Carrs.)
Glassman explained what happened: “I smelled the smoke and ran to the door. When I opened it the fire was almost out…It probably never got hot enough to set the bullets off.” He showed Chamberlain the .22 caliber bullets that had been put into the fire outside his door.”
Then Glassman showed them the squirrelly letters he had received from Berkowitz, who lived just above him. The handwriting looked identical to the letters that the Carrs had received.
That same afternoon, Sam Carr, still upset over the shooting of his dog and what he saw as non-action by the police, independently pursued the matter with the Omega Task Force. He drove down to the police station where the task force was headquartered.
Not much happened when Sam Carr related his story of the shootings of the dogs, the weird letters, the eccentric David Berkowitz. The task force had been inundated for many months with leads by people who spoke as passionately as Sam Carr. They put the information in a folder of level two priorities and forgot about it — for a little while.
The fact was, despite the subsequent excuses, Sam Carr had just handed them the name of the killer and they sat on it.
Two days later, August 8, Chamberlain and Intervallo called Detective Salvesen to tell him about the Craig Glassman event and the letters that Glassman had received. One of the letters was amazingly confessional: “True, I am the killer, but Craig, the killings are at your command.” Salvesen promised to inform the task force immediately, but the information didn’t get to the task force for days.
In the meantime, several traffic tickets that had been written the night of the shooting, outside witness Davis’ apartment, were at last found. All but one were investigated and yielded nothing. One final ticket was yet to be investigated — one belonging to a Yonkers man named David Berkowitz.
Detective Jimmy Justus called the Yonkers Police Department and talked to Wheat Carr, the daughter of Sam Carr, who had lost her dog. She gave him a real earful about David Berkowitz and everything her father had tried to impress upon the police days earlier. Officer Chamberlain called Justus shortly afterwards and told him everything he knew. They compared notes.
Then after the Carr family and officers Chamberlain and Intervallo had connected all the dots repeatedly for the New York City Police, the latter were more than anxious to go in for the collar and the glory that went with it. On August 10, Shea, Strano, William Gardella and John Falotico put 35 Pine Street under surveillance. The number of cops grew as everyone wanted to be in on the arrest.
Just after 7:30 P.M., a heavy-set Caucasian male walked out of the apartment building and seemed to head towards Berkowitz’s Ford Galaxy. The police started to close in on him. Falotico pulled his gun and stopped the man. “David, stay where you are,” he warned him.
“Are you the police?” the man wanted to know.
“Yes. Don’t move your hands.”
It was not David Berkowitz, but Craig Glassman, the part-time deputy sheriff who realized that these men surrounding him were not the Yonkers police but New York City’s “finest.” Glassman figured it out fast that Berkowitz was a suspect in the Son of Sam murders.
Several hours later another figure emerged from the apartment building, carrying a paper bag. The man was heavy with dark hair and he walked slowly toward the Ford Galaxy. This time, the police waited for the man to get into the car and put the paper bag on the passenger seat. “Let’s go!” Falotico yelled and the officers advanced. The man inside did not see the approaching figures. Gardella came from the rear of the car and put the barrel of his gun against the man’s head. “Freeze!” he yelled. “Police!”
The man inside the car turned around and smiled idiotically at them. Falotico gave him very explicit instructions to slowly get out of the car and put his hands up on the roof. The man obeyed, still smiling.
“Now that I’ve got you,” Falotico said, “who have I got?”
“You know,” the man said politely.
“No, I don’t. You tell me.”
Still smiling his moronic smile, he answered, “I’m Sam. David Berkowitz.”
620
This feature story is taken primarily from the following sources: Lawrence D. Klausner’s very good book entitled Son of Sam (McGraw-Hill, 1981), the New York Times, and the New York Post.
Other sources were:
Abrahamsen, David, Confessions of Son of Sam.
Breslin, Jimmy and Dick Schaap, .44 (novel based on the Son of Sam murders).
Leyton, Elliott, Hunting Humans; Inside the Mind of Mass Murderers.
Terry, Maury, The Ultimate Evil. Terry believes that the Son of Sam murders and other high-profile crimes involve a Satanic cult called the Process Church.
Ressler, Robert K. and Tom Shachtman, Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for The FBI.