THE first real break in the Son of Sam case came a couple of hours before sunrise on August 1, the morning after the attack on Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante, courtesy of Detective John Falotico, a thirty-one-year veteran of the NYPD who had never before worked a murder case. A small, clean-shaven man with bushy white hair, Falotico had only recently been transferred to the tenth homicide zone, which was responsible for all murders in West Brooklyn. For Falotico, who was always grousing about something, the reassignment was one more thing to complain about. But beneath the grumpy exterior was a steady, conscientious detective who was still on the force at fifty-eight, well past retirement age for most officers. He had split with his wife and the Catholic Church years earlier. Aside from his three teenage daughters, everything took a backseat to the job.
Within an hour of the shooting, Falotico was at the crime scene, interviewing a man who said he saw the attack in the rearview mirror of his car. Falotico brought the witness, Tommy Zaino, back to the scene the following afternoon to test the consistency of his recollections. Zaino provided the most detailed description of the killer to date.
According to protocol, as the lead detective on the Moskowitz case, Falotico should have been absorbed into the Omega task force the moment the link to the Son of Sam was established, but he wanted to stay put in Coney Island, where the tenth homicide zone was located. Deputy Inspector Dowd and Captain Borrelli reluctantly agreed, but they wanted Falotico to work with a more experienced homicide detective, Ed Zigo.
Falotico knew this area of Bensonhurst well from his years in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, where he’d investigated the Columbo crime family, which kept a real estate office nearby. He
spent his first two days on the case, a Sunday and Monday, scribbling down license plate numbers, ringing doorbells, and passing out his card to local residents. On Tuesday night a woman called the station house looking for him. He had given her his card a few blocks from the scene of the murder.
Falotico was tied up with Zaino and a police artist, trying to complete a new sketch of the killer, so another detective, Joseph Strano, a tall, strapping man with wavy brown hair and thick sideburns, took the call. The woman explained that her friend Cacilia Davis had been out walking her dog, a fluffy white terrier named Snowball, at the time of the latest attack. Davis, the woman told Strano, was almost positive that she’d seen the killer up close.
It took a few days of coaxing, but Davis eventually agreed to meet with Strano and his partner, Joe Smith. The man, she told the two detectives, had emerged from behind a tree. He was wearing a jacket and walked with his right arm straight down, as though he were hiding something up his sleeve. Strano asked if she had seen anyone else there. She said no. The detectives continued to press her. Davis eventually recalled seeing cops ticketing cars.
Hoping to find another eyewitness, Strano and Smith checked with the local precinct, but no corresponding tickets had been issued. They went back to Davis and asked her if she was sure. She was. Strano and Smith tracked down the young officer who’d been assigned to patrol the area that night. The officer insisted that he hadn’t written any tickets. Either Davis was wrong, or in all the excitement this young cop had failed to hand in his summonses and was now trying to cover it up. The next day Strano and Smith had another detective call the officer to assure him that if he’d forgotten to submit them, it was an understandable mistake, one for which he wouldn’t be punished. The young cop’s tickets soon materialized.
Another detective in the tenth homicide zone, James Justus, followed up on the tickets. One for thirty-five dollars had been issued to David Berkowitz of 35 Pine Street in Yonkers, who had parked his
cream-colored Ford Galaxy sedan too close to a fire hydrant. Justus tried calling him several times, but there was no answer.
On the evening of August 9 the NYPD saturated the city with new WANTED posters describing a man with a “good, athletic build,” a “sensuous mouth,” and “dark, almond-shaped eyes.” That same night Justus put in a call to the Yonkers Police Department in the hope that it might be able to help him track down Berkowitz, who he hoped might be a witness. Justus identified himself to the switchboard operator and explained why he was calling. “When the name David Berkowitz was mentioned,” Justus later wrote in his report, “she got very excited and asked if he lived at 35 Pine Street.” The operator told Justus that her backyard faced Berkowitz’s building, and that he had sent the sheriff threatening letters in the past. She insisted Justus speak with her father, Sam Carr.
“A short time later the father, Mr. Sam Carr, called the undersigned,” Justus’s report continued. “He stated that … he saw who he believed to be Berkowitz shoot his dog and further stated that there were four shots fired and one hit the dog. And another was found and is in the Yonkers property clerks at this time … The bullet is described as a large led [sic] slug with brass or copper jacket. Mr. Carr further stated that the subject lives alone and he had never observed him with a woman and stated that he has a small yellow Ford. He describes him as follows: M/W/24/5 feet 10 inches/165 pounds/long brown hair/thin face with high cheekbones … Mr. Carr stated that there are two police officers with the Yonkers P.D. that have further information on Berkowitz and they are P.O.s Chamberlin and Intervallo.”
Justus called Officer Chamberlin. The report recounts their conversation: “He [Chamberlin] saw the composite in the New York Post and he stated that Berkowitz bears a striking resemblance to the sketch. He further stated that their department did a psychological profile on him and that he is disturbed.”
The following afternoon William Gardella, the sergeant for the
tenth homicide zone; Falotico; and another detective from the tenth by the name of Charlie Higgins made their way toward the Pine Hill Towers in Yonkers, a bleak city of boarded-up red-brick factory buildings that marked the beginning of Westchester County.
They were not the first to arrive at Berkowitz’s building. Falotico’s partner, Ed Zigo, and another detective had heard what was going on and quickly drove up to Yonkers on their own. Zigo didn’t have a search warrant, but that hadn’t stopped him from entering the Ford Galaxy, which was parked nearby. In the backseat was an army duffel containing a rifle, a toothbrush, and a pair of dirty Jockey shorts. In the glove compartment was a letter addressed to the Suffolk County Police Department promising an attack at a disco in the Hamptons. Zigo’s hands shook as he read the note.
Falotico’s group arrived on Pine Street, and Sergeant Gardella sent Zigo out for a search warrant. Falotico and Gardella stayed behind. More and more officers and detectives appeared as the afternoon turned to evening. Residents started monitoring the scene from their windows. At one point a passenger van pulled up near Berkowitz’s car. Falotico asked him to park as close to the Galaxy as he could. In case Berkowitz managed to get to his car, Falotico wanted to make it harder for him to flee.
As officers continued to assemble outside, Berkowitz remained upstairs in apartment 7E, a $238-a-month studio with pornographic magazines strewn about the floor, a box spring sitting on a shag rug, and manic red scribblings covering the walls. (“My neighbors I have no respect for And I treat them like shit. Sincerely, Williams.”) Dirty sheets hung over the windows, obscuring what would otherwise have been an uninterrupted view of the Hudson.
At ten-thirty that night Berkowitz finally emerged from the building in frayed jeans, tennis sneakers, and a wrinkled light blue sport shirt over a white undershirt. Falotico saw him walking casually down the hill toward his Galaxy. The detective moved briskly to the car, his gun drawn, as Berkowitz started the engine. Falotico put his
pistol against the window and ordered him to cut the ignition and step out of the car. Resting against Berkowitz’s thigh was a brown paper bag with something resembling an apple turnover inside. Falotico recognized the shape immediately; in the summer, when it was too hot to wear a jacket, he himself often carried his gun in just such a brown paper bag. It had to be the .44.
Their exchange was brief.
“You got me,” said Berkowitz.
“Who are you?” Falotico asked, his heart pounding.
“You know met.”
“I don’t.”
“I’m the Son of Sam.”
“I looked at him, and he had that Mona Lisa smile,” Falotico recalls. “I drew him out of the car, and he was still smiling at me. Nobody with a gun facing his nose would stand there and smile.”