SUMMER OF FEAR, Part 5: Son of Sam at 73 — the Parole Hearing He Skipped, the Demon Dog He Admitted He Invented, and the Man He Blinded

SUMMER OF FEAR, Part 5: Son of Sam at 73 — the Parole Hearing He Skipped, the Demon Dog He Admitted He Invented, and the Man He Blinded

The finale of the five-part series Summer of Fear. In May, David Berkowitz declined to attend his own parole hearing — his thirteenth since becoming eligible in 2002 — and emailed the New York Post to say he is already free, and that his home is in heaven, not in the Bronx. Robert Violante, who was twenty when Berkowitz shot him in the head and who has almost no sight left, was asked what he made of that, and he answered. Garret Fisher closes the week with the demon dog Berkowitz later admitted he invented, the Carr brothers who both died young, the reporter who spent his life chasing a cult through this case and what he got right about the cowardice of the men who closed it, and the fifteen young people whose names are the only reason any of this is worth saying out loud. Fifty years ago next Wednesday, Donna Lauria was killed in a parked car in the Bronx. Everybody remembers the killer. So on Wednesday, don't.Part 5 of 5. The complete series: Parts 1–5. This series discusses gun violence and the deaths of young people. If you're struggling, you can reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the U.S. by calling or texting 988. Join our new FB groups page here. Take the poll! [https://www.facebook.com/groups/1309939807262443] Join the Daily Crime & Justice community on social media! We're building a passionate group of true crime enthusiasts who love diving deep into the most shocking cases in America. Follow us on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61578797265205] and Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/celebrity_trials_podcast/] by searching "Daily Crime & Justice" on either platform.  You'll get exclusive behind-the-scenes content, breaking news updates on cases we're covering, and early alerts when new episodes drop. Our social media is where Garret Fisher's hottest takes live, including reactions that don't make it into the show. But more importantly, it's where YOU come in. Share your theories, debate the verdicts, and connect with fellow listeners who are just as obsessed with justice as you are. Did the jury get it right? What questions do you still have? Your comments and insights often shape future episodes. We cover the trials that matter, but our community makes the conversation unforgettable. Come for Garret's signature cynical commentary, stay for the incredible discussions with thousands of true crime fans who get it.

SUMMER OF FEAR, Part 4: Stacy Moskowitz, Robert Violante, and the $25 Parking Ticket That Caught Son of Sam

Three hundred detectives. The largest manhunt in the history of New York City. None of it caught him. In Part 4 of the five-part series Summer of Fear: on July 30, 1977, Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante, both twenty, go on a first date in Bath Beach, Brooklyn — the one borough nobody was watching, because the police had flooded Queens and the Bronx, and the killer read the papers too. Stacy died. Robert Violante survived, blinded. And what finally ended the largest manhunt in the city's history was a $25 summons for parking too close to a fire hydrant, a forty-nine-year-old woman named Cacilia Davis who was walking her dog and was disbelieved when she called, a detective who thought a name looked out of place on a piece of paper, and a Yonkers police dispatcher who happened to be Sam Carr's daughter. Garret Fisher on the night in Brooklyn, the arrest at 35 Pine Street, and the paperwork that did what three hundred detectives could not.Part 4 of 5.This series discusses gun violence and the deaths of young people. If you're struggling, you can reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the U.S. by calling or texting 988. Join our new FB groups page here. Take the poll! [https://www.facebook.com/groups/1309939807262443] Join the Daily Crime & Justice community on social media! We're building a passionate group of true crime enthusiasts who love diving deep into the most shocking cases in America. Follow us on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61578797265205] and Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/celebrity_trials_podcast/] by searching "Daily Crime & Justice" on either platform.  You'll get exclusive behind-the-scenes content, breaking news updates on cases we're covering, and early alerts when new episodes drop. Our social media is where Garret Fisher's hottest takes live, including reactions that don't make it into the show. But more importantly, it's where YOU come in. Share your theories, debate the verdicts, and connect with fellow listeners who are just as obsessed with justice as you are. Did the jury get it right? What questions do you still have? Your comments and insights often shape future episodes. We cover the trials that matter, but our community makes the conversation unforgettable. Come for Garret's signature cynical commentary, stay for the incredible discussions with thousands of true crime fans who get it.

SUMMER OF FEAR, Part 3: The 1977 New York City Blackout — 25 Hours of Darkness, 1,600 Stores Looted, and Son of Sam Still Out There

In Part 3 of the five-part series Summer of Fear, the killer gets a stage. In late May 1977, a handwritten letter arrives at the New York Daily News addressed to columnist Jimmy Breslin, and when the paper prints it, the name Son of Sam belongs to eight million people. Women across New York cut off their long dark hair by the tens of thousands. The discos empty. Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and the Daily News go to war over a serial killer and sell papers by the million. In Bayside, Queens, seventeen-year-old Judy Placido is sitting in a parked car with twenty-year-old Salvatore Lupo, talking about Son of Sam, when the window blows in — both survive, and Judy will not speak publicly about it for twenty-two years. Then, at 8:37 on the evening of Wednesday, July 13, 1977, lightning strikes a Con Edison substation on the Hudson, and the largest city in America goes dark for twenty-five hours: 1,616 stores damaged, more than a thousand fires, and the largest mass arrest in New York City history. Garret Fisher on the summer the newspapers discovered that terror sells, the night a city tore itself apart in the dark, and why nothing that happened during the blackout belongs to the man in Yonkers. Part 3 of 5.This series discusses gun violence and the deaths of young people. If you're struggling, you can reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the U.S. by calling or texting 988. Join our new FB groups page here. Take the poll! [https://www.facebook.com/groups/1309939807262443] Join the Daily Crime & Justice community on social media! We're building a passionate group of true crime enthusiasts who love diving deep into the most shocking cases in America. Follow us on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61578797265205] and Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/celebrity_trials_podcast/] by searching "Daily Crime & Justice" on either platform.  You'll get exclusive behind-the-scenes content, breaking news updates on cases we're covering, and early alerts when new episodes drop. Our social media is where Garret Fisher's hottest takes live, including reactions that don't make it into the show. But more importantly, it's where YOU come in. Share your theories, debate the verdicts, and connect with fellow listeners who are just as obsessed with justice as you are. Did the jury get it right? What questions do you still have? Your comments and insights often shape future episodes. We cover the trials that matter, but our community makes the conversation unforgettable. Come for Garret's signature cynical commentary, stay for the incredible discussions with thousands of true crime fans who get it.

SUMMER OF FEAR, Part 2: Son of Sam Names Himself — the Ballistics Match, Christine Freund, and Virginia Voskerichian

In Part 2 of the five-part series Summer of Fear, the city finds out. On January 30, 1977, Christine Freund, twenty-six, and her fiancé John Diel leave a screening of Rocky in Forest Hills and never make it to the dance; Christine dies that morning, weeks after their engagement. Thirty-seven days later and half a block away, a nineteen-year-old Barnard College honor student named Virginia Voskerichian is killed walking home from the train with her books in her arms. Then a technician in a police ballistics lab lays two bullets side by side — one from Virginia, one taken from Donna Lauria in the Bronx eight months earlier — and the striations line up. On March 10, 1977, Police Commissioner Michael Codd and Mayor Abraham Beame tell eight million people that one man with one revolver has been hunting them. Six weeks later, on Easter weekend, Valentina Suriani, eighteen, and Alexander Esau, twenty, are shot in a parked car in the Bronx, and a white envelope is found lying in the street beside them. Inside, the killer gives himself a name. Garret Fisher on the ballistics match, the largest manhunt in New York City history, and the seven weeks the city didn't know what he called himself. Join our new FB groups page here. Take the poll! [https://www.facebook.com/groups/1309939807262443] Join the Daily Crime & Justice community on social media! We're building a passionate group of true crime enthusiasts who love diving deep into the most shocking cases in America. Follow us on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61578797265205] and Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/celebrity_trials_podcast/] by searching "Daily Crime & Justice" on either platform.  You'll get exclusive behind-the-scenes content, breaking news updates on cases we're covering, and early alerts when new episodes drop. Our social media is where Garret Fisher's hottest takes live, including reactions that don't make it into the show. But more importantly, it's where YOU come in. Share your theories, debate the verdicts, and connect with fellow listeners who are just as obsessed with justice as you are. Did the jury get it right? What questions do you still have? Your comments and insights often shape future episodes. We cover the trials that matter, but our community makes the conversation unforgettable. Come for Garret's signature cynical commentary, stay for the incredible discussions with thousands of true crime fans who get it.

SUMMER OF FEAR, Part 1: Son of Sam and the Bankrupt New York That Let David Berkowitz Start Killing

Fifty years ago this month, New York City was broke, burning, and about to meet the .44 caliber killer. In Part 1 of the five-part series Summer of Fear, Garret Fisher walks into the New York of 1976: a bankrupt city $14 billion in debt, five thousand police officers laid off, a police union handing out a survival pamphlet titled "Welcome to Fear City," the South Bronx going up in insurance fires, and six million people crowding the harbor to watch the tall ships sail in for the Bicentennial. Twenty-five days after those ships sailed, on July 29, 1976, eighteen-year-old EMT Donna Lauria was shot dead in a parked car in Pelham Bay, and Jody Valenti, nineteen, was wounded beside her. Nobody knew a serial killer had started. Over the months that followed, Carl Denaro, Rosemary Keenan, Donna DeMasi, and Joanne Lomino were shot in two more attacks across Queens — and no one connected them, because the precincts didn't talk. This is the story of David Berkowitz, and of the city that wasn't looking. Join our new FB groups page here. Take the poll! [https://www.facebook.com/groups/1309939807262443] Join the Daily Crime & Justice community on social media! We're building a passionate group of true crime enthusiasts who love diving deep into the most shocking cases in America. Follow us on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61578797265205] and Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/celebrity_trials_podcast/] by searching "Daily Crime & Justice" on either platform.  You'll get exclusive behind-the-scenes content, breaking news updates on cases we're covering, and early alerts when new episodes drop. Our social media is where Garret Fisher's hottest takes live, including reactions that don't make it into the show. But more importantly, it's where YOU come in. Share your theories, debate the verdicts, and connect with fellow listeners who are just as obsessed with justice as you are. Did the jury get it right? What questions do you still have? Your comments and insights often shape future episodes. We cover the trials that matter, but our community makes the conversation unforgettable. Come for Garret's signature cynical commentary, stay for the incredible discussions with thousands of true crime fans who get it.