How this son of Ireland rose to the occasion
IT is little more than a year since Jimmy Breslin, the pugnacious Irish-American newspaper columnist, died aged 88.
Right to the end, he remained best known for having received correspondence from the serial killer responsible for the so-called Son of Sam shootings in New York. He responded by writing a column urging the murderer to surrender either to him or the police.
Between July 1976 and his arrest in August of the following year, Son of Sam killed six people and wounded nine others. He turned out to be a postal clerk called David Berkowitz,
who initially claimed he was obeying orders from a demonpossessed dog owned by a neighbour called Sam.
Yet, as detailed in the hourlong Son of Kerry, Son of Sam, presented by Seán Mac an tSíthigh, there was a far closer Irish-American link to the case than Breslin. This excellent documentary looked at the leading role in the case played by police chief Timothy J Dowd, who had emigrated from Castlemaine, Co. Kerry, to Boston as a child.
By the time of the first murders, university graduate Dowd – who died four years ago at the age of 99 – had served in the NYPD for more than three decades. He wasn’t involved in the initial part of the inquiry, but as the killings continued in the Bronx and Queens, he was reassigned from Manhattan to spearhead the operation.
His 200-strong task force eventually traced Berkowitz through a $35 parking ticket he received near the crime scene on the night of his final killing. Now aged 64, he is serving six consecutive life sentences at the maximum-security Shawangunk Correctional Facility. Fascinating, if grim, stuff.