THE SONS OF SAM: A DESCENT INTO DARKNESS. (2021) A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
THE SONS
OF SAM: A DESCENT INTO DARKNESS. (2021)
A NETFLIX
DOCUMENTARY DIRECTED BY JOSHUA ZEMAN.
STARRING
PAUL GIAMATTI AS THE VOICE OF MAURY TERRY.
REVIEW BY
SANDRA HARRIS. ©
I’m trying not to get too excited about this four-episode Netflix crime doc, as, after all, real people were brutally murdered by the man who is its subject, but it certainly makes for gripping bloody television. So much so that I forgot, while I was watching it, to put the dinner on, and, worse, nearly forgot about the STRICTLY COME DANCING results show, lol, and that never happens. Whatever about dinner, you do not forget about STRICTLY in this house!
The documentary concerns the so-called ‘Son of Sam’ murders,
which took place in New York City from July 1976 to July 1977. They held the
city to ransom for that whole long horrible year, during which NYC felt to some
people like a powder keg waiting to blow.
The murders were committed by a gunman, dubbed the ‘Son of
Sam’ because of taunting anonymous letters he’d sent to the press, in the
fashion of Jack the Ripper in Whitechapel, London, in 1888, a serial killer who
has never been identified to this day. People don’t half have great larks, even
today, trying to work out his true identity, though. No such prolonged investigations
needed to finger the ‘Son of Sam’ killer, however.
The so-called ‘Son of Sam’ murderer, named in August
1977 as twenty-four-year-old postal worker David Berkowitz, mostly shot at
young women and men who were kissing and canoodling in parked cars in lovers’
lanes.
When I heard this part, I immediately pegged him as what we
in today’s parlance would call an ‘incel,’ meaning a guy who is ‘involuntarily
celibate’ or ‘can’t get a girlfriend.’ A sort of Ugly Single Loner Guy who
lives in his mom’s basement and plots a terrible revenge on womankind for
rejecting him. Girls won’t go out with him, so that’s society’s fault and the
whole of society has to pay for it. I wasn’t too far wrong.
David Berkowitz, who, in his ghastly reign of terror murdered
six people and maimed or otherwise horribly injured thirteen more in seemingly
random shootings, had a somewhat similar back story to notorious serial killer
of women, Ted Bundy’s.
Bundy found out that the woman he thought was his sister was
in fact his mother, and it must have coloured his emotions and the way
he felt about women. He’d also been rejected in his adult life by a beautiful
young woman with long dark hair, and most of his victims were- you guessed it-
beautiful young women with long dark hair.
Several of David Berkowitz’s victims were also attractive
young women with long dark hair, to the point where the terrified females of New York started going to the hairdressers’ to get their long dark tresses
cut off or dyed, or both, so that the ‘Son of Sam’ wouldn’t single them
out for his own special cowardly brand of murder.
Berkowitz’s mother was an impoverished waitress. She’d been abandoned
by her husband and was having an affair with a married man when she had David.
She gave him away a few days after his birth, and he was adopted by the
Berkowitzes from the Bronx. His adoptive mum died when David was only fourteen,
and he disliked his adoptive father’s new wife. This is frequently the kind of
troubled beginning that can lead to a dysfunctional adulthood, and, in David’s
case, it seems to have done just that.
Berkowitz readily admitted to the murders when he was nicked
by the NYPD after a year-long crime spree that had the city in a stranglehold.
The relief of the general public, not to mention the cops themselves, when he
was finally caught, is evident in the film. It was as if the city could begin
to breathe naturally again after a whole twelve months of holding its breath.
The documentary, you might notice, is called THE SONS OF
SAM plural, as opposed to just the ‘Son of Sam,’ singular. That’s
because it’s based on the book, THE ULTIMATE EVIL, written by American
investigative journalist Maury (Maurice) Terry, in which Terry alleges that
David Berkowitz did not act alone, but was in fact acting as part of a Satanic cult.
Poor Maury Terry spent the rest of his life, from 1977 to his
death in 2005, trying to prove his theory, with varying degrees of success. The
NYPD refused point-blank for a long time to re-open the case and examine it this
time from the viewpoint of there having been multiple killers.
You can’t really blame them. They’d cracked their case in
fine style, they’d received kudos and accolades from the public and their peers for same, and, besides,
David Berkowitz had confessed to being the sole shooter. What’s to re-open,
what’s to re-examine?
But, in 1993, Maury Terry interviewed Berkowitz in Attica
Prison, and Berkowitz told Terry that he’d only committed about two of the
shootings himself, and that the rest of the murders were done by members of the
same Satanic cult to which Berkowitz himself claimed to belong.
The letters Berkowitz had sent to the press seemed also to
indicate the existence of other cult members, and made reference to Berkowitz’s
former neighbour, Sam Carr. Berkowitz claimed that this man’s two sons, John
and Maurice, both deceased by this time, their deaths possibly suspicious, were
cult members. Maurice had definitely been a Scientologist; this was confirmed,
as far as I know.
Maury Terry was convinced that Berkowitz and the Carr lads,
amongst others, had gathered in the spooky Untermeyer Park behind their
apartment building and held Satan-worshipping sessions that often involved the
ritual killing of dogs and the drinking of the animals’ blood.
The footage of the park and the old pump house daubed all
over on the inside with Satanic symbols and stained in blood is extremely cool,
though of course I know that there’s nothing ‘cool’ about murder. It’s just
that I’ve always had a thing for graveyards and eerie parks or patches of
wasteland where creepy occult ceremonies might possibly take place.
Maury Terry was also convinced that this cult had links to
the Manson Family and the Process, or the Church of the Final Judgement, a Satanic
cult started in Britain in the 60’s and defunct by 1979. Poor Maury died,
presumably a broken man, in 2005, having been unable to convince the world at
large that David Berkowitz had not acted alone, but in tandem with other cult
members.
David Berkowitz himself had stated that ‘There are other Sons out there, God help the world.’ Does that mean that Maury Terry was right? I feel kind of undecided myself. Maury’s arguments seem convincing, but then again, no-one but David Berkowitz has ever been charged with these crimes. It’s a tough one. There’s no equivocation in my mind about this documentary, however. Ten out of ten. Top notch stuff. Watch it. Case closed. Or is it…?
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her debut romantic fiction novel, 'THIRTEEN
STOPS,' is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is
out now from Poolbeg Books:
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