Virginia voskerichian
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Son of Sam’s first murder
David Berkowitz, later to be known as the “Son of Sam,” pulls a gun from a paper bag and fires five shots at Donna Lauria and Jody Valenti of the Bronx while they are sitting in a car, talking. Lauria died and Valenti was seriously wounded in the first in a series of shootings by the serial killer, who terrorized New York City over the course of the next year.
Once dubbed the “.44 Caliber Killer,” the Son of Sam eventually got his name from letters he sent to both the police and famed newspaper writer Jimmy Breslin that said, “…I am a monster. I am the Son of Sam. I love to hunt, prowling the streets looking for fair game. The weman are prettyist of all [sic]…”
The second attack came on October 23, 1976, when a couple was shot as they sat in a car in Queens. A month later, two girls were talking on a stoop outside a home when the serial killer approached, asked for directions, and then suddenly pulled a gun out and fired several shots. Joanne Lomino was paralyzed from a bullet that struck her spine, but her friend was not seriously injured.
The So
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Son of Sam survivor breaks her silence after 40 years
Nineteen-year-old nursing student Jody Valenti had just spent a night dancing at a disco in New Rochelle with her friend Donna Lauria, 18, when, back in The Bronx, their car suddenly exploded with gunfire.
Donna, in training to be a New York City medic, was killed instantly — shot once in the back — and Jody took a bullet in the left thigh and was in agonizing pain and shock.
It was shortly after 1 a.m. on July 29, 1976. Son of Sam’s murder spree had begun.
With this month’s coming 40th anniversary of the start of David Berkowitz’s reign of terror over New York City, Valenti, now 59, has broken her four-decade silence for the first time in an interview with The Post.
“It took probably about six years of my life to be able to get in a car at night,” she says, her voice strong and confident. “It took a long time to be able to deal with the sounds of popping fireworks and stuff like that . . . But I faced my fears.”
The mass shootings from Newtown, Conn., to Dallas profoundly impacted her and prompted her to face her b
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The Son of Sam: A Timeline of the Killings that Terrorized New York City
Across 13 months of 1976 and 1977, fear over the Son of Sam murders perpetrated by then-unknown serial killer David Berkowitz gripped the citizens of New York City. Six women and men were shot and killed in three of the city’s boroughs in more than a dozen seemingly random attacks. The crimes spawned one of the biggest manhunts of the city’s history.
Tabloid newspapers battled for the latest information as daily sales soared. “It had absolutely everything going for it as a tabloid perfect storm,” Sam Roberts, the Daily News city editor in 1977 told the New York Times of the media frenzy. “It was an ongoing, unfolding crime story that New Yorkers were genuinely terrified about.”
Here's a timeline of one of the most infamous killing sprees in modern history:
July 29, 1976: The killer attacks his first victims
The shootings first attributed to the killer who would become known as the Son of Sam occurred in the Pelham Bay area of the Bronx. Two women, Jody Valenti and Donna Lauria, 18, were sitting
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