Ultimate Evil : The Truth about the Cult Murders: Son of Sam and Beyond

1.76 MB·english

by  Maury Terry

The Ultimate Evil
The Truth about the
Cult Murders:
Son of Sam & Beyond
Maury Terry

Text copyright © 1987 by Maury Terry
Introduction and Epilogue copyright © 1999 by Maury Terry
This edition published by Barnes & Noble Digital, by arrangement with Maury Terry
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written
permission of the Publisher.
2001 Barnes & Noble Digital
ISBN 1-4014-0780-3
For Robert and Joseph Terry; to those who were always
there; and in memory of the innocent slain.
CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
PART 1
ON TERROR'S TRAIL

1. SATAN AT STANFORD
2. THE GUN OF AUGUST
3. "KNOCK ON COFFINS"
4. HER NAME WAS STACY
5. COUNTDOWN: THE FINAL WEEK
6. CATCH .44
7. CONFESSION
8. "SAM SLEEPS"
9. THE PROCESS
10. INTO THE MAZE
11. BLOOD IN THE BADLANDS
PART 2
WEB OF CONSPIRACY: THE DOMINOES FALL

12. "HELLO FROM THE GUTTERS"
13. MINOT? WHY NOT?
14. A MATTER OF MURDER
15. INSIDE THE BIGGEST CASE
16. THE MOST UNLIKELY ALLY
17. "SAM" SPEAKS
18. "HUNTED, STALKED AND SLAIN"
19. WHAT'S HAPPENING, AMERICA?
20. FROM THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
21. A COAST-TO-COAST CONSPIRACY
22. A CALL TO COPCO
23. IN DEATH'S VALLEY
24. MURDER REIGNED IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
25. DEATH MASK
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THERE are those without whom I might not have been able to sustain this investigation. Some,
because of sensitive positions they occupy, cannot be named — but they have my appreciation for their
professional insights and cooperation.
Others to whom I am indebted are my family and friends, who listened and offered support when it
mattered most. Among those friends are George Austin, Joe Walsh, Scott Hammon, Bob and Larry
Siegel, Lee Carucci, George and Roger Young, Kyle and Nina (Betty) Rote, Pete Lebhar and the circle
at Olliver's.
Special thanks to the Queens District Attorney's Office, particularly John Santucci, Herb Leifer and
Tom McCarthy; and to Gannett Westchester Newspapers — especially Joe Ungaro, Dave Hartley,
Shennan Bodner and Tom Bartley.
My appreciation is extended to former Lt. Terry Gardner and Det. Mike Knoop in Minot, North
Dakota; and to Sgt. Ken Kahn in the Santa Clara, California, Sheriff's Department.
I would also like to note the contributions of reporters Jeff Nies and Jack Graham of the Minot Daily
News, and thank Marv and Jean Dykema and friends of Arlis Perry who assisted me in Bismarck.
A singular acknowledgment to reporter Jim Mitteager, who was there at the beginning; and to
reporter/author Marian Roach, who helped in the early years.
My gratitude extends to retired NYPD detectives Joe Basteri and Hank Cinotti, to Lt. Mike Novotny
and Lt. Marty Harding of the Yonkers Police, and to Lt. Don Starkey of the Yonkers Fire Department's
arson squad. I would also like to note the assistance of police instructor Fred Patterson, who joined
some stakeouts and incorporated my work into a seminar for law enforcement officers, and that of the
late Joseph Pearlman, an exemplary private investigator.
I also thank the Greenburgh, New York, Police Department, particularly Capt. Gerry Buckhout and
Chief Don Singer. My added appreciation to Nassau County, New York, District Attorney Denis Dillon,
the Connecticut State Police, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation.
A special word of appreciation to people close to the Son of Sam case: Jerry and Neysa Moskowitz,
Mike and Rose Lauria, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Suriani, Robert Violante, Cäcilia Davis, Tom Zaino, John
Diel, Mrs. Nann Cassara, Steve Cassara and the Neto family.
Singular gratitude is expressed to the West Coast investigators, including Ted Gunderson, Judy Hanson,
Dee Brown and Dave Balsiger. Their assistance was extremely valuable.
I am grateful to a woman who I will call Lee Chase, who was close to David Berkowitz and whose
assistance was timely and informative.
My thanks go to attorneys Felix Gilroy and Harry Lipsig, and to producer Frank Anthony and the staff
of WOR-TV's "What's Happening, America" and "The War Within" programs.
An acknowledgment to the work of reporters Mike Zuckerman and Ed Trapasso of Gannett, Newsday's
Steve Wick, and author Ed Sanders.
For assistance in the 1990s, I would like to thank the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the
Yonkers Police Department, and retired NYPD detectives Al Sheppard, Jim Tedaldi, Jim Rothstein and
Richard Johnson.
My appreciation for contributions in the '90s is also extended to: Barbara C., Dale Griffis, Sam Diego,
Donald Ripp, Ray Segal, Steve Segovia, Mark Ness, Bart Feder, Sarah Wallace and Wayne Darwen.
My gratitude is also extended to those in the print and broadcast mediums who believed in the
relevance of the investigation and offered information or followed through with reports on the work.
And finally, an important acknowledgment to the many private citizens, and others, who either came
forward with vital information or gave hours of their time when I sought their cooperation. It made a
difference.
INTRODUCTION
AS the clock inched past midnight into July 31, 1977, the great metropolis was in turmoil. A task force
of three hundred cops — by itself larger than most American police departments — was hunting Son of
Sam in one of the deadliest scenarios ever staged in the real-life theater of New York City. An
expansive dragnet draped Queens and the Bronx, the preferred stalking grounds. They didn't think the
menace would evade their porous net and invade Brooklyn. They were wrong.
In the predawn hours of July 31, a young man sprayed four shots from a.44 Bulldog into a car parked in
a Brooklyn lovers' lane, fatally wounding Stacy Moskowitz and partially blinding her date. It was the
eighth and final attack, and it happened as our seaside analysis of the case continued forty miles east in
Davis Park. That irony would remain with me always.
Eleven nights later, a parking ticket he received near the Brooklyn scene finally led a befuddled NYPD
to suburban Yonkers, New York, and the owner of that cited Ford Galaxie. His name was David
Berkowitz, and he was a stocky, twenty-four-year-old postal employee and army veteran who had
patrolled the frozen demilitarized zone in Korea before returning to his native Bronx in 1974.
Berkowitz, whom police never considered a suspect until a few hours before his fortuitous capture,
went quietly. He eagerly confessed to being a lone marauder who had terrorized New York for thirteen
agonizing months. The fact that his confession was fatally flawed was buried by the avalanche of
euphoria and police promotions that followed. It mattered, too, that a New York City mayoral primary,
in which the incumbent was lagging in the polls, was on the immediate horizon. It was time for the case
to end and for the mayor's camp to garner credit.
From the outset, I was skeptical of Berkowitz's claim of sole culpability, and those suspicions marked
the beginning of a perilous investigative odyssey destined to continue for many years. During that time,
I traveled from completely outside the case to a point where I was able to uncover the many horrific
secrets hidden within its very core. The trail led from the hushed silence of a church in Palo Alto,
California, to the mansions of Beverly Hills, and from the golden wheat fields of North Dakota to the
posh decadence of Long Island's Hamptons and the squalor of a half-dozen prisons.
This book, which chronicles that harrowing voyage deep inside one of America's most infamous cases,
was first published in 1987. It was updated two years later and has now been brought into 1999 by
virtue of this introduction and a comprehensive new epilogue.
However, this is not a Son of Sam story. On the surface is the enigmatic David Berkowitz, but far
below is an infinitely more frightening specter — a highly motivated and well-organized cult group
whose various criminal enterprises included the.44 homicides. While using the trappings of the occult,
the group's main goals were power, greed and terrorism. It is the embodiment of organized evil, and it
still stains America on the eve of the millennium. It has thrived because its tentacles ensnared a number
of jaded allies whose influential positions enabled it to extend far beyond New York.
So, more than anything else, this book is an examination of a volatile consortium which evolved with
the times, altered its face and constructed a facade which it burrowed into the 1990s American
landscape. But beneath the contemporary veneer, it remains what it always was: a well-connected
criminal cabal which some authorities today regard as "active and dangerous" because they believe it is
presently aligned with a number of incendiary U.S. hate groups, radical movements and militias.
To understand why the Son of Sam and other related killings happened and how those ultimately the
most responsible for them managed to continue their operations to the present day, it is perhaps
beneficial to pose a few questions.
Did the government deceive the public about Vietnam, Watergate and Iran-Contra? It did. Did the
government fatally fumble the 1993 standoff at the Branch-Davidian compound in Waco, Texas? It did.
Was the FBI implicated in a cover-up in the 1992 shooting deaths of the wife and son of separatist
Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho — and was it later blamed for also botching the 1996 bombing
case at the Atlanta Olympics? It was.
In general terms, have so-called servants of the public misled that same public about a host of other
misdeeds on national, state and local levels over the course of many decades? They have. And do
deceptions, cover-ups and blatant bureaucratic ineffectiveness continue to incubate in various forms
throughout the United States today? They certainly do.
In Son of Sam's New York City hunting grounds, the 1970s saw the noted Knapp Commission hearings
into widespread police corruption. In the 1990s, the Mollen Commission undertook the same distasteful
task, and a smattering of serious scandals continued to erupt in NYPD precincts into 1999.
In 1995, former NYPD officer Eugene O'donnell, a professor of police studies at Manhattan's John Jay
College of Criminal Justice, wrote: "Cops believe the department is driven not by a commitment to
public service, but by the desire to deceive the press and public into believing things that are not true."
Even in that context, I was still somewhat surprised when I uncovered irrefutable evidence of just how
badly the Son of Sam case was mishandled by a select number of top police officials. Later, when I
came to comprehend why that happened — for reasons that transcended simple incompetence — my
surprise dissipated.
To be sure, hundreds of dedicated police officers worked feverishly on a tremendously draining.44
investigation in 1976 and 1977. They weren't the problem. In the pyramid structure of the system,
information flowed upward, leaving field cops with knowledge of only isolated fragments of the case.
But at the top, a small group of police brass, politicians and the office of the then-district attorney of
Brooklyn, in particular, were privy to all the accumulated data.
And it was at those levels where some of the strongest evidence of conspiracy was suppressed. As
Eugene O'donnell wrote of the NYPD, "I believe that what has developed over the past two decades is
a department infested with a huge level of cynicism." In one example of that attitude, the NYPD held
the largest promotions ceremony in its history before the ink was dry on Berkowitz's fingerprints.
Careers were made, reputations enhanced. It was all constructed on a foundation of sand, and — quite
frankly — on the graves of future victims.
Concurrently, New York Mayor Abraham Beame was up for reelection and was trailing badly in the
polls as the Sam case heated up. He almost closed a cavernous gap in the wake of Berkowitz's arrest —
with his highly visible portrayal as the man in charge whose police department just happened to end the
reign of terror only a month before the primary. But despite his phoenixlike rise from the ashes, Beame
narrowly lost that election and was out of office several months later.
To state the obvious: new mayors initiate high-level changes in large police departments. Thus, many in
power had a vested interest in a timely, uncomplicated resolution of the Son of Sam case. But the
evidence reveals more than that. It also shows that events were manipulated behind the scenes by a
handful of influential individuals who, although not directly involved in the shootings themselves, were
compromised because they had interacted with cult leaders at high-society drug parties that featured
sex with children.
Jerry Moskowitz, father of.44 victim Stacy, told me his cousin was a judge in Brooklyn, where it was
common courthouse gossip that the case was butchered. Likewise, Carl Denaro, a surviving victim,
said in 1997: "By now, anybody who knows anything about this knows that Berkowitz had
accomplices."
Mike Lauria, father of the first victim, Donna Lauria, also believes Berkowitz acted with others. "I
know he killed my daughter — but he had help in all of it," Lauria stated. Robert Violante, who lost
most of his vision in the attack that killed Stacy Moskowitz, is yet another who no longer accepts the
official version put forth in 1977. "I tend to believe Berkowitz was part of a satanic cult," Violante
stated in a 1995 interview.
Queens District Attorney John Santucci, in whose jurisdiction five Son of Sam attacks occurred, knew
the case was muddled. He pushed for a trial, but was vilified for opposing the planned acceptance of
Berkowitz's guilty pleas by the two other district attorneys in the case. Santucci was bucking the tide
and was pressured into backing away — which he did for seventeen months until reopening the
investigation when my newspaper articles about a Son of Sam conspiracy offered him the opportunity
he'd wanted all along.
"When I moved on it, there was no cooperation from the police department and the other district
attorneys, and that response was more than a little troubling," Santucci told me. In the early 1980s,
Santucci was again angered when a few valued prison informants inexplicably were transferred away
from Berkowitz. "I think there's big money and influence somewhere in this, and if I could prove it, I'd
go public," he said.
That assessment is worth remembering, as evidence developed since 1996 has demonstrated the district
attorney was a prophet.
Santucci, who eventually announced his investigation's conclusion that Berkowitz did not act alone,
retired in the early 1990s. By then I had moved on to other cases and various TV projects. But the Son
of Sam matter was never far from my mind. Television programs asked for updates; radio talk shows
liked to explore it — and, of course, there was Berkowitz himself.
Unlike a number of other high-profile criminals, Berkowitz kept himself invisible. He ignored the
regular interview requests he received from the press, which in itself said something. In all those years,
he'd never spoken to the media about the true story of the case. In television terms, he was the biggest
"get" out there, but he wouldn't talk to anyone.
In the early 1980s, he and I exchanged several letters during a time when he was quietly trying to aid
the investigation. Then he fell silent, expressing concern for his family's safety and stating that
whatever I or the district attorney's staff discovered was fine with him — but he wasn't going to
participate clandestinely any longer. After that, we didn't communicate for ten years.
So, without Berkowitz or another accomplice who was willing to talk, there wasn't much more I could
do to help the Queens district attorney's office move the case into a courtroom. Likewise, Santucci's
staff felt stymied. As Assistant District Attorney Herb Leifer put it then, "We're confident David didn't
act alone, but we need an insider — either Berkowitz or someone else — so we can put this entire
package in front of a grand jury."
So, just as the door seemed closed for good, it opened again in 1993, when out of the blue Berkowitz
agreed to tell me his story on national television — but only as much as he felt safe in doing. He
wanted the interview to be done by me because he knew I was keenly aware of the case's complexities.
That interview, the first Berkowitz did about the Son of Sam shootings, was broadcast on Inside
Edition in November 1993. The program devoted three entire shows to the story, and the case exploded
into the headlines again. The investigation advanced further in 1997, when I questioned Berkowitz for
New York's WABC-TV in an award-winning series that was expanded to a national one-hour special on
the A&E network's Investigative Reports.
Concurrently, the police department in suburban Yonkers, where Berkowitz had lived, opened a probe
in 1996 and developed important new leads. The entire case, which actually covered many years before
and after Berkowitz's era, surged forward to the point that indictments are now within the realm of
possibility — the direct result of evidence uncovered in the late 1990s.
In fact, at least in layman's terms, the case is now effectively "solved." Significantly, the major players
have been identified, along with many who served other functions in the overall scenario. Still, several
intangibles will eventually determine whether the evidence is destined for a courtroom.
No matter what the future holds, I hope that maybe — just maybe — the lessons learned from this
investigation will help ensure that such horror and related official transgressions will not go
unrecognized in the future. If the press is to be the government's watchdog, it might be mindful that its
goal is to transcend simple reporting of what is often merely self-serving "spin" hidden under a
wardrobe of purported truth.
Likewise, federal agencies such as the FBI might better serve the public if they remained awake at the
wheel. The.44 shootings did not fit the Bureau's vaunted serial killings profile: they were "clean"
executions which involved no physical or sexual contact with the victims. But no one focused on that
and other anomalies, and major clues went by the board.
Similarly, the Bureau's inability to identify the domestic threat posed by the Sam cult's terrorist-minded
allies is worthy of scrutiny. It is inconceivable that this subversive foreign group, unveiled in this book,
was not thoroughly investigated, arrested or at the very least banished from the United States years
before the Son of Sam killings.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service also figures into the equation. The INS did expel a number
of these individuals from the United States in late 1968, but all of them soon returned to resume their
activities unfettered — and they continue to operate today.
These unsettling thoughts peered over my shoulder in the darkness of July 31, 1998, when I once again
stood on the dune stairs in Davis Park and listened to the crashing surf — an angry surf — unlike the
placid pond the Atlantic had been on that anniversary weekend night in '77.
So much had changed since then. There was tragedy: one of my sources, a sensitive Yonkers teenager,
hung himself; another died of a puzzling overdose of medication; and a reporter helping me — a friend
— was killed in a car wreck after confronting a suspect. There was no overt evidence of murder, but the
timing and circumstances remain troubling.
Sadly, others featured in this book have died since its original publication. Among them Cäcilia Davis,
John Diel, Harry Lipsig, Jim Mitteager, Jerry Moskowitz, Nann Cassara, Carl Kelly, Sal D'Iorio, Joseph
Strano, Veronica Lueken, Dave Spence and Craig Glassman — who succumbed on Halloween night
1991 when his car skidded into a tree. Also, Sam Carr, who was but one step removed from the crimes,
died in 1996. Not surprisingly, his remaining family kept news of his death from the media.
Time and circumstance haven't smiled on some who were on the wrong side of the case, either.
Although many remain alive, at least twenty-one of Berkowitz's associates, suspects at varying levels
of culpability, have perished since his arrest. Many of them died by violent means, including murder.
The most recent was a suicide in late 1998. It is a remarkable and telling total since most were still
quite young in the late 1970s.
But there have been positive highlights, too. Along the way were dozens of articles for the Gannett
newspapers, a handful of magazine stories and numerous television specials — one of which earned
United Press International's annual Enterprise Award for investigative reporting. In 1997, the most
recent television presentation received similar honors from the Associated Press.
I have also lectured on "major cases" and ritual crime at law enforcement seminars, and my work was