Intriguing dissection of ‘Son of Sam’ murders
Netflix series explores theory that notorious US serial killer did not act alone
As strange as it may seem, serial killer numbers in the US have plummeted dramatically in the past two decades.
Though mass shootings are now as American as hot dogs and warfare, it is rare to find individuals systematically terrorising communities as was the case in the decades preceding the millennium.
As Discover magazine reported in December, about 770 serial killers were active in the 80s compared to just more than a 100 in the past decade.
Where there used to be a Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy stalking human prey there are now gun-obsessed loners who spend too much time on the internet consumed by baseless conspiracy theories.
Before you know it, you’re reading about tens of innocent people being slaughtered at a country fair.
One theory for the drop in numbers is that improved DNA analysis has made it easier to track serial killers, which in itself acts as a deterrent.
As much as those carrying out their twisted fantasies suffer from psychosis, many are highly calculating and intelligent, so, to borrow from an Americanism, “the juice ain’t worth the squeeze” given law enforcement capabilities.
It was much harder for police to trace these people in the 1970s, 80s and 90s when the forensic sciences were not nearly as advanced as they are today.
Furthermore, because police were under immense public pressure to catch the killer, they usually ignored important aspects of a case as soon as they had someone behind bars.
The four-part Netflix series, The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness, is a brilliant illustration of this point.
From the time David Berkowitz, the “Son of Sam” killer who confessed to the killings of six people in New York between 1976 and 1977, was arrested, journalist Maury Terry was convinced that not all was at it seemed.
Terry’s fascination with the case stemmed from the fact that he lived in the same Yonkers, New York, neighbourhood as Berkowitz, as well as two brothers, John and Michael Carr, whose father, Sam Carr, was a notorious child-beater.
At the time, New York tabloids were at their height, and sold millions of copies thanks to their coverage of the murders.
But Terry went against the grain by not simply regurgitating what was being fed to the media by the New York Police Department.
Instead, his investigations showed that not only did Berkowitz know the Carr brothers, but John Carr often used to doodle the Son of Sam logo featured in letters written to the police before Berkowitz’s arrest in August 1977.
Moving beyond the obvious connection that the Carr siblings’ father’s name was Sam — in other words, sons of Sam — Terry also managed to establish that all these young men were involved with a Satanic cult known as “The Children”, which staged rituals where German Shepherds were sacrificed to the devil.
As the series shows, Terry was further motivated to uncover the truth when the Carr brothers died mysteriously — John taking his own life after going on the run, and Michael dying in a car crash.
Both had become undesirable to fellow cult members, it seems.
Yet even this represented only a fraction of what was to come.
Terry, who spent about two decades digging up new information, was able to form a connection between The Children and the Manson cult in California, in addition to a Hollywood film producer known for hosting orgies and dabbling in the occult.
For 16 years, Berkowitz refused to speak publicly about whether he worked alone. When he did, it was Terry who was granted the interview.
Police and those in the legal field frequently warn against circumstantial evidence, but in the Son of Sam murders, it is nigh impossible to believe that at least some of what Terry brought to light was not worthy of further investigation.
But the New York police simply refused to entertain what he had found and written about in newspapers and divulged on television shows.
There was no way they would concede other killers were still out there when they had Berkowitz so neatly wrapped up in jail.
Even though police in other parts of the country found compelling evidence that Berkowitz had not acted alone, they stood their ground.
Instead, they painted Terry as a wacky conspiracy theorist whose obsessions had made him delusional. Authority doesn’t like to be wrong.
The series is directed by Joshua Zeman.