Retired detective thinks 1970 Bronx homicide of teenage lady might be linked to serial killer Son of Sam and needs case reopened | EUROtoday
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Five years earlier than New York City was terrorized by the ‘Son of Sam’ killer David Berkowitz again within the Seventies, a teenage lady was gunned down on a Bronx avenue – and now, a retired detective believes her killing might be linked to Berkowitz, as he requires the case to be reopened.
Mike Lorenzo, whose father labored the Berkowitz investigation, instructed The New York Post that the 1970 homicide of 16-year-old Margaret Inglesia bears hanging similarities to the crimes that may later make Berkowitz one of the crucial notorious serial killers in American historical past.
“This is a case that needs to be reexamined,” stated Lorenzo, who’s working with Son of Sam professional Manny Grossman, to induce the NYPD to reopen the decades-old case. Lorenzo spent 20 years with the Yonkers Police Department earlier than retiring in 2008.
“This was Son of Sam before Son of Sam.”
On October 18, 1970, round 2 a.m., Inglesia was strolling house from a celebration when she was shot on East 169th Street between Morris and Grant avenues within the Morrisania part of the Bronx. She was shot as soon as within the entrance and twice within the again as she lay dying, in line with a witness report on the time.
Her killing was the one deadly capturing in a string of six assaults carried out by an unidentified sniper on the identical block over a two-month span that 12 months. No arrests have been ever made.
But Lorenzo and Grossman imagine Berkowitz, who was 17 on the time, might have been the one accountable.
From June 1970 to June 1971, Berkowitz labored a few mile away from the assaults, at his father’s enterprise, Melrose Hardware, earlier than leaving to hitch the U.S. Army.
They additionally level to proof uncovered after Berkowitz’s 1977 arrest, together with 100-yard capturing targets present in his house, as signal he might have been honing long-distance capturing abilities earlier than his infamous killing spree.
“Why would he have 100-yard targets? He’s not a hunter,” Lorenzo identified.
The principle comes with notable variations. Berkowitz’s confirmed assaults between 1976 and 1977 have been carried out at shut vary, utilizing a .44-caliber revolver, typically firing by automobile home windows. The Bronx sniper used a .22-caliber rifle. Still, Lorenzo argues the similarities outweigh the discrepancies.
“It wasn’t right next door to the father’s shop but it wasn’t 20 miles away or in another borough and it fits his M.O.,” Lorenzo stated. “It’s the same thing as the Son of Sam killings but just a different kind of gun. Shooting into a car is sniping too.”
New York City within the Seventies was already unraveling – financially strained, crime-ridden, and fearful. But between July 1976 and August 1977, that concern escalated when a faceless gunman stalked younger ladies and {couples} throughout the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn.
Calling himself the “Son of Sam,” the killer taunted police and the media with handwritten letters and random violence. Berkowitz, a Yonkers postal employee, was ultimately recognized because the shooter who murdered six individuals and wounded seven others, together with youngsters and younger {couples} sitting in parked automobiles.
After greater than a 12 months of false leads and mounting panic, a parking ticket close to the scene of the ultimate capturing led police to Berkowitz’s automobile and he was arrested on August 10, 1977.
He was convicted in 1978 of six counts of second-degree homicide and 7 counts of tried second-degree homicide, and sentenced to 25 years to life. Now 72, Berkowitz stays incarcerated at Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Ulster County.
Lorenzo stated the Bronx sniper case had troubled him lengthy earlier than he started working with Grossman on different Son of Sam-related investigations.
“I really think there’s something in those files,” Lorenzo stated.
The two have beforehand helped uncover a beforehand unknown Berkowitz sufferer – Wendy Savino, who survived a 1976 capturing within the Bronx after being struck 5 occasions whereas sitting in her automobile.
“I found out about Wendy because I found the sketch she did of her shooter that was an exact match of Berkowitz,” Grossman instructed The Post. “Then I found a police report that showed her shooting had all the characteristics of a Son of Sam shooting.”
He then chilly known as Savino and says she instructed him that she had recognized Berkowitz as her shooter in 1977 proper after his arrest. “She never forgot his face,” he added.
The findings have been later delivered to now-retired NYPD First Grade Detective Robert Klein, who concluded Savino had been shot by Berkowitz, regardless of Berkowitz denying the crime throughout a jail interview, police sources stated.
Interest within the Son of Sam case has surged once more lately, fueled most just lately by a Netflix docuseries that revisits Berkowitz’s crimes utilizing never-before-heard jail recordings and archival footage.
youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=mLENEDZK3h4&embeds_referring_euri=httpspercent3Apercent2Fpercent2Fwww.the-independent.compercent2F&source_ve_path=MjM4NTE
Grossman believes the Inglesia case deserves a better look — whether or not or not Berkowitz in the end proves to be the killer.
“This is a major case that’s been forgotten,” Grossman stated. “There’s a perp out there and we think it’s Berkowitz.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/son-of-sam-bronx-teen-cold-case-murder-b2890981.html