After a year-long killing spree the police at last had Berkowitz under lock and key. He pleaded guilty to all six charges of murder and was sentenced to 365 years in prison. One of the Omega team, Sergeant Joseph Coffey, who had conducted the initial interrogation, said: ‘I feel sorry for him. The man is a fucking vegetable.’
However, not everyone was satisfied. Investigative journalist Maury Terry spotted a number of inconsistencies in Berkowitz’s story. Berkowitz claimed that he had acted alone. But he simply could not have been responsible for the Violante-Moskowitz shooting if Tommy Zaino’s description was accurate. Even if he had been wearing a wig, he was not tall enough. And if he was the man Mrs Cacilia Davis had seen outside her apartment building, only minutes before the shootings, he could not have got to Violante’s car on Shore Parkway in time. Terry interviewed Zaino and Davis. Both confirmed their original accounts. When Davis went through her story again, Terry realised that it was unlikely that, if Berkowitz had been carrying a .44 Bulldog revolver already connected to a number of murders, he would have sped off after a police car, honking his horn late at night. Maybe, as Berkowitz said, ‘The demons were protecting me, I had nothing to fear from the police.’ Terry tracked down the witnesses who said that they had seen a fair-haired man in a yellow VW. All of them stuck to their stories. They could have been mistaken. But their descriptions seemed to match those given by the two schoolgirls who had been shot in Queens. Terry concluded that Berkowitz had a fair-haired accomplice.
Another inconsistency was Berkowitz’s pseudonym ‘Son of Sam’. His real father’s name was Tony, and his adoptive father’s name was Nathan. The only Sam in the case was Sam Carr, who Berkowitz claimed had given him orders to kill via the demon dog Harvey. However, although the Carr house was visible from Berkowitz’s sixth floor apartment, they had never met. Carr confirmed that the first time he had even heard Berkowitz’s name was when Mrs Cassaras called and told him about their former lodger. So why was Berkowitz so obsessed with Carr? Sam Carr did, in fact, have two sons, John and Michael. Both of them hated their father. Carr’s daughter was called Wheat and John Carr was nicknamed ‘Wheaties’. Then Terry remembered ‘John “Wheaties”, rapist and suffocater of young girls’ in the Son of Sam’s letter to Jimmy Breslin. John ‘Wheaties’ Carr was tall, with long stringy fair hair. While Terry tried to trace John Carr, he became interested in some of the Satanic clues in the Breslin letter. He was also concerned about Berkowitz’s seeming obsession with dogs. He did discover that in Walden, New York, about an hour’s drive from Yonkers, 85 Dobermans and Alsatians had been found skinned during the year of the Son-of-Sam killings. More dead dogs had been found in a wooded area of Untermeyer Park in Yonkers. A local teenager said that devil-worshippers held ceremonies there. Could Berkowitz have been involved in a satanic cult? The police dismissed the idea.
In October 1978, when Terry eventually traced John Carr, it was too late to ask him about any of this. He had been shot dead in the small town of Minot, North Dakota. His body had been found in the bedroom of his girlfriend Linda O’Connor, with a bullet through the roof of the mouth and rifle beside the body. The coroner’s verdict was suicide, but the police believed he had been murdered.
John Carr had been born in Yonkers, New York, on 12 October 1946 – he shared a birthday with the self-styled ‘wickedest man in the world’ the Satanist Aleister Crowley. After leaving Catholic school, Carr joined the US Air Force. He was stationed in Korea and served for 12 years. In 1972, he returned to the US and was stationed in Minot, North Dakota. He was discharged in 1976, allegedly for drug addiction. In 1976 and 1977, he went to hospital three times with overdoses and had a reputation as a drug dealer and a heavy drinker. He was in New York for probably five of the eight Son-of-Sam attacks, including the shootings of Donna DeMasi and Joanne Lomino, and he closely resembled the descriptions they had given.
In late January 1978, Carr drove the 1,500 miles from Minot to New York, saying he was going to stay for a long time. But within two weeks, he called his girlfriend and told her that the police were after him. On 14 February, he flew back to Minot. He rented a post office box, opened a bank account and enquired about the continued payment of a disability allowance he received for a service injury, hardly the actions of a man contemplating suicide. Two days later he was dead.
Mysteriously, on the skirting board by the body, the letters ‘S.S.N.Y.C.’ had been scrawled in blood. A man who has blown the top of his head off with a rifle bullet seldom has time to write things in his own blood. Terry deduced that Carr had been beaten to the ground by his assailants, then his killer, or killers, had gone to search for his gun, leaving Carr time to write his message before he was killed. The letters ‘S.S.N.Y.C.’, Terry concluded, stood for ‘Son of Sam, New York City’. Carr also had the figures ‘666’ written in blood on his hand. 666 was the number of the Beast in the Book of Revelations and was used as a Satanic pseudonym by Aleister Crowley. The police in Minot had also discovered that Carr was connected with a number of local occult groups and his girlfriend said that when Carr had seen news of Berkowitz’s arrest for the Son-of-Sam shootings on the TV, he had said, ‘Oh shit’.
Up to this point Terry had been dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. But John Santucci, the District Attorney of Queens, began to believe there was something to Terry’s investigation. He re-opened the case. It was soon discovered that, far from being the classic psychotic loner, Berkowitz had a wide circle of friends. Chief among them was John ‘Wheaties’ Carr’s brother Michael. In 1975, the year before the killings started, when Berkowitz was living in his drab one-room apartment in Barnes Avenue, he met Michael, a young drug addict who had been hanging about outside the apartment block. He invited Berkowitz to a party. The guests included John Carr and other members of The Twenty-Two Disciples of Hell, the Satanic group Berkowitz referred to in his letter to Breslin. In due course, Berkowitz moved to Yonkers, to within 200 yards of Sam Carr’s house where Michael Carr then lived. Michael Carr had since moved out and, by the time he could be traced, he, too, was dead. In the early hours of 4 October 1979, Michael Carr’s car ran into a street lamp at 75 miles an hour as he drove towards Manhattan. There were no skid marks and his sister, Wheat, was convinced that he had been forced off the road or that one of his tyres had been shot out.
The most unexpected witness in Santucci’s new investigation was Berkowitz himself. In February 1979, he had called a press conference and announced that his story about Sam Carr’s dog and demon voices had been concocted in the hope that he would be able to enter a plea of insanity. But court-appointed psychiatrists had declared him sane. Now, a year after being incarcerated in Attica Correctional Facility, he said that he had bought his .44 knowing exactly what he intended to do. He wanted to kill women because of his disappointments with sex.
In prison, Berkowitz had become a prolific letter writer. In them, he described how he had stage dressed his apartment to back his insanity plea. A week before his arrest, he had stripped his apartment of an expensive Japanese stereo system, a dinner service, a bureau, sofa and bed. These had been loaded into a van and dumped in front of a Salvation Army warehouse in Mount Vernon. Berkowitz specified the location of the garage he had rented the van from, the cost of the rental and the location of the warehouse – all of which checked out. He had also vandalised his apartment, knocking a hole in a wall so violently that it had cracked the plaster in a neighbour’s flat. He had also covered the walls with ravings. This was all true. In a letter to a priest in California, Berkowitz wrote:
‘I really don’t know how to begin this letter, but at one time I was a member of an occult group. Being sworn to secrecy or face death, I cannot reveal the name of this group, nor do I wish to. The group contained a mixture of Satanic practices which included the teachings of Aleister Crowley and Eliphaz Levi. It was (and still is) blood orientated, and I am certain you know what I mean. The Coven’s doctrines are a blend of ancient Druidism, the teachings of the Secret Order of
the Golden Dawn, Black Magick, and a host of other unlawful and obnoxious practices. These people will stop at nothing, including murder. They had no fear of manmade laws or the Ten Commandments.’
None of the other members of The Twenty-Two Disciples of Hell were found. But the postman who delivered letters to the Pine Street district of Yonkers killed himself. He was a young married man named Andrew Dupay. In the month before Berkowitz was arrested, he was noticeably worried. Then on 20 September 1977, five weeks after Berkowitz’s arrest, he and his wife were bathing their two baby daughters when Dupay excused himself, went down to the basement and blew his head off with a shotgun. A neighbour said that Dupay had said that he had learned something on his rounds that had frightened him. One of Terry’s informants said that Dupay knew both Carr and Berkowitz and had killed himself because threats had been made against his family.
Berkowitz made other disturbing references in his letters. Shortly after the Son-of-Sam shootings had begun, he applied for a job in a dog pound. The pay was not good, but Berkowitz said that ‘there was another way in which I was getting paid. Somebody needed dogs. I guess you understand what I’m trying to say.’ Terry’s investigation again proved that Berkowitz was telling the truth.
Then Berkowitz dropped a bombshell. He ripped a chapter out of a standard work on Satanism and witchcraft. It concerned the satanic practices of Charles Manson and his Family. Then he wrote a note in the margin, saying: ‘Call the Santa Clara Sheriff’s office. Please ask the sheriffs what happened to Arlis Perry.’ He went on to say that Perry had been ‘hunted, stalked and slain. Followed to California. Stanford Univ’.
Stanford University is in Santa Clara County. A 19-year-old student called Arlis Perry was horribly murdered in the church in Stanford University at midnight on October 1974. She had only been in California for a few weeks. Her body was naked from the waist down. Her legs were spread and a 30-inch altar candle had been rammed into her vagina. Her arms were crossed over her chest and another candle was between her breasts. Her jeans lay inverted over her legs. She had been beaten, strangled and stabbed behind the ear with an ice pick. Little of this was made public until 1988, but Berkowitz knew details about the murder that had been withheld. He even cut out a picture from the paper that he said resembled Arlis Perry. The only picture of her that appeared in the newspapers showed how she looked in her school days. The picture that Berkowitz selected looked much more like Arlis Perry the night she died. At the very least, he had seen a picture of the murder, performed, Terry maintains, by the California satanic group associated with Charles Manson. Berkowitz said that Arlis Perry had once been a member of the group but had tried to leave.
Terry also noted that some of the Son-of-Sam killings had been performed with a ruthless efficiency. Others were inept and bungled. Terry concluded that Berkowitz had only committed three of the Son-of-Sam killings – those of Donna Lauria, Valentina Suriani and Alexander Esau. Donna Lauria had been killed, Terry says, because she knew about the coven. Christine Freund died because she had offended one of the members. Terry believes that the killer in the balaclava was actually a woman, who was a member of the coven. According to Terry, Stacy Moskowitz was killed by John Carr and Berkowitz was there because the killing was being filmed as a ‘snuff movie’. That is why the killer had picked out the car under the street lamp. Tommy Zaino and his girlfriend Debbie Crescendo were lucky. They had been parked under the street lamp but had moved to a darker spot just before Stacy Moskowitz and Bobby Violante drove up.
On 10 July 1979, Berkowitz was slashed with a razor by another inmate in the cell-block reserved for high risk prisoners. The cut ran from the left-hand side of his throat to the back of his neck. It needed 56 stitches and nearly killed him. He would not say who had attacked him. He later said that it was an attempt by a Satanic group to make him live up to his vow of silence. Maury Terry claimed that the leader of satanic cult was Roy Alexander Radin, a tycoon who earned his money in show business. He moved to California in 1982. But by the time Terry had tracked him down, yet again, it was too late. Radin had been murdered on Friday, 13 May 1983. His body was found dumped in Death Valley – Charles Manson’s old stamping ground. A defaced bible was found nearby.
Berkowitz became a born-again Christian in 1987 and works as a chaplain in prison. In March 2002, he wrote to New York governor George Pataki asking that his parole hearing be canceled, stating he didn’t want to be released. In June 2004, he was denied parole again, even though he had made it clear that he would refuse it.
Chapter 11
Dennis Nilsen
Name: Dennis Nilsen
Nationality: Scottish
Born: 1945
Number of victims: 6 killed
Favoured method of killing: strangulation
Reign of terror: 1978–83
Motive: kept the bodies of his victims
Final note: feels no remorse for his victims or their families
Dennis Nilsen was born in Fraserburgh, a small town on the bleak north-east coast of Scotland, on 23 November 1945. His father was a Norwegian soldier who had escaped to Scotland after the German invasion of his homeland in 1940 and married Betty Whyte, a local girl, in 1942. The marriage did not work out and Betty continued to live with her parents. A few years later, the marriage ended in divorce.
Dennis grew up with his mother, elder brother and younger sister, but the strongest influence on his young life were his stern and pious grandparents. Their Christian faith was so strict that they banned alcohol from the house, and the radio and the cinema were considered instruments of the Devil. Nilsen’s grandmother would not even cook on the Lord’s day and their Sunday dinner had to be prepared the day before.
As a boy Dennis Nilsen was sullen and intensely withdrawn. The only person who could penetrate his private world was his grandfather, Andrew Whyte. A fisherman, he was Nilsen’s hero. He would regale the little boy with tales of the sea and his ancestors lost beneath its churning waves.
When Andrew Whyte died of a heart attack at sea in 1951, he was brought home and laid out on the dining room table. Dennis was invited to come and see his granddad’s body. At the age of six, he got his first glimpse of a corpse. From that moment, the images of death and love fused in his mind.
He left school at 15 and joined the army. After basic training he was sent to the catering corps. There he was taught how to sharpen knives – and how to dissect a carcass. During his life in the army, Nilsen only had one close friend, who he would persuade to pose for photographs, sprawled on the ground as if he had just been killed in battle.
One night in Aden, Nilsen was drunk and fell asleep in the back of a cab. When he awoke he found himself naked, locked in the boot. When the Arab cab driver returned, Nilsen played dead. Then as the driver man-handled him out of the boot, Nilsen grabbed a jack handle and beat him around the head. Nilsen never knew whether he had killed the man or not. But the incident had a profound effect on him. Afterwards he had nightmares of being raped, tortured and mutilated.
After 11 years in the army, Nilsen left and joined the police force. His training included a mortuary visit, where recently qualified constables were initiated in the gruesome habit of viewing the dead. But Nilsen was not repelled. He found the partially dissected corpses fascinating.
Nilsen did well in the police, but his private life was gradually disintegrating. Death became an obsession. He would pretend to be a corpse himself, masturbating in front of a mirror with blue paint smeared on his lips and his skin whitened with talcum powder.
Since his teens, he had been aware of his attraction towards other men, but in the army and in the police force he had somehow managed to repress it.
Eleven months after he joined the police, he was on the beat when he caught two men committing an act of gross indecency in a parked car. Aware of his own inclinations, he could not bring himself to arrest them and he decided to resign.
He went to work interviewing applicants at the Jobcentre in Londo
n’s Charing Cross Road. There he became branch secretary of the civil service union and developed increasingly radical political views. Nevertheless his work was good enough to earn him promotion to executive officer at the Jobcentre in Kentish Town, north London.
Despite his professional progress, Nilsen was lonely and yearned for a lasting relationship. In 1975, he met a young man called David Gallichen outside a pub. They moved into a flat at 195 Melrose Avenue together, with a cat and a dog called Bleep. Gallichen, or Twinkle as Nilsen called him, stayed at home and decorated the flat while Nilsen went to work. They made home films together and spent a lot of time drinking and talking. But the relationship was not destined to last. Gallichen moved out in 1977 and Nilsen was plunged back into a life of loneliness.
On New Year’s Eve 1978, Nilsen met a teenage Irish boy in a pub and invited him back to Melrose Avenue. They were too drunk to have sex. When Nilsen woke in the morning, the boy was lying fast asleep beside him. He was afraid when the boy woke up he would leave – and Nilsen wanted him to stay.
Their clothes were thrown together in a heap on the floor. Nilsen lent over and grabbed his tie. Then he put the tie around the boy’s neck and pulled. The boy woke immediately and began to struggle. They rolled onto the floor, but Nilsen kept pulling on the tie.
After about a minute, the boy’s body went limp but he was still breathing. Nilsen went to the kitchen and filled a bucket with water. He brought the bucket back and held the boy’s head under water until he drowned. Now he had to stay.
Nilsen carried the dead boy into the bathroom and gave him a bath. He dried the corpse lovingly, then dressed it in clean socks and underpants. For a while, he just lay in bed holding the dead boy, then he put him on the floor and he went to sleep.
The following day, he planned to hide the body under the floor, but rigor mortis had stiffened the joints, making it hard to handle. So he left the body out while he went to work. After a few days, when the corpse had loosened up, Nilsen undressed it again and washed it. This time he masturbated beside it and found he could not stop playing with it and admiring it.
Killers - The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time Page 15