PART 1:THE ULTIMATE EVIL

THE ULTIMATE EVIL 
An Investigation into a Dangerous Satanic Cult 
By Maury Terry 

INTRODUCTION 

On August 11, 1977, the day after David Berkowitz was arrested for the "Son of Sam" murders, I began what would become the journey of a lifetime; a frustrating, rewarding, painful and sometimes harrowing voyage deep inside one of the most notorious murder cases in U.S. criminal history. On the surface was the enigmatic David Berkowitz, but far below was an infinitely more frightening specter—that of a network of satan-worshipping cults that crisscrossed the United States. 

Into this abyss I reluctantly walked, not knowing that I had vastly underestimated the scope of the Son of Sam case. I would go looking for the truth, only to find the truth almost too frightening to contemplate. 

This, then, is not a Son of Sam story. Rather, silhouetted against the explosive backdrop of the .44-caliber homicides, this is the story of the search for that nameless force behind the .44, and numerous other deaths, rapes and arsons from coast to coast. The trail would lead from the "gutters of New York City"—to borrow from a Son of Sam letter—to the mansions of Beverly Hills, the wheat fields of North Dakota and into the hushed silence of a church in Palo Alto, California. 

It would take me from the offices of top law enforcement officials to the desolation of a half dozen prisons and into the homes and lives of the families of homicide victims. 

The search would also introduce me to people whose dedication and commitment to exposing the truth jeopardized their careers, and still they fought on. In my own case, I was subjected to a false, unsuccessful smear campaign waged by a few officials in the New York City Police Department; and a well known "church"—actually a disguised cult—devised intricate plans to discredit me because its leaders feared the investigation would lead to their front door. 

And then there was the public; that considerable number of citizens who believed in the cause and came forward with sometimes crucial information that had been ignored by the NYPD as it strove to preserve its own "solution" to the case. Some images are crystal clear today. Among them: the old woman from Manhattan who didn't trust the police and took a bus to North Dakota to present data to startled sheriffs deputies there; District Attorney John Santucci—himself—standing in a downpour on a Queens street corner to meet with a woman who insisted on secretly offering him information she considered important; an angry key witness, Cacilia Davis, recounting how authorities tried to bury details she provided; a saddened Michael and Rose Lauria recalling an overlooked clue as they relived, in painful detail, the night their daughter, Donna, was murdered by Son of Sam; a prison associate of Berkowitz weeping because a tip he sent out of jail was received too late to perhaps prevent a double homicide. Human stories all, and they weave through the course of this story. 

There was tragedy, too. One of my sources, a sensitive Yonkers teenager who lived near Berkowitz, hanged himself; and a reporter helping me—a friend—was killed in a car wreck after confronting a possible suspect and telling him his actions were being monitored. There was no overt evidence of murder, but the timing and circumstances remain troubling. 

And regarding murder, if past pattern is a reliable indicator, people will die as a direct result of this book. The reason for that assessment will become evident as the story unfolds. 

It has not been a joyous journey, being one marked by frustration, tragedy and then more frustration. But there have been many highlights. Along the way were five television specials, one of which earned United Press International's annual Enterprise Award for investigative reporting; dozens of analytical newspaper articles for the Gannett chain; and numerous appearances on television and radio news programs and talk shows to discuss the investigation. In the Midwest, my work was recently incorporated into an eight-hour course that has been presented as an educational aid to several police departments. 

In addition, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and its chairman, Roy Innis, sought my counsel in the Atlanta child murders probe; and I participated peripherally in Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald's attempt to prove his innocence in the infamous "Green Beret" murder case that was the subject of the book and television miniseries Fatal Vision. These and other cases have come my way as a result of the work on the "Ultimate Evil" investigation. 

My files are under lock and key in a location known only by me and two law enforcement officials. The names of all suspects and the information provided by all informants are in the hands of the proper authorities. If my safety or that of anyone close to me is ever jeopardized, several people whose names are at the top of a special list will come under rapid and intense scrutiny. Some of those people can't be named in this book, but all are at least referenced as to profession, place of residence and the like. 

Throughout the inquiry, the disdainful face of what intelligence operatives term "disinformation" leered over my shoulder. For instance, a psychiatrist who knew nothing about crime-scene analysis or the new evidence suggested in print that there was no conspiracy. Why? Because Berkowitz refused to answer his questions about it. 

Over the years, I have been asked many times why I put any faith in Berkowitz. How did I know he hadn't fooled me as well? My reply has always been that I didn't believe Berkowitz per se; I believed in the evidence—evidence which was uncovered long before he ever whispered the word "cult." Only then, when information gained in prison was supported by existing data or confirmed by follow-up investigation, did I acknowledge his credibility. 

An author—who never met Berkowitz but wrote a book on him—stated that he found David "terrifying." I have met David Berkowitz, and I don't find him terrifying. Rather, the real terror is to be found in the national expanse of the Son of Sam and related cases, and in the knowledge that many of those involved, including masterminds, are still walking the streets today. 

There is not one shred of evidence to suggest they have stopped recruiting young people, stopped twisting impressionable minds or stopped planning the periodic slayings of innocent victims. That is the bottom line. But the opening line— although no one knew it—was written in blood more than a decade ago, on a serene university campus in California. 

PART I 

ON TERROR'S TRAIL 

We had pure panic. The city was exploding around us. 

—Steve Dunleavy, New York Post columnist 

I am still here. Like a spirit roaming the night. 

—Son of Sam letter . . . 

the pinnacle of Heaven united with pure hatred raised from the depths of Hell. 

—Robert DeGrimston, satanic cult leader 

Satan at Stanford 

At 11 P.M. on October 12, 1974, the lush, sprawling campus of Stanford University was alive with the sounds of Saturday night. From scattered pockets of partying, exuberant bursts of harmony, laughter and the thump, thump, thump of reverberant bass guitars drifted from dormitory windows and doorways as the student population unwound from a week's worth of classes, study and football fever. 

The love affair with big-time sports was enjoying a resurgence at the university, long known primarily as a bastion of academic excellence. But Jim Plunkett's Stanford Indians had ridden a dark horse out of nowhere to upset the world in the Rose Bowl game on New Year's Day of '71. Four seasons later, the pride still burned with the memory, and the fervor lingered yet on autumn Saturdays. 

And although it was mid-October, Columbus Day—a time of smoldering dry leaves and ripening pumpkins in the northern reaches of the country—it was a clear, pleasant evening in Palo Alto. A light breeze gently rattled the gum trees and palms that studded the campus and bore the musical merriment from one distant corner of the sparkling complex to the other. 

There were many such nights in the friendly climate of California's Silicon Valley, which nestled some forty miles to the south and east of San Francisco. The Valley's nickname, and the whole of Santa Clara County, which enveloped it, spoke of tomorrow, progress and affluence. 

The general vicinity of Palo Alto, including nearby San Jose, was home to a considerable number of high-technology corporations—such as IBM—which had erected laboratories or development centers for the manufacture of advanced computer circuitry. Silicon is a nonmetallic element critical to the production of semiconductors: hence the Valley's label. 

And since Stanford graduates were harvested annually by the area's corporate residents, the school functioned as an integral component of a community that was science- and academia-oriented, a domicile of the prosperous and an enclave of both the scholar and the pragmatic business executive. Although Stanford and other local institutions were regarded as hallmarks of philosophical liberalism, the Valley itself was considered a refuge of conservative mores and politics—especially when compared with its raucous northerly neighbor, San Francisco, or to that hissing viper vat located a more reassuring 350 miles to the south—Los Angeles. 

To Valley citizens, nearby Frisco was the site of 1967's "Summer of Love"—and the haven of homosexuals, flower children, unwashed hippies, freaked-out bikers and Jefferson Airplane acid-drooling rock. It was a breeding ground of occult deviance and satanism, and the harborer of the notorious North Beach section, where Carol Doda and friends would shake their booties and other such things nightly on the sweaty stages of Big Al's and the Condor Club. 

But to nineteen-year-old Bruce Perry, studying this October night away in a campus apartment at Stanford, those activities were as foreign as the Latin he'd soon have to master as a diligent second-year pre-med student. 

Around him, out of doors, the sounds of Saturday were faint in the wind, and only remotely tempting. Bruce Perry was dedicated to his work, and a weekend with Hippocrates was as normal to him as was an evening with Led Zeppelin to some of his less industrious counterparts across the campus. 

Not that Bruce was always serious. He did have his moments. But for the immediate future, they seemed as long ago and far away as his hometown of Bismarck, North Dakota. 

By all accounts, Bruce Perry was an ail-American boy from an ail-American town whose family nurtured him with a Norman Rockwell Americana upbringing. The son of a comfortably set dentist, Dr. Duncan Perry, the handsome, curly haired Bruce was a standout in both the classroom and sports in Bismarck. His days at Bismarck High School had been alive and full. 

When he graduated in 1973, he was the honored holder of a smattering of track and field records in North Dakota—including the state mark for the quarter-mile. He was popular, deeply religious, and participated in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, both in school and at summer camps. In short, Bruce was a sure-shot pick to succeed in the world. And even more than that, since August 17, 1974, Bruce was a married man. 

His young, blond bride, also nineteen, also from Bismarck, and also immersed in religious causes, was his high school sweetheart, the former Arlis Dykema. As Bruce labored over his assignments that October night, Arlis busied herself around the small but cozy corner apartment the couple shared on the second floor of the university's Quillen Hall, a residence for married students. 

As it neared eleven-thirty, Arlis gathered up some letters to Bismarck family and friends and told Bruce she was going out to mail them. Bruce shrugged at his bride, then decided to pack up his work and get outside for a while himself. He realized Arlis was showing signs of restlessness and that he hadn't done very much to liven up her evening. 

Bruce was still adapting to the idea of being married. Marriage was adjustment, his parents advised, and was subject to growing pains. Not that he didn't love Arlis. He was happy she was with him and they shared long hours of contentment and caring. In many respects, they complemented each other. But Bruce regretted that he'd seen so little of his fiancee the previous year. He had been alone at Stanford while Arlis remained in Bismarck, working with her religious friends, attending Bismarck Junior College and squirreling money away for their wedding. 

During their months apart, the couple maintained regular contact, but it wasn't the same as being together. People can grow in any number of ways in the year after high school. 

Bruce took the concept of traditional marriage to heart; his religious background wouldn't have permitted otherwise. Arlis, he was confident, felt the same as he did. Life would be good, Bruce believed, with children and a comfortable home. But first they had to survive Stanford and cope with the added demands that came with preparation for a career in medicine or dentistry. Bruce had a high hill to climb, and he knew it. But he was optimistic he'd make it, and Arlis would be there to help him. 

Arlis herself was an Everyman's vision of Middle America. She was a studious young woman who'd also served as an enthusiastic cheerleader at Bismarck High for three years. Rounding out her life, she was a devout, practicing Christian who swelled with a religious ardor that was almost a quaint artifact of a simpler, more compassionate past in the U.S.A. of 1974. 

A friend to many and confidante of some, Arlis was a pretty girl; tiny, almost fragile in stature. She had a quick smile, an inquisitive, probing nature and that overriding passion for the lections of the Lord. 

Always in motion, she passed some of her idle hours at Stanford with frequent, long walks around the campus—sometimes jogging to release her pent-up energy. She had shoulder length, wavy blond hair, wore glasses and—being fallible—was possessed of an occasional streak of self-righteousness that could grate on the nerves of those less enthralled with the Holy Word than she was. And more than anything else, religion seemed to dominate Arlis' life. 

Like her future husband, Arlis belonged to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in Bismarck. She'd also joined Young Life, a student evangelical society whose members taught Sunday school, studied the Bible and strove to spread the Message to the masses. Included among those masses was the North Dakota drug culture. 

And since Arlis didn't employ halfway measures when it came to her faith, she was an outgoing, insistent missionary of God. 

Maybe it was there, in that consequential corner of her being, that she angered the devil. 

There had been a boy in her life before Bruce, friends say, but they don't reveal much about him. Only that it was puppy love—hearts and flowers long consigned to a scrapbook by the time she and Bruce fell in love. 

Their bond was their religion. Slowly at first, they were drawn together, and then the romance gathered steam. There was a period of dating and courtship; a year of long-distance engagement while Bruce scrambled through his freshman year at Stanford; and finally a picture-book wedding ceremony held at the Bismarck Reformed Church on August 17, 1974. 

Then, after a week's honeymoon at a rustic cabin owned by Arlis' parents, it was back to business as the new Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Perry drove west and settled into their California home as September began. 

Several weeks later, on October 1, one of the couple's major concerns evaporated when Arlis was hired as a receptionist at a Palo Alto law firm, where she listed her part-time experience at the Bismarck dental office of Duncan Perry as a reference. 

The supplemental income would ease the financial strain, and Arlis also now had a way to fill her days while Bruce attended classes. In her free time, she continued to explore the expansive campus, often stopping to pray at the large, decorative Stanford Memorial Church in the quadrangle. Bruce, when his schedule allowed, would accompany her there. 

Whether or not Arlis was slightly bored is impossible to determine. But she did miss her Bismarck family and friends. She was young, not accustomed to being away from home, and Bruce's responsibilities—which included tutoring freshmen in math—occupied much of his time. 

In one letter to North Dakota she lamented: "Friends are hard to find here. Many times I've been tempted to go knock on doors asking if anybody needs a friend. But I guess we just have to appreciate each other and trust the Lord for new friends, too." 

Arlis also discovered pronounced lifestyle differences between the Dakotas and California. "Nobody [here] is very personal at all," she wrote. "They don't even say hello when you ride up the elevator with them." 

Arlis was indeed a long way from home. 

The Dakotas are ruggedly beautiful in their simplicity and remoteness. Ironically, while that inaccessibility has helped maintain a low crime rate, it has also contributed to the lawbreaking that does exist. Young people everywhere tinker with drugs and liquor, but in North Dakota experimentation sometimes lingers on because the state, and others like it, are devoid of the diversions available in more populous areas with major metropolitan centers. In short, some people can become burdened by too many "wide open spaces" for too long a time. 

On the other hand, the Dakotas have been spared the incredible amount of crime which bubbles in the big cities, where festering ghettos and teeming industrial districts provide a conducive backdrop for organized mayhem of every variation, major-league narcotics dealing, murder, rape and mugging. 

This new and rapid-paced world was overwhelming to Arlis, who, like so many before her, suddenly found herself a small fish in a sizable pond. Bruce Perry empathized with his wife's adjustment phase, having endured it himself a year earlier. Sensing her mood that Saturday night, he decided to join her on the walk to the mailbox. 

At about 11:30 P.M., apparently in good spirits, the young couple strolled from the high-rise campus apartment building. Engrossed in conversation, they ambled across the school grounds and suddenly began to argue. The reported subject was minor; ludicrous, in fact, unless other matters were occupying one's mind at the time. A tire on their car was slowly losing air, and each thought the other should have filled it. 

The bickering continued as they strode in the direction of the Memorial Church, which loomed before them in the distance. It was about 11:40 P.M. 

Ostensibly miffed at Bruce, Arlis halted abruptly, faced him and emphatically stated that she wanted to be alone. She told her husband she intended to visit the church and would see him later at the apartment, which was about a half mile away. 

Equally annoyed, Bruce turned from his wife and hastened back across the campus, oblivious to the sounds of revelry wafting around him as he walked. He didn't notice whether anyone was watching him. 

At approximately 11:50 P.M., Arlis Perry pulled open the massive outer doors of Stanford Memorial and entered the foyer, where another set of portals offered access to the main body of the church. 

Stanford Memorial is ornate and somewhat imposing. It is a decorous, breathtaking edifice, and as Arlis stepped inside she saw a veritable rainbow of scarlet and gold. There were rich velvet tapestries of red and purple; and montages, sculptures and candelabra of immaculately polished, glistening gold. Above it all was a magnificent golden dome. 

In front of Arlis, and elevated several steps from the floor of the church, was the main altar. To either side were rounded alcoves which contained additional pews, all angled to face the altar. In rough outline form, the building resembled a thick, three-leafed clover, with the altar alcove in the center. 

The church, as always, would be shuttered at midnight by a campus security guard. And since it was nearly twelve, only two other worshippers sat in a silent vigil of prayer. These young people, who occupied a pew to the right of the center aisle in the rear of the church, noticed Arlis in the subdued perimeter lighting as she softly padded down the main aisle, eased her way into one of the front rows on the left and knelt to pray. 

For her nocturnal visit, Arlis dispensed with formality. She wore a dark brown jacket, a blouse, blue jeans and a pair of beige wedge-heeled shoes. 

Bruce Perry, having returned to Quillen Hall, was still fidgety about the altercation with his wife. He probably gave no thought to the futility of mailing letters late on a Saturday night—Arlis' stated reason for wanting to go out. With no Sunday mail collection at Stanford, the letters wouldn't be processed until Monday morning. 

It is also unlikely he considered the possibility that Arlis might have wished to go out alone and used the letters as an excuse for doing so. And he probably didn't reflect on how their argument grew so out of proportion—resulting in Arlis' continuing to the church by herself. But there was no reason for Bruce Perry to have been analyzing such thoughts as he paced the apartment and worked out his irritation. 

Back in the church, as Arlis meditated at midnight, the two worshippers behind her rose to leave. It was now closing time. Looking over their shoulders as they departed, they saw that Arlis hadn't moved from her pew. She was now alone in the cavernous house of worship.

Outside, a passerby spotted a young man who was about to enter the building. He was casually dressed, and had sandy colored hair which was parted on the left. He was of medium build and wore a royal blue short-sleeved shirt. He appeared to be around twenty-three to twenty-five years of age. For some reason, the witness noted the man wasn't wearing a watch. 

Security guard Steve Crawford was a few minutes behind schedule when, at 12:10 A.M., he stood in the rear of the church, looked for stragglers and saw none. There was no sign of Arlis or the sandy-haired stranger. Crawford then spoke aloud into the apparently empty, dimly lit church: "We're closing for the night. The church is being locked for the night now. If anyone is here, you'll have to leave." 

He was answered by his echo rebounding off the muted statues and shadowed walls and rolling slowly back to him. Satisfied, Crawford shut the doors, locked them and walked away —leaving Arlis Perry alone with the devil. In the house of God. 

Almost certainly, she was already in Satan's grasp when Crawford voiced his notification. From wherever she was being hidden, she would have heard him calling out, listened to the great portals clanging shut and heard her heart pounding in the deathly stillness that followed. 

But she probably never believed she wouldn't leave the church alive. 

At about that moment, Bruce Perry was nervous. He disdained arguing over trivia. He was unhappy that his bride was alone somewhere on the campus after midnight, and he didn't take to cooling his heels waiting for her in the apartment. 

So he hurriedly set off to rendezvous with Arlis. If the church was closed, their paths would cross on the way. But they didn't—and Bruce found himself puzzled and slightly concerned. It was now 12:15 A.M., and he stared at the front of the darkened church. The doors were locked. And where was Arlis? He walked around to a side entrance, which was also secured, and then circled to the rear of the building. But she wasn't there either. Bruce then decided to comb the campus; and left. 

At about this time, a passerby thought he discerned some noise inside the church, in the vicinity of the choir loft. But he was uncertain, and kept walking. 

Bruce's tour of the campus was futile. Growing increasingly anxious, he abandoned his search and returned to Quillen Hall. But Arlis wasn't there. He didn't think his wife had been that upset. And since she didn't know anyone at Stanford yet, she couldn't have just dropped in on some party. No, Bruce reasoned, she must be walking it off, calming herself down before coming home. And so Bruce Perry waited and worried. 

At 2 A.M., on his next series of rounds, security guard Steve Crawford again checked the church. He tried all the doors and assured himself they were locked; he said later that he also walked through the building—as he was supposed to—and saw and heard nothing. 

Across the campus Bruce Perry was in a quandary. At 3 A.M., he finally had enough and reached for the telephone. He dialed the Stanford security police and reported his wife missing, telling the dispatcher Arlis might have fallen asleep in the church and been locked in at midnight. 

Responding to the call, Stanford officers went to the church. They would later say they examined its outer doors and found them locked. Unfortunately, that action was irrelevant. The Satan at Stanford 11 police didn't go inside, which was the only way to learn if someone was indeed asleep in one of the pews. If they had, and if their statements and Crawford's account are correct, they would have met the killer. 

This is so because, when Crawford next returned to the church at 5:30 A.M., a door on the right side was open—forced from the inside. His discovery suggested that someone broke out of the church after the 3 A.M. visit by the Stanford officers, which is possible but unlikely. 

What is more credible is that Crawford, despite his statement, never entered the building at 2 A.M. and that the Stanford police didn't check all the doors an hour later. The time of Arlis' death would be fixed at approximately midnight, and it is improbable the killer or killers loitered in the church for three hours afterwards. 

But now, at five-thirty, alerted by the forced side door, Crawford cautiously entered the chapel. In the faint light, he quickly appraised the main altar to determine if anything valuable had been stolen. But nothing appeared to be disturbed, and so Crawford began a slow, wary walk around the perimeter aisle, peering apprehensively into the pews. It was then he discovered the missing Arlis Perry. 

He wished he hadn't. 

In the words of a church official who later viewed the scene, the sight was "ritualistic and satanic." And indeed, it was a vision from hell. Arlis was lying on her back, with her body partially under the last pew in the left-side alcove, a short distance from where she was last seen praying. Above her was a large carving which had been sculptured into the church wall years before. It was an engraving of a cross. The symbolism was explicit. 

Arlis' head was facing forward, toward the main altar. Her legs were spread wide apart, and she was nude from the waist down. The legs of her blue jeans were spread-eagled upside down across her calves, purposely arranged in that manner. Viewed from above, the resulting pattern of Arlis' legs and those of the inverted blue jeans took on a diamond-like shape. 

Arlis' blouse was torn open and her arms were folded across her chest. Placed neatly between her breasts was an altar candle. Completing the desecration, another candle, thirty inches long, was jammed into her vagina. But that wasn't all: she'd also been beaten and choked.

However, none of that butchery caused her death. Arlis Perry died because an ice pick had been rammed into her skull behind her left ear; its handle protruded grotesquely from her head. 

None of this explicit information would reach the public. 

Crawford, gagging at the horrible sight, fled the empty church and summoned his superiors. They, in turn, immediately called the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, which had criminal jurisdiction over the Stanford campus. 

A team of uniformed officers and six detectives sped to the scene. Undersheriff Tom Rosa, viewing the body, quickly characterized the slaying as the work of a sexual psychopath. As the officials Secured the church, other detectives went to the Perry apartment, believing, logically enough, that Bruce was a likely suspect. 

In fact, when he opened the door for the police, he was nearly arrested on the spot. And not without reason. Bruce Perry was covered with blood. 

The horror-stricken young athlete was told of his wife's death and questioned about the events of the night before. Through tears and agitation, Bruce tried to convince the detectives that the blood staining his shirt was his own. He explained that he was prone to nosebleeds when upset, and said his anxiety about Arlis set off an attack. He pleaded with the police, who were skeptical, to put it mildly. 

But a polygraph test and a check of the blood type would soon tell the story: it was indeed his own blood. Or at least, it wasn't Arlis'. 

Most of the specific details about the murder were withheld, including the exact location of the stab wound and the fact that the weapon was recovered. Police will routinely conceal some pertinent information as a way to separate truth from fiction in the event a suspect is identified, or as a means of eliminating "bedbug" confessors. And in this instance, particulars weren't disclosed because of the revolting violation of the victim. 

It was now a couple of hours past dawn, and the morning was blossoming into a bright and sunny Sunday. The air was clear, the sky was cloudless, but the night had yet to relinquish its grip. The damage done by the powers of darkness was still Satan at Stanford 13 apparent as word spread across Stanford that something terrible had occurred in the church while the campus slept. 

In a few hours, the Sunday service was scheduled to begin. But not this Sunday; not inside the church. Police and coroner's investigators sealed it off and pored through it looking for something—anything—that could lead them to the killer. The devil had claimed this Lord's day as his own. 

Three members of the choir appeared at 9 A.M. to prepare selections for the fifty-member choral group. But they weren't allowed inside to retrieve their music until 10:15, when Arlis' body was finally rolled out on a gurney by downcast coroner's investigators. 

As worshippers assembled for the 11 A.M. services, they mingled with a burgeoning crowd of media, police and curious, shocked students. Voices were hushed; occasionally a police radio crackled. Rev. Robert Hammerton-Kelly, dean of the church, had seen Arlis in death and was aghast. Visibly shaken, he was determined to hold the service out of doors in the rear of the church, where he told the congregation about the murder, saying the ceremony wasn't canceled because he "wasn't going to let evil triumph." 

At four-thirty that afternoon, the interior of the nondenominational church was turned back to God as Fathers John Duryea and Robert Giguere celebrated a Roman Catholic mass which began with a blessing scripted to reclaim Stanford Memorial from the forces of evil. 

The Santa Clara Sheriff's Department was mounting its own campaign against the "forces of evil"—mainly by failing to see they existed. From the outset, the department's superior officers directed a hunt for a local sexual psychopath. Such preconceptions aren't unique to Santa Clara County, but in the Perry case they cost the police a realistic chance to locate the killer, or killers. 

The top possible suspects at the beginning, of course, were Bruce Perry and security guard Steve Crawford. Ranked behind them was the "unknown sexual psychopath," who most probably was the sandy-haired young man seen entering the church at midnight. 

That man's existence was withheld from the public, along with other details which might have dampened the sex crime theory. The fact that the murder occurred in a church meant  little to the police, who didn't believe in symbolism—even when coupled with Arlis' own active religious background. 

Also kept under wraps was the knowledge that FBI technicians in Washington, D.C., lifted a perfect palmprint from the candle found in Arlis' vagina. That discovery finally eliminated Crawford and Bruce Perry as possible suspects, and eventually inspired the police to fingerprint more than a hundred other individuals who ranged from students and university employees to area sex deviants. 

And yet, the biggest clues eluded them. 

On Tuesday, October 15, the Stanford church was the setting for a memorial service for Arlis Perry. Bruce, his skin crawling at the prospect of walking into the scene of his wife's slaying, nonetheless swallowed his repulsion and attended. Seated in the front row with his father and uncle, who had flown in from Bismarck, Bruce and some hundred and fifty other mourners heard Rev. Hammerton-Kelly eulogize Arlis as a "member of the Body of Christ who was cut off as she prayed." 

His voice ringing from the pulpit beneath the golden dome, Kelly noted that Christ, too, was "cruelly murdered by cruel and perverse men. He was a victim. Arlis, in her death, was like her Lord. I assure you that Arlis is with Christ in glory." 

"Violence," Kelly intoned, his voice dropping, "has swept to the very altar of God." 

The mourners then joined in several choruses of solemn hymns. Some wept openly; others dabbed their eyes with handkerchiefs; and more were on the verge of tears. Many in the church were classmates and friends of Bruce. Arlis hadn't been on the Coast long enough to make any friends—or enemies—of her own. 

As the sorrowful throng waited for Bruce, his father and his uncle to file out after the service, one of the acquaintances Arlis had managed to make in the six weeks of her California life was startled. Mark Connors* was looking at Bruce, and something was wrong. 
* Every person named in this writing is real. Only the names of certain confidential witnesses and living suspects have been changed, and those will be noted by an asterisk. 
Bruce Perry wasn't who he was supposed to be.

☟☟☟☠☟☟☟ 

Mark Connors worked at the Palo Alto law firm of Spaeth, Blaise, Valentine and Klein, where Arlis was hired as a receptionist just two weeks before her death. In the church, Connors strained for a close look at Bruce. He met him outside, expressed his sympathy and then he knew for sure: Bruce Perry was not the man he believed was Bruce Perry. 

Contacting the sheriff's office with a story that should have turned the investigation around, but didn't, Connors recounted a dramatic event from the afternoon of Friday, October 11—the day before Arlis died. 

It was noontime, and Arlis was behind her reception desk when a visitor appeared. Connors assumed it was Bruce Perry since Arlis was so new in California, and newer yet at her job. Who else would know where she worked? 

Connors watched as Arlis and the young man engaged in a fifteen-minute conversation he described as "serious and intense." He speculated that Arlis might have been angry at Bruce for coming to the office so soon after her hiring. Regardless, he decided, Bruce was a nice-looking young man who seemed to be in his early twenties. He was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, and was husky, broad-shouldered and athletic looking. He stood about five feet ten and had curly, blondish hair of "regular" length. He wasn't a hippie freak. 

As the earnest discussion ended, Connors was surprised that Arlis didn't introduce him to Bruce. But if the topic of their talk was as important as it appeared to be, then perhaps Arlis reasoned this wasn't the time or place for social amenities, Connors thought. 

When the young man left, Arlis resumed her duties. She said nothing to Connors or anyone else about the visitor, leaving him with the impression that the young bride's husband dropped by unannounced to settle a pressing matter. Until the memorial service, Connors believed he had seen Bruce Perry. But now, he stated that it certainly hadn't been him after all. 

The detectives took down the information and asked Bruce if he'd stopped at the law firm. He hadn't; and Bruce further advised the investigators that Arlis asked him not to call or visit there until she'd settled into the job. 

Did she mention a visitor the day before she died? the police inquired. She hadn't, Bruce replied, adding that it wouldn't be unusual for Arlis to keep something from him if she thought the knowledge would be upsetting to him. (Arlis' friends in North Dakota would later make that same observation. Five years later.) 

Well, the detectives continued, does this man sound like anyone you'd know? Bruce Perry shook his head. No, it didn't. 

The police knew what Bruce was unaware of, but they disregarded the fact in their single-minded quest for a random sex pervert: the description of Arlis' visitor was similar to that of the man seen entering the church the next night. Surprisingly, they didn't assign a police artist to draw sketches of the two men for comparison or identification purposes. 

And the questions that should have been asked were unspoken. Who was this man at the law office? Who knew Arlis was in California? Who knew where she worked? Could the killer have come from Bismarck? Is it possible the slaying wasn't the work of an area psycho after all? Could Arlis have actually known her killer? Is it possible this guy was from Bismarck, didn't know Bruce, but learned where Arlis was from others in North Dakota? Could he have known her family or Bruce's, who were among the few who did know that Arlis had recently found employment? Or could he have just known she was at Stanford, followed her around until he learned where she worked and then dropped in on her? And why did he materialize only a day before her death? 

Could Arlis have known Bruce would have disapproved of whoever this was and consequently arranged to meet him secretly at the church and fabricated the letter mailing and argument to get Bruce out of the way? Or did she tell this guy to split when he came to the office—but he followed her the next night, saw the altercation with Bruce and seized the chance to kill her? If so, why? 

There was no question that he had murder on his mind. The killer carried the ice pick into the church. It wasn't a weapon of opportunity. So was this a premeditated slaying and not a random sex crime at all? 

But the questions weren't asked, or at least weren't pursued. 

As the police hunted their Jack the Ripper in California, Arlis Perry returned to North Dakota. 

She had left Bismarck in Bruce's automobile. She came home in a box. 

The Bismarck Reformed Church, where the couple had been joyously married two months before, was the site of the funeral on Friday, October 18. As the bells pealed mournfully, about three hundred friends, relatives, former schoolmates and hangers-on filed into the church. Virtually everyone who had attended the wedding to wish Arlis a long and happy life gathered again to see her to her grave. There is a chance someone involved in the murder was among them. 

It was a crushing experience for those close to Arlis. The wedding day was still fresh in their minds; too recent to have yet become a memory. Most hadn't even seen the bridal pictures yet. Arlis' parents, her sister Karen and brother Larry reacted to the death with total shock and disbelief. Bruce Perry found himself at the second service for his wife in three days. He'd lived the equivalent of a lifetime in eight weeks. 

As he listened to the eulogy with his head lowered heavily onto his chest, Bruce heard Arlis described as a deeply committed Christian who lived a life dedicated to God and her fellow man. Her own words, now so distant and of yesterday, were spoken aloud by Rev. Don DeKok, who read from verses Arlis had underlined in her Bible and from marginal notes, such as "very nice," she'd written beside them. 

As DeKok talked of Arlis, her friend Jenny closed her eyes and envisioned a golden day and an unseen California hill and meadow, from where Arlis had penned a letter on October 6, the Sunday before she died: "We're on a picnic right now. It's about 90 degrees and we're suntanning in the hills. Bruce is studying and I'm writing letters." Then, in a poignant irony, Arlis explained: "We went to the Stanford Church this morning. Maybe you remember me telling you about it. The guest speaker was Malcom Boyd, maybe you've heard of him. He's the author of Are You Running with Me, Jesus? I've never read the book, but I'm going to be sure to now." 

No, Arlis, the crestfallen Jenny thought. You never got the chance. 

In the pulpit, DeKok recalled a time when Arlis enunciated what Christ meant to her. She'd once thought of God as a judge seated behind a huge bench who pointed a finger down at her when she'd done wrong, the pastor remembered, quoting Arlis as not believing she could be significant to "such a big God. But when I realized he really does care for me," she said, "it was like a choir of angels bursting into song." 

But Arlis' song had been stilled forever. 

Throughout Bismarck, as the reality set in, grief succumbed to fury as people asked why. Murder was an intrusion in Bismarck, an aberration. Murder belonged in the big cities—not in their territory. More people were killed in New York City in a week than in Bismarck in a year, they said. And they were right. And the bitterness intensified. 

Inevitably, California was raked over for spawning the slime that would brutally murder a young girl—and in a church, besides. A double desecration. And indeed, it was. But as righteously as California could be indicted for a century of sins, there were those hints, those indications, that perhaps this time wasn't one of them. The families didn't know that; neither did the press or the public. The Santa Clara detectives knew; but seeing, they were blind. They were running their own game, working their own leads—convinced the killer was from the neighboring area. 

But the signs were there. They weren't totally in focus, but the faint lettering which appeared read: "Bismarck." 

First, of course, was the puzzling incident of Arlis' visitor, who entered her California life just thirty-six hours before it ended. The police considered that he might merely have been a delivery man or a prospective client of the law firm, but that couldn't hold up for various reasons. But most important, the intense, fifteen-minute discussion demonstrated that Arlis either knew the young man or else he was bearing a message from someone she did know. 

Where did the people whom Arlis knew live? They resided in North Dakota, not on the West Coast. And if there in fact was a motive for the killing, it would be hidden in Bismarck, not Palo Alto. But the sheriff's investigators didn't make the connection. 

They still didn't budge two weeks later* around Halloween, when another bizarre incident occurred which should have sent the red flags flying. And it even happened in Bismarck. 

At Arlis' grave. 

At the time of her burial, a temporary marker was placed at the site until a permanent stone could be readied. It was stolen. Random vandalism was ruled out as no other markers were disturbed. Only Arlis'. 

A sick souvenir? It certainly was. Santa Clara detectives already knew of two other "souvenirs" involved in the case: personal possessions of Arlis which were removed from the murder scene by the killer or killers. Trophies. Reminders. Proof that the job was done by whoever was supposed to do it. 

The public didn't know this, just as it wasn't aware of the visitor to the law firm or the man at the church. But the police did know. And yet they reacted stoically to the news of the theft in Bismarck. That wasn't the only time information was back-burnered. There was still another incident, just as ominous, which was halfheartedly pursued—and dropped. 

The details were provided by Bruce Perry's parents. They'd heard a story, a tale which unsettled them, and they wondered if it was possibly connected to the murder. 

According to word on the streets in Bismarck, Arlis and a girlfriend—whose name the Perrys didn't know—had crossed the river from Bismarck to neighboring Mandan one day to try to convert members of some satanic cult to Christianity. That sounded like Arlis. 

The unknown girlfriend, the Perrys believed, was probably a member of Young Life, the student religious organization. The incident was said to have occurred during the year Bruce was at Stanford and Arlis in Bismarck. Yes, the Perrys agreed, it might only be a rumor. But in light of Arlis' death in a church and the theft of the grave marker in Bismarck, they felt the California police should be aware of it. 

The Santa Clara detectives were 1,700 miles from Bismarck, and they lacked the manpower or budget to conduct an intensive investigation in North Dakota. And they still believed the killer was a local sex marauder. So with some degree of routine assistance from Bismarck authorities, they made a cursory check to try to solidify the information. A number of Young Life officials were questioned about the incident. Interestingly, people had heard of it, but no one seemed to know exactly when it happened or the name of the girl who allegedly accompanied Arlis that day. 

And so it died; and other details which could have proved vital to the investigation would also lay dormant for years. 

Time crept by, and except for periodic "anniversary" stories, Arlis' name disappeared from California news columns. In the Sheriff's Department, her file gradually drifted to an "open but inactive" drawer. Detective Sergeant Ken Kahn and his partner, Tom Beck—who weren't assigned to the case at its outset—were now appointed to monitor the search and pursue new leads, if and when any surfaced. 

About every six months, Arlis' parents would phone the sheriff's office to learn if any progress had been made. Bruce Perry, who eventually graduated from Stanford and became a 20 On Terror's Trail doctor, would do the same. But the answer from Kahn and Beck was always no. There was nothing to report—then. 

It was still several years before the chilling handwritten clue, "ARLIS PERRY: HUNTED, STALKED AND SLAIN, FOLLOWED TO CALIFORNIA," would be scrawled across a page in a book about satanism and secreted from the confines of a forbidding New York prison. 

But those haunting days were yet to dawn. 

And as of the summer of 1977, the murder of the young Christian bride remained unsolved. 35s

II 

The Gun of August 

Slowly, because that's the way it was done, he crept closer. Quietly, trying not to make a sound. Stealth, he knew, was essential. His quarry was elusive and easily spooked. He'd already missed several opportunities this day. But not this time. This one was ready to be taken. Now. 

He dropped the net and the blue crab slithered mindlessly away. 

"Son of a bitch," George Austin muttered. He raised the net again and slammed it into the water in frustration. 

"These things are made for fish—not crabs! Don't you know that?" 

Behind him, nearer to shore, I started laughing. "They're gonna recall your Gold Glove award," I shouted. "You'd better stick with the clams. They don't move as fast." 

Austin, thirty-one, a brown-haired insurance broker and a friend for five years, turned around, grumbled unfavorably about my lineage and began inching a path farther out from Davis Park, Fire Island, into the Great South Bay. I decided to join him, and soon found myself just as luckless in the quest for a seafood dinner. 

If the summer of 1977 was such a bountiful one for crabs, then where the hell were they? The bay water was warm and glistening in the late-day sun as we waded along, nets in hand, probing the shallow water for the slowly propelling shadow that signaled supper was near. 

"I feel like an antisubmarine pilot," George complained. 

"Yeah, this is different." 

It wasn't this way in Rockaway Beach in the early fifties, when, as a child of six, I'd go crabbing daily while on vacation. Rockaway, in those days, was the borough of Queens' half hearted answer to the New Jersey ocean resorts. All the Irish in Yonkers rented bungalows in Rockaway then, it seemed. 22 On Terror's Trail But crabs never swam like this in Rockaway Bay. In fact, I couldn't remember them swimming at all. 

My father, my grandfather and I would stand on a pier, drop collapsible wire nets over the side, let them hit bottom and open. Then it was a matter of waiting for the crabs to crawl onto the wire and nibble at fish bait tied inside. Raise the line, the cage closed, and hello, dinner. Times had certainly changed. And so had I. 

I was nearing thirty-one that summer of 1977. In the nine years since college, I worked at IBM in Westchester County, in the northern suburbs of New York City, as an editor and feature writer for a number of the company's publications. It was good, decent work and it paid fairly well, but I found myself restless—a wayward wind skimming the land for something new; something more. 

For as long as I could remember, I sought challenges. And that sometimes bothered me because I felt I should be more settled. Many of my contemporaries were secure with their jobs and families. Content with nine to five. I wasn't. Why that was so, I couldn't answer. But that quizzical trait would soon involve me in the most bizarre, frustrating and yet rewarding experience I'd ever known. In a short time, my career and life would be changed forever. 

I'd joined IBM rather than write for the Westchester newspaper chain. As a varsity baseball player and golfer with a competent background in football and basketball, I landed a part-time sports-reporting job while still in college. But I became terribly disillusioned in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's murder in April 1968. 

Working alone that night in Port Chester, New York, for the Daily Item, I returned from covering a basketball tournament to find a two-block stretch of downtown in shambles. Fires, rioters and looters ran wild. The police and firefighters seemed helpless as they ducked bricks, bottles and garbage being tossed at them from rooftops and tenement windows. I stood with them on the street that night, all of twenty-one years of age, and went back to the paper to write the story. 

The Item was a small afternoon paper then, and I manned the office alone at night. So I let myself into the darkened building and typed the piece as I'd seen it. 

There had been extensive property damage, some nineteen arrests, and several dozen others could have been booked. But the editors killed the story, compiled their own and buried it around page ten with a headline that said, in effect, "Sporadic Violence Hits Village." 

The next day I drove with my girlfriend from my home twenty miles away in Yonkers just to obtain a copy of the paper that didn't print my story. I then took her through the urban battlefield so she could satisfy herself that I wasn't hallucinating. She was stunned, and we both learned a lesson we wouldn't forget. I saw how the game was sometimes played and gladly accepted IBM's offer. Since that time, the ownership of the Westchester newspapers passed to the Gannett Corporation, and standards changed for the better. But it was too late for me. Or so I thought. 

Within the corporate world I survived, even prospered; a victim and yet a beneficiary of this compulsion to explore new horizons. I also did some free-lance work in the music and travel businesses, and was a partner in an investigative sports journalism TV project that almost—but not quite—made it to the air. 

But full-time employment did have its advantages, such as paid vacations. And that's what I was doing on Fire Island on Saturday, July 30, 1977—enjoying the last two days of a leisurely ten at a friend's beach house. 

"What's new with Sam?" George Austin cut in, knowing my fascination with the sensational series of murders that was immobilizing New York City. It was a guaranteed conversation starter. I wasn't the only one engulfed in that drama. Everyone, it seemed, was following the saga very closely, including George (McCloud) Austin, so nicknamed because of his resemblance to Dennis Weaver's TV detective. 

I didn't have any special knowledge of the case. I wasn't then part of the media or law enforcement fraternities. I was an outsider reading the newspapers, watching television and listening to radio to absorb all I could about Son of Sam. Like thousands of others, I was trying to figure out who—or what —he was; and where he was. 

It was an incredible time, for never before had one, single ongoing criminal investigation captured the attention and dominated the thinking of an entire metropolitan region the way New York was mesmerized and terrorized by the Son of Sam slayings. 

Looking west across the Great South Bay in the general direction of the distant, invisible city, George continued: "The sun'll be down in a few hours. Nothing happened last night when they thought it would. Maybe tonight . . . ?" 

"I don't know. If I had that answer I wouldn't be playing Sea Hunt now. But sure, it could be tonight. Maybe the bastard caught the flu yesterday, or maybe he chickened out. Or maybe he died. Or maybe—shit, I don't know. I'll tell you, though, I don't envy those cops. This is one hell of an unbelievable case." 

"Yeah." George nodded. "The big anniversary day is over. Maybe he won't venture out tonight either. But he's over there somewhere on the mainland. . . . Just as long as he doesn't take the ferry out to here," he added dryly. 

On Fire Island, the terror consuming New York seemed far more removed than a ferry ride. It seemed a continent, a lifetime away—rather than the forty-five or so miles it actually was into the outlying boroughs. For the past five months, since early March, the city had been aware that a deranged psychopath was on the loose; shooting down young girls and couples as they embraced in parked cars on lovers' lanes or near discos, stood on porches or walked the night streets. The toll was holding at eleven: five dead, six wounded. 

Son of Sam, or the .44-Caliber Killer, had begun his work on July 29, 1976, a year and a day earlier. But the New York City Police Department had taken more than seven months— five separate attacks—to decide it was chasing one gun; that all the shootings were related. As public recognition of the menace grew, so did the fear. The newspapers, particularly the tabloid News and Post, fanned the flames and outdid themselves on the anniversary date of the first shooting. 

That was yesterday, and the killer hadn't struck, although he'd hinted at an anniversary attack in a macabre letter sent in June to Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin. "What will you have for July 29?" he teased. 

New York's mayor, Abraham Beame, up for reelection, knew what he'd have: the biggest dragnet in the city's history blanketing the boroughs of Queens and the Bronx—Son of Sam's exclusive hunting grounds. This was well and good, but Beame chose to make the announcement in full view of the ever-watchful eyes of the cameras, resulting, some thought, in a direct dare to the killer to strike on that night. 

If that was so, Son of Sam decided to pass; and the twenty ninth of July oozed by without incident. 

However, the sounds of silence on the twenty-ninth didn't abate the deathwatch over the city, which had been operating on the fringes of mass hysteria for months. Thousands of girls with long hair were still cutting it short—because all the victims happened to have had long hair. And since that hair happened to have been brown in color, blond wigs were still selling out in stores from Floral Park in Queens to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. And television crews were still stalking beauty parlors across the city to record the shearing and bleaching for showcasing on the nightly news broadcasts. 

The tastelessness spread to the citizenry, too. Because of the extensive publicity surrounding the case, the NYPD's suspect file was bulging with an inconceivable seven thousand names. Some were young men whose jilted girlfriends were determined to even a score, or loan sharks whose clients were hopeful of short-lived reprieves while the police investigated the tipsters' allegations. 

Other suspects were sons believed by their elderly widowed mothers to be exhibiting abnormal behavior. And some were genuine loonies whose names were forwarded to other police jurisdictions for future reference, if and when the detectives who checked the original information remembered to do so. Often, they didn't. 

In one case, a young woman from Westchester contacted authorities to advise she was certain her ex-husband was the killer. To quote from the official report: 

She said that just before her divorce he told her that one of the things he will miss is her long brown hair. She also stated that he loved Italian girls [most of the victims to that point were Italian-American]. He has sexual hang-ups and wanted her to get into the sadomasochistic scene with ropes. 

In addition, this suspect, from whom police did obtain a handwriting sample to compare with the block-lettered Son of Sam notes, also went to discos and topless bars; wore a wig; was brought up in the neighborhood of two of the shootings; owned guns; "shot" at the TV when he thought no one was around; thought his sexual equipment was under par; and besides all that, looked like police artists' sketches of the Son of Sam. Or so the wife said. 

In yet another incident, two Westchester residents believed they knew the gunman's identity, so they took it upon themselves to drag him to his father's grave to coax a dramatic confession from him. He refused to admit his guilt, however, so they decided to beat him with baseball bats to "get it out of him." Still no go. The "killer" was seriously injured and the two vigilantes were promptly arrested. 

In other graveyard occurrences, police were sent to investigate reports that men were seen dancing on the graves of two .44 victims; one at a Queens cemetery, the other in the Bronx. A Bronx cemetery worker was questioned and released. No one was identified in the Queens incident. 

Each of these leads, no matter how outlandish or unlikely, had to be investigated, to some degree at least, by the Police Department's task force, whose burgeoning ranks included many of the elite of the city's detective corps. The problem was, they weren't doing much detecting: they were pushing paper and chasing wild geese all over the metropolitan area. It was demoralizing; and as those on the inside knew well, there was little guidance and barely any communication between teams and shifts. 

Detectives would find themselves tuning in the TV news to learn what had happened that day in their own investigation, for, eager to see their faces on camera and their names in print, some task force supervisors were perfectly willing to discuss the case at length with the media. 

On most days, the task force headquarters at the 109th Precinct in Queens resembled a Hollywood set with camera and sound equipment scattered about. 

Internally, the special command was known as "Omega." "As in 'watch' "—watch TV to find out what's going on—was the derisive dismissal of the group's effectiveness by some who were there. Nonetheless, by late July about three hundred police, a force larger than most departments in the United States, would be punching their clocks at Omega. 

And all the while, the panic was spreading. Coveys of psychics visited crime scenes and issued mystically inspired descriptions of the killer and his getaway cars. Numerologists, soothsayers, magicians and housewives from Queens were tying up police phones for hours pushing their own theories on the killer's identity and motivation. 

Motivation. That's where the psychiatrists came in. From studying the incidents and the letter to Breslin, every psychiatrist in the Manhattan Yellow Pages, it seemed, had an opinion on the case; and many of those analyses wormed their way into the newspapers. One of the more popular offerings went like this: 

Son of Sam was a loner. He hated women and was killing young girls with long brown hair because he'd been rejected by such a girl. His .44 was really a surrogate penis, and when he was firing it he was really copulating. He was a quiet type who blended right into the crowd. He was religious, and alternately felt he was doing God's will and possessed by demons. He attended Catholic schools. The name Son of Sam was a play on "Samson"—whose hair was cut off by a woman. Son of Sam was emasculated by a woman. 

The press, anxious for stories on the slow days between attacks, dutifully gave gobs of space to these scatter-gun diagnoses. On one occasion the Post even carried a story about a misguided, but well-meaning priest who offered himself as a hostage to the murderer. 

Also during that summer, it seemed as if the media were running a "Surrender to Me" contest among the city's journalists, as Breslin and Pete Hamill of the News, the Post's Steve Dunleavy and a couple of TV reporters all appealed to Son of Sam to turn himself in—to them. 

Even the Times, the aristocratic gray lady of 43rd Street, was dipping her crumpet in the killer's cup, devoting extensive space to the investigation. That must have flustered its editors, who liked to consider "the paper of record" above such things as mass murder. But by late June the Times realized the killer was "fit to print" in a big way and joined the fray in earnest, along with Newsweek, Time and other publications from coast to coast and in Europe. 

It was difficult not to become immersed in the hysteria, particularly when a number of citizens' groups, media outlets and corporations began offering reward money that totaled $40,000. But much of the panic was overreaction. The odds against a particular person being shot were immense. There were eleven victims as of July 30. Out of how many millions? Still, it was a horrible, grim lottery. 

"Hello from the gutters of N.Y.C. which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine, and blood," Sam had written Breslin in early June. Then, with words that might have flowed from the pen of Poe, he reminded the world: "I am still here. Like a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest." 

The letter was fascinating in its flawless horror and vivid imagery. The case itself was hypnotic. It was the greatest manhunt in New York history, a deadly game between the hunted and the hunters. The letter to Breslin topped it off. 

Usually, people don't learn of a crime until after it is committed. But with Son of Sam it was much different. People were looking over their shoulders, knowing he was out there before he struck. He was terror with a name, an identity; the equivalent of the dreaded great white shark stalking the ocean shores. People in New York felt the fear, and became personally involved in the case. The victims were young, white, middle-class and Roman Catholic, it so happened. Sam had invaded the bedrooms and watering holes of working-class New York. 

The discos in his two targeted boroughs thus far—Queens and the Bronx—were empty. Businesses were suffering. The streets were deserted by midnight. 

New York, on July 30, 1977, was a city under siege. 

But how did it get that way? 

According to what the public knew at the time, it had begun quietly on Thursday morning, July 29, 1976, in the northeast Bronx as Michael and Rose Lauria were returning to their roomy, fourth-floor apartment at 2860 Buhre Avenue in the predominantly Italian-American Pelham Bay section. It was 1 A.M. 

Lauria, a bus company employee in Manhattan, and Rose, an administrative worker at New York Hospital, also in Manhattan, were coming home after attending a wake and stopping briefly at a local restaurant, the Chateau Pelham. 

As they neared their building, they recognized the 1975 blue-and-white Oldsmobile double-parked in front. It belonged to Jody Valente,[R] nineteen, a student nurse and close friend of the Laurias' daughter Donna,[L] eighteen. Jody was behind the wheel talking with Donna, who sat beside her in the passenger's seat. Donna had medium-length dark hair and light brown eyes. She was a pretty young woman, popular, and dated often. She was currently on the "outs" with a boyfriend. 

The two girls were back from an evening at a discotheque in nearby New Rochelle, located on the Long Island Sound in southeastern Westchester County. The disco's name was Peachtree, and in time it—and New Rochelle—would figure prominently in the Son of Sam story. Donna and Jody, who herself was a pretty girl with shoulder-length, flowing brown hair, were regulars at Peachtree's Wednesday night backgammon tournaments. 

The Laurias paused to speak with the girls, and Mike reminded Donna to come upstairs soon because she was due at work in the morning. As he looked up from his conversation with his daughter, Mike Lauria noticed a yellow compact sized auto double-parked across the street and about twenty yards behind Jody's car. It was occupied by a lone male driver. Unknown to Mike, neighbors had spotted a similar, unfamiliar vehicle cruising the area several hours before—at about the time Donna went out. 

"Make sure you don't stay down here too long," Mike advised. He was understanding of the comings and goings of his sons, Louis and Michael, but was more protective of Donna, his only girl. 

Donna offered a compromise, saying she'd wait with Jody while her father went upstairs and brought down her poodle, Beau. Then they'd walk the dog together. Mike Lauria agreed, and he and Rose entered the tan brick apartment building and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. On the street, Donna and Jody continued their conversation. 

Donna, who'd been sickly as a child, had blossomed into a healthy young woman. Perhaps remembering her past, she chose a career in the medical field and was now employed as a technician by the Empire State Ambulance Service in Manhattan. 

Jody Valente, the student nurse, was a neighbor as well as a friend to Donna and her family. She lived with her parents just three blocks away, at 1918 Hutchinson River Parkway. 

At 1:10 A.M., Donna bid good night to Jody and turned to open the door of the double-parked Olds. As her hand pulled the latch open, she saw a young man standing on the curb about eight feet away, toward the rear of the car. Donna was startled. "Now what is this . . ." she started to say. They were her last words. 

The man on the curb pulled a gun from the brown paper bag he was carrying, put both hands on the weapon, crouched slightly and fired three shots into the car. Donna raised her right arm as the bullets shattered the closed passenger's window. One of the slugs entered above her right elbow, traveled downward through her forearm, exited beneath her wrist, entered her back and killed her instantly. Donna tumbled from the car and hit the pavement with a sickening thud. 

Another bullet, apparently aimed at Donna as well, tore into Jody Valente's left thigh. The third missed. 

His work done, the killer turned and walked around the corner of Buhre and Mayflower avenues and into infamy. 

Rose Lauria looked directly down from her kitchen window on the fourth floor in response to the noise below. She heard Jody Valente's horn blaring and she watched curiously as Jody crawled from the car and hobbled back and forth in the middle of the street, shouting at the top of her voice. Then it dawned on Rose: Jody was crying for help. 

Mike Lauria was in the stairwell with the poodle when he heard the series of explosions. He raced outside to Jody's car and she screamed to him, "Donna! Donna!" Mike Lauria looked down to the pavement and saw his stricken daughter. He rode with her in the ambulance, holding her hand and pleading with her not to die, but it was too late. 

As for the wounded Jody, her mental anguish was more severe than her thigh injury, which was promptly treated. When police visited the hospital, she was nearly hysterical. But after a time, she provided a detailed description of the gunman: 

Male white, 30s, 5'9", 160 pounds. Curly, dark hair; mod style. Clean-shaven. Light complexion. Wearing a blue polo shirt with white stripes. Dark pants. 

Although no one knew it, the Son of Sam case had begun. 

There are typically more than 1500 murders in New York City annually, and many of them—because of their "routine" nature, or because the victim was a drifter, or a bum, or even a minority—get short shrift in the newspapers. But a young white girl from a middle-class family who was slain in a car for no apparent reason was unique enough to be reported in some detail by the city's press corps. 

Still, within days the story of Donna's death faded from the public consciousness. 

The name of Donna Lauria wouldn't surface again until February 1, 1977, six months later.

For the police responsible for bringing her killer to ground, Donna's name remained an important one. The investigation of her murder was handled by the 8th Homicide Zone, which covered the Pelham Bay area. At that time, homicide detectives were a breed apart, the elite of the NYPD. The city was divided into districts or "zones" of homicide, with the detectives assigned to each responsible for the slayings that occurred within those boundary lines. 

The homicide cops worked only murder cases. Other officers handled robbery, burglary, vice, organized crime, etc. It was an efficient system, allowing for much-needed specialization in homicide investigations. It has since been discarded. 

But at the outset of the Lauria probe, the police knew two things. One: Jody Valente said she didn't recognize the killer; and two: the ballistics examination indicated the weapon used was a large-caliber handgun—a .44-caliber Bulldog revolver— not a common firearm in New York. 

A powerful weapon that fires five rounds, the Bulldog is designed for only one purpose: to kill people. And, at close range, it is effective. Its drawbacks are that it is difficult to control because of a strong recoil, or "kick," and it isn't very accurate beyond a distance of some twenty feet—after which the velocity of the bullets also decreases markedly. 

For want of any other apparent motive, the detectives believed that one of Donna's former or current boyfriends was somehow involved in the killing; or that the attack was the result of an organized crime mistake—a "hit" on the wrong person. There had been some mob-related activity in the general vicinity in the preceding few months, including a couple of shootings. The police speculated that some contract killer may have shot Donna in a case of mistaken identity. Such things had happened before. 

Much to his chagrin, some detectives began to insinuate that bus company employee Mike Lauria was himself "connected" to organized crime. Mike, to understate the issue, was livid. 

These theories never reached the public, however. The existence of the double-parked, compact yellow car and the sighting of a similar auto several hours before the shooting were also withheld. 

The investigation, after some promising early leads evaporated, went nowhere. And as of October 23, there was no progress to report in the Lauria case and, barring new developments, the folder would find its way to an "open but inactive" file. 

At 1:15 A.M. on Saturday October 23, Rosemary Keenan, eighteen, the daughter of an NYPD detective, and Carl Denaro, twenty, a former department store record salesman and security guard at Citibank in Manhattan, left a Flushing, Queens, bar called Peck's and rode a half dozen blocks in her navy blue Volkswagen to a darkened spot in a residential area near the corner of 159th Street and 33rd Avenue. 

With brown shoulder-length hair, Denaro had tried to picture himself as he'd look in a week's time, after the Air Force —which he'd just joined—trimmed his tonsorial splendor to meet military regulations. 

Keenan, a student at Queens College, knew Denaro casually before their late-night encounter at Peck's, where Denaro was toasting his final days as a civilian. Invited to join the party, she had; and now the two were escaping the madding crowd for a few moments alone before Rosemary's curfew time. 

Denaro was in the passenger's seat as the bug slowed to a halt on the quiet, tree-lined block. After turning off the engine, Rosemary glanced in her rearview mirror and noticed the passing of a solitary jogger as he crossed her line of vision. 

Then, for a short five minutes, their world was still—until 1:30 A.M., when it exploded around them in a shower of glass. 

As the couple reflexively ducked in shock and surprise, both the driver's and the passenger's window blew out with a deafening roar, and the speedometer suddenly shattered—its needle jolting forward and jamming stuck at "30." 

Large-caliber bullets whining through the front passenger's window were causing the eruption. Other slugs slammed into the right side and roof of the VW as the gunman apparently struggled to adjust to the weapon's recoil. In contrast with the Lauria shooting, the assailant was having some trouble. 

But neither Rosemary nor Denaro knew they were being fired on—not even when Denaro felt the force of something slicing through the back of his head on the right side. Instinctively, he reached behind and put his hand into his own warm, seeping blood. 

"Get out of here! Get out of here!" he screamed. 

Rosemary lunged for the ignition switch, clicked it on, ground the Beetle into first gear, and the car lurched forward as she struggled to regain her composure and cope with the reluctant clutch. 

Shaking, crying, she stared at Carl and was horrified to see he was covered with blood. Disoriented, not thinking clearly enough to drive to a hospital, she sped the six blocks back to Peck's, where they both staggered inside. Denaro, still not knowing he'd been shot, collapsed. 

He would spend the next three weeks in Flushing Hospital and return there for an additional ten days on January 20. As Jimmy Carter was taking the oath of office as President of the United States, doctors were implanting a steel plate into Denaro's head. 

Rosemary Keenan escaped unhurt. The attacker, perhaps mistaking Denaro for a woman because of his long hair, had vented his fury at the young man instead of the short-haired college student. 

If Carl Denaro had been less of a "hippie," Rosemary Keenan might not be alive today. 

The Queens detectives from the 109th Precinct assigned to the case learned from the NYPD's ballistics laboratory that a .44-caliber handgun was used to shoot Denaro. Beyond that, the ballistics technicians were stymied due to the deformed condition of the slugs. They couldn't determine any particular make or model of .44. 

All of the NYPD's ballistics work was performed in the same lab in Manhattan, whether a shooting occurred there or in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island or the Bronx. So into a file went the slides and bullets recovered from the Denaro assault. The evidence obtained from the Lauria scene in the Bronx already lay in another folder in the lab. 

With no answers forthcoming from the ballistics examination, the detectives pursued other avenues. Rosemary Keenan's father, Redmond, a second-grade detective with more than twenty years' experience, participated in the probe. But there were no witnesses to the attack, and nothing in Denaro's background—or Rosemary's—surfaced as a possible motive. So, as with the Lauria case three months earlier, the inquiry went nowhere. 

Lack of apparent motive aside, no one noted the similarities between the shootings: young people, late at night, shot in cars for no discernible reason. No one pointed out that some type of .44 revolver was used in both incidents. The attacks, which occurred in boroughs separated by the short spans of the Trail Throgs Neck and Whitestone bridges, might as well have happened six thousand miles apart. 

Carl Denaro's wounding was in and out of the newspapers in the course of one day. 

The next assault in the lengthening string would in time develop into one of the most critical and telling episodes in the saga of Sam. This was so because, in contrast to the Denaro case, there were witnesses—three of them. Two would look straight into the shooter's face from less than ten feet away. He would even speak to them. These were the two young victims, who would survive to describe the event in detail and provide descriptions of the gunman which would differ markedly from Jody Valente's eyewitness portrayal of the man who murdered Donna Lauria. 

Saturday, November 27, 1976, began with a blustery binge as a chilling wind whipped through the canyons of midtown Manhattan carrying scraps of paper, debris and yesterday's headlines through the midnight air. 

On various street corners in the Broadway area, the hardiest of vendors—wearing ancient woolen caps with earflaps lowered—huddled near their carts of roasting chestnuts. The smoldering aromas, tipped skyward by the wind, blended with the assorted litter gusting its way from gutter to sidewalk to doorway. 

Leaving the movie theater, the two young friends bundled themselves against the sudden cold and hastened for the warmth of the underground station. Soon a graffiti-splashed subway train, clattering and swaying on its path beneath the East River, took them home to Queens. 

In their borough again, they left the train at 179th Street and Hillside Avenue and boarded a bus that brought them to the corner of Hillside and 262nd Street, less than a block from Joanne Lomino's house. 

Joanne, eighteen, graduated from Martin Van Buren High School the preceding summer and was seeking a job as a secretary. So far, she hadn't found anything to her liking. But since she lived at home with her parents, the pressure to find regular employment wasn't excessive—although her family was hopeful she'd find full-time work before the new year began. 

Her companion, Donna DeMasi, was sixteen and still enrolled at Van Buren. She was tall, slender and attractive, and her long dark hair contrasted with Joanne's, whose blond tresses were shorter. 

After stepping from the bus, the girls walked leisurely down 262nd Street, talking animatedly as they went. It was a good time of the year. The family get-togethers of Thanksgiving were just two days previous, and the girls were now anticipating the Christmas season. 

When they reached the front of the Lomino home—a small, two-story dwelling with a modest front yard cut by a walk which led to a tiny cement porch—Joanne and Donna continued their conversation on the steps. Across from the house a powerful streetlamp cast a reassuring halo of light on the immediate area. Now mindless of the cold, the two teenagers chatted on for several more minutes. 

And then they saw him. 

Actually, Donna spotted him first. But as he strode onto the grass and halted just eight feet from the girls, Joanne—who'd been facing sideways with her back to the man—looked over her shoulder to study him also. 

He was dressed in what appeared to be a green form-fitting, three-quarter-length coat, perhaps an Army fatigue jacket. He was slim—about 150 to 160 pounds—and stood about five feet eight. His hair was longish, straight, parted and dirty blond in color. His eyes were a piercing dark brown. 

The girls were somewhat nervous, but not frightened by the man, who seemed to be lost. As if to confirm their speculation, he began speaking in a high-pitched voice: "Can you tell me how to get ..." 

He never finished the question. Instead, he yanked a revolver from his coat and began firing. Joanne, still with her back to the gunman although her face was looking into his, was jarred sideways as the first slug tore into her spinal cord and continued on, puncturing a lung. 

Donna, on a lower step, was struck next as she lunged away from the spitting gun. The large-caliber bullet entered the base of her neck and barely missed her spine. 

Like fragile, broken mannequins, the two girls tumbled from opposite sides of the porch and into the surrounding bushes. The attacker kept firing, the remaining bullets splattering the front of the house and smashing the living-room window. 

His weapon finally empty, the gunman fled down 262nd Street toward 81st Avenue as a witness, who heard the shots,ran outside and watched closely as he hurried by, carrying the gun in his left hand. 

Donna DeMasi lay in Long Island Jewish Hospital for nearly three weeks recovering from her wound and wore a neck brace for months afterward. Joanne Lomino wasn't as "fortunate." Her stay at Long Island Jewish lasted three months, and was followed by another 120 days at the Rusk Institute in Manhattan, where she underwent rehabilitation therapy. She was now a paraplegic, and would live the rest of her life in a wheelchair. 

The investigation of the assault fell to the detectives at Queens' 105th Precinct. Once again, the ballistics people were unable to be of much help since the recovered bullets were too deformed for any precise comparisons to be made. Beyond the conclusion that the slugs came from some model of .44 revolver, the laboratory analysis was fruitless. 

And as in the cases of Donna Lauria and Carl Denaro, background checks on the victims uncovered no apparent motive for the attack. Still, no one connected the three incidents. As the Christmas season came and went, there were no further developments in any of the cases. 

Three composite sketches had been prepared: one from Jody Valente's description of the Lauria killer; another from a combined effort by Joanne Lomino and Donna DeMasi; and a third from the witness who saw the assailant flee that scene. 

The two Queens sketches were very similar, differing primarily on the location of the part in the attacker's long, straight, blondish hair. The girls remembered the part was on the left side; the witness recalled it was on the right. But that a part did exist was not in question. 

In any event, the drawings looked nothing like that of the man who murdered Donna Lauria—whose hair was dark and curled into a bushy "perm." That man was also younger and heavier than the Lomino-DeMasi shooter; and his nose, eyes and mouth were shaped differently from those of the Queens assailant. 

And still another Queens resident would be the next to fall to the nameless force behind the .44. And she would die. 

The new year, 1977, was the "Year of the Cat," and A1 Stewart's haunting hit of that title climbed the charts in the early months. It was midwinter, and it was freezing, bitter The Gun of August 37 cold. On January 29, the mercury in New York registered a scant fourteen degrees above zero as midnight neared. Three thousand miles to the west on this Saturday, comedian Freddie Prinze had just died from a bullet wound in the head—self inflicted in a "tragic accident." 

In Forest Hills, Queens, in the shadow of the West Side Tennis Club—then the site of the U.S. Open—Christine Freund, a twenty-six-year-old secretary, would become victim number six. Several years later, the events surrounding Christine's murder would provide pivotal clues in the search for the conspirators who aided David Berkowitz in the shootings. But for the present, the following highlights will outline the story: Austrian-born Christine Freund, a diminutive five feet two, was a beautiful young woman with long, dark brown hair that cascaded over her shoulders to a point midway down her back. Her parents, Nandor and Olga, emigrated to the United States when Chris was five and found a new home in the bustling Ridgewood section of Queens. Soon after their arrival, Olga gave birth to another daughter, Eva. Together, the sisters were the spark of the middle-class Freund household and both were now employed in secretarial positions in Manhattan. 

In 1972, Chris was hired by the Wall Street firm of Reynolds Securities, and currently worked out of its office at 2 Broadway, in the heart of the financial district. For a short time, she'd taken courses at Lehman College in the Bronx. But as her relationship grew with her boyfriend, John Diel, her interests changed. 

Diel, thirty, was a soccer aficionado who earned his money as a bartender at the Ridgewood III, a neighborhood watering hole. He and Chris had survived an up-and-down relationship and were planning to announce their engagement in two weeks —on Valentine's Day. 

On that frigid Saturday evening of January 29, Diel called for Christine at her Linden Street home in his blue Pontiac Firebird and they drove to the Forest Hills Theatre to watch Sylvester Stallone conquer the world in the original Rocky. It was Chris's second consecutive evening in a theater. The night before, she remained in Manhattan with two girlfriends and attended the Broadway production of Godspell. 

Twenty-four hours before meeting the devil, Christine had joyously sung "Day by Day" with Jesus. 

* * * 

Following Rocky, Chris and Diel trekked the snowy streets to the Wine Gallery restaurant on nearby Austin Street. After a light meal and some Irish coffee, the bundled couple began to walk to Diel's car, which was parked several blocks away in Station Plaza, near the Long Island Rail Road tracks. Their next stop was to be a Masonic dance, at the hall where they first met seven years before. 

At the corner of Austin and Continental Avenue they passed a lone hitchhiker with an orange knapsack, and neighbors saw a man in a small green foreign car drop off a passenger with a suitcase at the train station at about this time. 

Back in the car, Diel revved the engine and let it warm up for about two minutes in the cold night air. He inserted the latest Abba tape in the stereo and the sound of the newly released "Dancing Queen" filled the auto. Chris nestled close to John, and they hugged briefly. 

"God, it's cold," she remarked. The couple then sat back and prepared to leave. 

At that moment, the first of three .44-caliber slugs crashed through the passenger's side window. 

"Chris! Chris!" Diel hollered, pulling her down as two more shots roared into the car. One passed through Christine's shoulder and entered her back; the other missed and blew out a hole in the windshield on the driver's side. 

And then, it was over. Diel, quaking in fear and anguish, kept his head down until he was sure the onslaught had ended. Reaching for Chris, he pulled her to him. When he took his hands away he saw they were covered with blood. 

"Chris, Chris!" he shouted again. But Chris didn't answer. Frantic, Diel propped his fiancee up in the seat and fled the car, running madly to Continental Avenue for help. 

Waving his arms wildly, he rushed to a couple stopped at a red light. "My girl's been hurt! Please help me!" he blurted. The couple took him back to his car and, as Diel leaned in to check on Chris, they left. 

Diel then glanced across Station Plaza, saw a man entering the Forest Hills Inn and let out a rather interesting cry: "Mister! Mister! They shot her! They shot my girl!" The man stared at Diel and kept going. "They shot my girl!" Diel yelled again, as two neighbors heard him and phoned the police. 

But on the street, Diel, alone again and with no help in sight, jumped into his car. Seeing that Chris hadn't moved, he floored the Firebird and squealed to a halt in the center of the Continental and Burns avenues intersection, blocking traffic. Finally, he had help. 

But it was too late for Christine Freund. She died shortly afterwards—at 4:10 A.M.—in St. John's Hospital. The shooting had occurred at 12:40 A.M., January 30, 1977. The cause of Christine's death was a bullet wound in the head. Diel had dragged his girlfriend down one shot too late. 

Finally, the Police Department began to rumble. The ballistics tests failed to link the bullets fired at Christine to any other shooting. But once again, it was noted that a .44-caliber weapon, identified as a Charter Arms Bulldog model, had been used. Not "one particular .44 Bulldog to the exclusion of all others." But "a" .44-caliber Bulldog. 

On February 1, Peter Bernstein of the Daily News wrote: 

More than 50 detectives are investigating possible links between the murder of Christine Freund in Forest Hills, Queens, early Sunday and three episodes last year—two in Queens and one in the Bronx. 

Two young women have been killed and three were wounded, one of them seriously, in the four incidents. 

"We are leaning toward a connection in all these cases," said Sgt. Richard Conlon of the Queens 15th Homicide Zone. 

In each of the cases, a single gunman, acting without apparent motive, emerged in the early morning darkness to shoot down his unsuspecting victims. 

Accompanying the article, which erroneously stated that Carl Denaro hadn't been injured, were a photo of Chris and Diel, a map of the three Queens shooting sites and the police composite sketches from the Lauria and Lomino-DeMasi shootings. 

The drawings differed so widely the caption referred to more than one suspect: "Police sketches of suspects in LominoDeMasi shooting in Queens and slaying in the Bronx last July." The most critical words in the article were Sergeant Conlon's "leaning toward a connection." Simply, the police weren't sure. The circumstances of the attacks led them to suspect a single gun was behind all of them—a relatively uncommon .44 Bulldog. But they had no evidence. And more importantly, they certainly had no proof that one particular man was responsible: their own composites clearly indicated otherwise. In addition, there were other possible motives for Christine Freund's slaying—motives which would remain hidden within the Police Department. 

But despite the cautious approach chosen by the police in February, March would whirl with a pungent wind that would blow all that rightful reticence into the gutter. 

From that point, when the bosses and politicians bulled into the case, there would be one man and one gun, regardless of what the facts were. But New York's press and citizenry wouldn't know that. The media and the public would believe that a single, crazed psychopath was prowling the nighttime streets. 

It was nearly time for the birth of the .44-Caliber Killer.

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"Knock on Coffins"