Original subtitles

["Season of the Witch" by Joan Jett plays]

♪ When I look out my window ♪

♪ Many sights to see ♪

♪ That it's strange ♪

♪ So strange ♪

♪ You've got to pick up every stitch ♪

♪ Oh, no ♪

♪ Must be the season of the witch ♪

♪ Must be the season of the witch ♪

♪ Must be the season of the witch ♪

[man] Quiet!

I am very pleased to announce that the people of the city of New York

can rest easy this morning

because of the fact that the police have captured

a man whom they believe to be the Son of Sam.

[dramatic music playing]

[sirens wailing]

[Brokaw] They arraigned Berkowitz in Brooklyn,

formally accusing him of being the Son of Sam killer.

[man 1] Berkowitz is accused of shooting a young woman

as she sat in a parked car.

That was the last of six murders

police say were committed with the same .44 caliber gun.

[man 2] Berkowitz was brought to court in an eight-vehicle motorcade.

Police were afraid of public anger against Berkowitz.

A crowd jeered as Berkowitz was driven from the court.

[crowd jeering]

[Zuckerman] It couldn't have been better.

Once they named Berkowitz, it was like, "Hallelujah, we got our bad guy."

It's over. Everybody can walk the streets again.

The police got the bad guy."

Hopefully my life goes back to normal again, you know?

Where I don't have to live with a gun in my hand sleeping at night.

There's no sense to it. He's just a sick maniac. He's an animal.

If he's convicted, what should happen to him?

What do you think? Dead.

Period.

[man] Today, Berkowitz's 68-year-old father

held an emotional news conference.

Upon learning that it is allegedly he, what was your immediate reaction?

I cried… [sobs]

[man] That's enough.

[Klausner] Everyone knew that he was guilty.

The public wanted him hung, drawn, and quartered.

If he walks out the front door,

he's gonna look like Swiss cheese. Forty-two people will shoot him.

[reporter] Berkowitz was surrounded

by dozens of detectives and uniformed police.

In court, Berkowitz broke into a slight smile,

just as he had the day he was arrested.

Berkowitz could draw a life sentence if convicted on the charge,

but it's not yet been determined whether he's mentally competent to stand trial.

There is a vast difference between being medically, psychiatrically ill,

and being legally insane.

Being psychotic is not necessarily legally insane.

Then even a man who says he gets his orders through a dog…

[reporter] The judge ordered him committed for psychiatric examination.

Tonight, Berkowitz is being held here

in a specially secured building at the Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn

to begin what could be up to 30 days of testing

to determine his mental competency.

[Terry] I felt a unique fascination with the Son of Sam case.

Maybe it was the fact that the killer's trail

led to my neighborhood of Yonkers

or the mystery of how this 24-year-old loner

could have eluded the police for so long.

But at the heart of my curiosity,

lay the most important question of them all.

Why?

You had a lot of experience with people like this.

Thousands of people--

No, let me correct you. Nobody has had a lot of experience

with a repetitive killer.

What would be some of the specific questions you might pose to him today

at Kings County Hospital?

The court has ordered me to examine him as present fitness to proceed.

-We are-- -Let… Sorry.

We are all so interested, of course,

in plain English, in what makes this guy tick.

[Klausner] After a minimal amount of interview with David,

their finding is he's antisocial, a failure in life,

he was ineffective with women.

At all. He had never had a girlfriend.

David was in military service in Korea.

[male reporter] Berkowitz was an auxiliary policeman from '70 to '73.

Subsequent to that period, he was in the military service.

He would have been training in firearms.

[Murphy] The psychiatrist that interviewed Berkowitz,

his evaluation was that Berkowitz was very angry with women.

He had recently found out that he was adopted.

And when he finally did try to find his birth mother, she rejected him.

And this was his way of lashing out.

And kind of, like, "Case closed, let's send him away."

[man] Well, we had been sitting one time in a lunchroom,

and he told one of the girls that works on the midnight shift then that, uh,

"You shouldn't wear your hair so long,

because Son of Sam is going after girls with long hair."

[Belsky] The thrust of the story was, "He was adopted. He didn't like women."

I don't know there's a sexual element with Berkowitz.

Most serial killers, many of them, there is that element.

Tying the woman up and subduing her or killing her.

Berkowitz, he would shoot these people, and then he would run away.

And, you know, again, you're left with the question of motivation.

That's the part that doesn't make sense to me. "Why?"

[reporter] Yesterday, a Berkowitz tape with a psychiatrist was played in court.

[Berkowitz] I had nothing against these victims.

Who were these people to me?

They were just people. I didn't hate them. I wasn't angry against them.

[Schwartz] Then why did you do it?

[Berkowitz] Well, Sam did it through me. He used me.

He made me go out there and do it. I did it for him. For blood.

Berkowitz told his story, and he said, "A dog commanded me to do it."

[man] Berkowitz told his examiners

he'd been guided by a thousand-year-old dog named Sam.

The newspapers being as they are, they were ready to run with all of it.

Tell me more about this Sam. Sam is a dog?

Sam is a 6,000-year-old something who is almost human,

and he talks to him through his dog.

It's Sam's dog that tells him what Sam wants.

It was everywhere.

Anything you could get on Son of Sam, you wanted to go with that.

A big, sensational story with all the nice, juicy elements.

That's what people wanted.

[man] Son of Sam, over the past few weeks,

has gotten more print space and broadcast time in New York

than anything since Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton.

When you cover news, that's one of the toughest things.

What you do after the big story.

The easiest part is doing "Caught!" in red on page one of the New York Post.

But what do you do the next day, and the next day?

Anything that had any potential to sell a newspaper had to be run down.

When you have a saturation of emerging television stations

and newspapers,

how do I distinguish myself

from all the other guys?

I thought it was of interest to readers.

There seems to be interest out in the streets with this case.

-And we-- -Is that a healthy interest, do you think?

-[Breslin] Healthy interest? Murder? -Yeah.

[reporter] Berkowitz told his examiners he'd been driven by demons

and guided by a thousand-year-old dog named Sam.

[Terry] I had been absorbing every detail that I could,

pages and pages of newspaper reports…

David Berkowitz, the man arrested…

…and countless hours of TV and radio.

Man accused of the last…

He'd successfully transmitted the official message to the nation.

Crazy David Berkowitz had heard a dog and killed for his master, Sam.

Yet the press, infatuated with the sensational,

had somehow overlooked the evidence that suggested there was more to the story

than just the party line.

[siren wailing]

Maury wasn't the kind of a person, who, if he got simple "yes" or "no" answers,

accepted those answers and moved on.

Just being told, "No, we've got the right person,"

by New York City police or anyone else,

that wasn't good enough for him.

[Ott] Maury thought that there was more to the story.

Some people are, "I wanna know everything."

He had to know everything.

He was born skeptical.

Maury and I go back to kindergarten.

We went to the same grade school.

We went to the same high school.

We've stayed friends, and close friends, since then.

Yonkers was an industrial city, blue-collar mostly. Catholic.

Maury was very close, at a young age, to religion.

Matter of fact, he lived less than a city block away from the church.

Maury used to get a call at seven o'clock in the morning,

because the altar boy didn't show up, so he'd have to go fill in.

[Amicone] That was a very strong driving force in Maury's personality.

There's a very strong teaching of right and wrong, of good and bad,

of justice and injustice.

[Kay] Maury was probably not the best behaved altar boy.

Rules were not something he was terribly fond of.

It was just the way he was.

[Amicone] Maury was very focused,

and when Maury got his teeth into something

that he wanted to get answers for or pursue, he didn't let go.

[atmospheric music playing]

[Terry] The corporate world of IBM had its perks,

but if I had to write one more article about computers,

or supply chains,

or lasers,

I might just strangle myself.

I knew I was on to something with the Son of Sam story…

something big.

In 1977, I was the news editor with Gannett.

And Maury began selling a story to me about Berkowitz

and Berkowitz not acting alone.

For Maury, many pieces in all of this seemed to point to John Carr.

In Forest Hills, where one of the shootings took place,

the shooter goes up to the two young girls and starts to ask directions

and then drops into a shooter pose and pops them.

They both survive. They both got a good look.

They both heard him speak.

And the composite comes out, and it looks dramatically like John Carr.

The hair, in particular, comes across the face.

[Ott] Maury went into the phone book looking for the Carr family,

and listed was John Wheat Carr.

Obviously, it jumped off the page

because of the "John 'Wheaties'" reference in the Breslin letter.

Interesting part of the story

is that John Carr was in mine and Maury's homeroom in high school.

He was a quiet kid, a little strange.

Didn't have a lot of friends.

We used to call him "Wheaties," after his sister, Wheat Carr.

The Carr family lived right down the street from Berkowitz in Yonkers.

[Terry] Though I hadn't thought about John since we were freshmen 16 years ago,

I was now trying to find out all I could about my former classmate

and his younger brother, Michael.

Speaking to friends and neighbors,

they recounted a number of disturbing stories

that only fueled my suspicions.

[barks]

I'm trying to think of the dog's name. I think Harvey.

I used to see Harvey all the time with Old Man Carr,

driving around in his pickup truck.

[dog barking]

We heard stories that Sam was very miserable.

You know, nobody had a nice word for him, that I saw.

And he was a hard disciplinarian.

I heard he really abused the boys.

He would beat them.

He would lock 'em in the attic sometimes as punishment.

Maury believed some of the letters alluded to that.

The, uh, Son of Sam letters.

[Terry] The references were as clear as day.

"Papa Sam keeps me locked in the attic.

He beats his family."

And of course, "I am the Son of Sam."

It was a veiled homage from the real-life sons of Sam

to the old man they hated.

[Zuckerman] Did John "Wheaties" Carr write the letter?

It makes perfect sense. The son of Sam.

It may have been a taunting confession.

"Here's how good I am.

I'm going to confess to you. Catch me if you can."

He wants to see if you could figure out what his cryptic message is.

And it's a challenge. It's a game for the shooter to play.

If you read the letters, you're gonna say, "You know what? That fits."

You know, there are things that sound almost too good to not be true.

[Bartley] Maury was insistent,

but I didn't buy it.

I thought the story was too thin, too unsupported, too speculative,

and nothing he sold me, or tried to sell me, was working.

But he wanted to see my boss,

and we all met in the executive editor's office.

Maury could be so convincing.

[dramatic music playing]

Maury should have been a salesman.

[Terry] While Bartley and his editors wouldn't greenlight my Carr story,

they encouraged me to keep digging.

That same day, I traded my IBM key card for a press pass

and threw myself into the investigation.

[Zuckerman] Maury drank coffee endlessly and smoked continuously,

and spoke quickly and spoke often.

The editors at the Gannett Newspaper liked Maury,

and he had a golden shovel that allowed him to dig as much as he wanted,

as long as he wanted, to get to the bottom of the story.

There was always another layer.

Maury and I worked together as partners.

And the first thing that we worked on

was the question of whether Berkowitz could have acted alone

in the Moskowitz shooting.

[male reporter] Stacy Moskowitz, 20 years old, blonde.

Robert Violante, also age 20,

both shot twice in the head in Brooklyn, New York.

Police believe the gunman reached the car by walking through this park.

[Terry] The very early reports on the Moskowitz killing had me concerned.

David Berkowitz's features were wildly different

from the sketches of the killer done by the police artist.

We found Tommy Zaino, who was a key witness to the shooting.

I didn't think it was David Berkowitz then, and I don't think it's him now.

[Zuckerman] We had a timeline based on a witness

who saw Berkowitz go out to his Ford Galaxy to get a parking ticket.

And a distance from his ticketed car to where the shooting took place.

[man] This is Cäcilia Davis.

Mrs. Davis saw Berkowitz that night when she was walking her dog, Snowball.

I walked all the way down to the Belt Parkway.

I came back, and my dog didn't want to go home yet

because he got a girlfriend over there.

When I turned around, I saw a man coming out of the tree there.

[Terry] At about 2:33 a.m., Miss Davis, about 125 feet from her apartment,

sees a young man, whom she later identifies as David Berkowitz.

As he walks by, less than five feet separate them,

and he glares at her.

He had a grin on his face, like I seen already on television.

[Terry] At 2:35 a.m., a mere two minutes later,

but over five blocks away,

Tommy Zaino watches

as an unknown assailant pulls a gun from beneath his shirt,

crouches, and fires four times

into Robert Violante's car.

A guy came over to the car

and blew those people away in less than four seconds.

[watch ticking]

[Zuckerman] We ran through this a half-dozen times.

It doesn't add up,

it doesn't seem possible he could have done this.

No, he couldn't, because I seen him taking off the ticket.

He could never go back to the playground, because I seen him.

[Zuckerman] It doesn't seem possible Berkowitz could have made it

in the amount of time he had. Commit the shooting.

Get the ticket. Get out of Dodge.

Had to be someone else who was the shooter

while he was acting as the lookout.

[man 1] Witnesses described a yellow Volkswagen

that'd been cruising the area.

[man 2] Someone saw and chased a yellow Volkswagen

not far from where Stacy Moskowitz was murdered.

David Berkowitz drove a Ford.

[Zuckerman] My gut tells me there were probably two other,

maybe three other people involved.

[tense music playing]

And it makes sense to go another step

and say John and Michael

were possibly involved in the Son of Sam shootings.

[Bartley] Maury was convinced that the Carr children had been involved.

But I was absolutely opposed to running that story.

There's a legal barrier. It's libelous.

We're not a New York Post.

[Terry] Bartley's attitude bothered me.

Healthy skepticism was one thing, but what if we were right,

and the Moskowitz killer was still out there, waiting to strike again?

Taking what I'd uncovered to the New York Post,

they jumped at the story

and knew just how to break it.

They would go direct to the source, to the Brooklyn Psych Ward,

where, under lock-and-key, sat the .44 Caliber Killer.

The Son of Sam himself.

[Belsky] So, the New York Post had a source,

a guy named Jim Mitteager, who had somehow befriended Berkowitz.

Jim Mitteager was an NYPD detective

who had recently quit to become an investigative reporter

and now had access to the most famous criminal in America,

proven by photos and recorded conversations

smuggled out of the lockdown ward.

[camera clicks]

[Mitteager] How'd it feel when you fired the gun?

How did it feel?

Was it like an orgasm?

-[Berkowitz] Nothing. -Nothing sexual?

[Berkowitz] No.

-[Mitteager] It felt good? -Yeah.

-[Mitteager] You enjoy sex with women? -Mm-hmm.

[Mitteager] Do you think murder is more exciting?

[Berkowitz] Yes.

[camera shutter clicks]

[Terry] It sounded like Berkowitz was willing to talk.

And a few days later, he passed Mitteager a haunting note.

"People want my blood, but they don't wanna listen to what I have to say.

This is all a plot!

There are other 'sons' out there.

God help the world."

The note had given us another piece of the puzzle,

and the game had just evolved.

With Berkowitz's mention of a co-conspirator,

Zuckerman and I compiled all of our investigative work.

It was time to go to the authorities.

[siren wailing]

[tense music playing]

[Zuckerman] Maury and I went to the Brooklyn DA's office.

Eugene Gold was an older, very well-established district attorney…

Good morning.

…and to win his interest in reopening the investigation

would be a major feather in our cap.

We spoke to a senior assistant district attorney.

We made our pitch. "We want you to reopen the investigation."

"We want you to look. Clearly there's more going on here, and there may be others."

Maury turned some documents over.

I thought it was convincing.

There are just too many loose ends here.

We need to figure out and put to rest once and for all what happened here.

And they very politely said, "Thanks, but no thanks."

[Terry] Leaving the DA's office, I realized how naive I had been.

I thought we were all on the same side, but I was wrong.

The powers that be weren't interested in uncovering the truth,

but more so in covering their ass.

[Zuckerman] Why do the police not dig in and investigate some of these things more?

Maury felt that the police wanted this to go away,

because they didn't do a sufficient job.

[Bartley] Maury came up with what appeared to be evidence of police

not following through on particular leads.

And they were sloppy. They overlooked things.

Every one of them made mistakes.

During the arrest,

the police broke into David's car without a search warrant.

They found the weapons and then searched for a couple of hours

to find a judge to sign a search warrant after the break-in.

The search warrant has to be signed before the break-in.

So none of the evidence is admissible in court,

because it all stems from an illegal break-in.

There was a fear that the case would fall apart.

[woman] Come on, let's move with…

[man] Evidence.

[Terry] The police, it seemed, had cut corners at every turn.

[woman] It's going to the boss's car.

[Terry] Despite all the references in the letters,

they never once interviewed John Carr,

the actual son of Sam.

It was one of the biggest crimes in all of New York City history,

yet the NYPD had done only the most minimal post-arrest investigation.

[indistinct police radio chatter]

[Zuckerman] They were desperate to close the books after Berkowitz's arrest.

Once they named Berkowitz, it was like the rush to the courthouse

and the rush into him confessing and being sent off to the psychiatric ward.

And the cops ride off into the sunset on their beautiful horses.

That's the end.

The successful conclusion of this investigation

again typifies the reason

why the New York City Police Department has long been known as the finest.

[Terry] While I was surprised at how badly the case was mishandled,

at least I now knew why.

And the reasons transcended simple incompetence.

Before the ink was dry on Berkowitz's fingerprints,

the NYPD held the largest promotion ceremony in the city's history.

[Zuckerman] It was an election year. Beame was up for reelection.

I declare my candidacy for reelection as Mayor of the City of New York.

[Zuckerman] NYC had enough problems.

If this guy was arrested, and the murdering and shooting stopped,

that was good enough for them.

[Terry] Reputations were saved.

Careers were made.

And justice had paid the price.

[Zuckerman] Maury was determined.

He was gonna run this thing to ground until he knew the answers.

What else could be going on here?

What else could we be able to find if we keep digging?

[Terry] Returning to the Carrs' neighborhood,

a local teenager informed me of a potential new lead.

He took me along a path

directly behind Berkowitz's apartment building and the Carr home.

Underneath our feet was the Old Croton Aqueduct,

a hundred-year-old tunnel system that ran along the Hudson River…

and directly under an old estate now known as Untermyer Park.

[Ott] Untermyer Park was a beautiful estate.

We used to go there in high school.

It was secluded, dark at night.

After the Son of Sam killings, I walked the park with Maury.

He wanted to show me it.

A lot of graffiti on the walls.

And we found dead animals in the aqueduct, in this tunnel.

[man] We found a couple of shepherds that were buried.

A dog was shot on Warburton Avenue,

and we found a dog, uh, his ear was cut off.

[Terry] The dogs had been mutilated in a brutal fashion.

As we walked further, we came across a decrepit structure.

An old, abandoned pump house, deep in the belly of the park.

[Ott] There was this building, and it was really a mess.

There were bloodstains on the floor.

There was blood written on the walls.

[Terry] According to my teenage guide, they called this place "the devil's cave."

[brooding music playing]

[Hartley] We had reports of chanting down in the back.

A couple of those security guards went down in the back to check it out,

saw a group of people in the woods with torches,

and we found a couple of hoods and a couple of capes,

one black and one gray.

[Terry] It was rumored to be the meeting place of a group

that called themselves…

"The Children."

[Zuckerman] There were reports of a cult committing extreme acts,

people in robes and costumes involved in this satanic ritual.

And evidence of German shepherds being sacrificed.

[Ott] There was an altar. There was blood.

[Terry] This wasn't just kids dabbling in the devil.

This was something far more sinister.

I'd seen enough Hollywood depictions of devil worship

to laugh off the idea of a so-called cult,

but there was no denying the eyewitness reports

and the mutilated German shepherds.

With all of it less than a mile from the Berkowitz and Carr homes,

it was time, I reasoned, to delve deeper into the dark arts.

[brooding music continues]

[Zeman] How do you define the occult?

Well, you can actually take the definition of the word, which means "hidden."

It's a study of the invisible things.

You're outside of the norms, beyond the normal constraints of morality.

Around the late '70s, it became a kind of lifestyle for people.

Then it gets picked up in popular culture.

Heavy metal. You know, Black Sabbath.

And Rosemary's Baby.

-Hail, Satan! -Hail, Satan!

[man] Satan is his father!

Oh, God!

Around this time, the occult splits into two, kind of, camps.

There's this nice, light side that becomes what we know as "New Age,"

with meditation and yoga.

But there are people that were drawn in to these darker kinds of practices.

These groups are driven by this notion of extremes.

It's transgressive, slightly shocking. Excess in all directions.

They find the normal world either boring or too constraining,

or it doesn't recognize them.

There's a sensibility.

It wants this kind of anarchic, you know, fantastic Utopia,

and if we can just throw ourselves into that, we can help bring it about.

[thunder rumbling]

I'm not surprised that, more than once, things probably got out of hand.

I wouldn't say it was inconceivable

that there could have been a sudden eruption of violence.

Random acts of violence can be justified

in ideology that finds the modern world horrible.

People are motivated by very strange things.

[Terry] Looking back at the Son of Sam crimes,

I realized that the letters sent to the press and police

were littered with occult references.

"Beelzebub," the demon known as Lord of the Flies.

"Brat," as in imp or small devil.

"I'll be back! I'll be back!"

Words identical to those spoken by Satan in the book Black Easter.

[Lachman] There are strange coincidences.

Like the nightclub being called Elephas

and Eliphas Levi being this black magician.

Once you start looking for these things, you start to find them.

It's like a language that you can start to read, and others can't read it.

[Terry] And perhaps the most illuminating clue of them all.

The Son of Sam symbol that traced back to a 19th-century occult talisman

drawn by Eliphas Levi himself.

Inscribed along the outer perimeter was the word "Berkaial,"

which reminded me of "Berkowitz."

And then "Amasarac."

Learning that the early Satanists used backwards words and phrases,

I held the symbol to a mirror.

It read "Carr." "Sam."

"Berk."

"Sam," "Carr," the symbol.

It was all there.

[Ott] Maury thought the letter connected Berkowitz to the occult.

For example, it referenced the pathways to where the satanic activity took place.

[Terry] The path between the Berkowitz and Carr homes

led to the cult meeting place.

The path is also known in the neighborhood as "the gutters"

or NGP, "near gutters path."

[Bartley] Maury believed that the aqueduct was connected to the Breslin letter.

"Hello from the gutters."

[Ott] It was a definite discovery on Maury's part that

opened up a whole new window.

[eerie music playing]

It became a web.

And that web kept getting bigger and bigger.

[Zuckerman] I do remember, at the time,

being convinced that this was not fantasy.

That this was not without foundation.

Berkowitz seemed to be involved with

occult groups operating out of Untermyer Park.

And it makes sense to follow that thread

and say both of the Carr brothers were very likely involved.

Were they all part of the Son of Sam shootings?

[siren wailing]

As lookouts, as drivers, as shooters.

With Berkowitz in prison,

the question lingers, "Who is still out there?"

[Terry] The pieces were beginning to fit together,

but I needed confirmation,

which meant going back to Berkowitz in Kings County.

But before I could say anything, Mitteager dropped a bombshell.

Reaching into his bag,

he pulled out a handful of pictures taken from inside the hospital.

"The Post is about to print these," he said.

Looking at the photos of Berkowitz lying there, I was stunned.

"Jim, as soon as these pictures are published,

there's gonna be a stink the likes of which you've never seen."

The Post had just taken the Son of Sam story one step too far.

[Belsky] We do "Sam Sleeps," page one of the New York Post.

It's a picture of David Berkowitz in his jail cell,

lying in a bed, just asleep.

The fascination about Berkowitz had built. So no one had seen him.

We thought it was a big scoop.

And the world just explodes.

[man] Could be an intriguing First Amendment case

if the New York Post and other publications

ultimately are accused of arranging to pay for the pictures of Berkowitz.

[Terry] The shit had hit the fan.

The fallout from those photos was immediate.

An investigation was opened into the source of the pictures.

I was worried.

The Brooklyn DA, the state, the local police,

they were all out for blood.

[male reporter] Assuming that the editor or the publisher provided the money,

is that newspaper or publication liable for prosecution too?

[Belsky] There was a big investigation

as to how the pictures were gotten of inside the jail.

Maury said, "This will blow everything," which is exactly what happened.

Once they knew there was a leak in there, then it's over.

No one could get to Berkowitz.

[slams]

[eerie music playing]

[Terry] I'd uncovered so many frightening revelations with Berkowitz at the center,

and now he was out of my reach.

But I wouldn't be deterred.

As the saying goes, when one door shuts, another opens.

[dramatic music playing]

[mysterious music playing]

A blizzard had just dropped record amounts of snow across the northeast.

For the past few weeks, I had been driving by the Carr home,

hoping for a glimpse of the elusive John Carr,

who had disappeared in the days after Berkowitz's arrest.

Neighbors told me the make and model

of the last vehicle John had been known to drive.

And suddenly, there it was,

parked in the driveway.

The prodigal son, John Wheaties, had come home.

During the next week, I cruised by the house,

but the vehicle, still laden with snow, hadn't moved.

A week later on a quiet Saturday morning, my mother called in a frantic state.

[phone ringing]

"Maury, there's something you need to know."

She'd been scanning the morning's paper when she saw the posting.

"That boy you've been looking for, John Carr…

he's dead."

[ominous music playing]

[Zuckerman] The fact that John Carr,

the guy who looks like the police sketch of the Son of Sam killer,

turns up dead in Minot, North Dakota,

from a questionable shooting suicide, it raises questions.

For Maury Terry's purposes, very convenient questions.

Why Minot?

Minot is cold and desolate.

It's a place that nobody wants to be. So how did that come about?

Was it an accident? Was it a suicide? Was it a murder?

Maury put into print

a story about how John Carr could have been implicated in the shootings.

And how the police dismissed the connection.

[Terry] The Post loved the Carr story and gave it the front page.

There was no way the authorities could ignore our investigation now.

But that night, a breaking news alert grabbed my attention.

It was Mitteager.

And he was under arrest.

[dramatic music plays]

[man 1] The New York Post and other publications

are accused of arranging to pay for the pictures of Berkowitz.

[man 2] The picture of Berkowitz, Son of Sam killer,

with the headline "Sam Sleeps."

[man 3] An issue that could be decided in a court of law.

[Terry] The timing of the arrest was highly suspicious.

I couldn't help but wonder,

was this retribution for trying to inform the public about John Carr?

The doors were shutting all around me.

And it was only getting worse.

[helicopter blades whirring]

[brooding music playing]

[man 1] In New York today,

David Berkowitz is expected to reject the advice of his lawyers

and admit that he is the so-called Son of Sam murderer.

[man 2] Berkowitz will be brought here

to the state courthouse in Brooklyn this morning.

He's expected to plead guilty to the Son of Sam murder charges.

[man 3] Inside sat survivors of the Son of Sam attacks

and the relatives of those who were killed.

A struggle broke out on the seventh floor.

Berkowitz kicked and bit some of five officers trying to move him.

At one point, he lunged toward a glass window.

It was evident he was agitated, wild-eyed in handcuffs.

And then he stunned the court, shouting repeatedly,

"Stacy was a whore! I'd kill her again."

Mrs. Moskowitz was on her feet, screaming back. "You animal!"

Violante shouted, "You should be killed, you creep,"

and collapsed, sobbing.

Guards forced Berkowitz back out of court.

I have never seen anything like this.

A defendant being brought in and such an outburst.

This is a sick man.

And didn't you say something, Mrs. Berkowitz?

-Moskowitz. Don't ever call me Berkowitz. -I'm sorry, Mrs. Moskowitz.

-Did you say something, Mrs. Moskowitz? -I did. I called him a bastard.

I have got tremendous hostility inside of me.

And, uh,

it's just a game, what he did by calling Stacy what he said about her.

[Zuckerman] Maury wanted to change the public perception of David Berkowitz

as the singular bad guy.

But when Berkowitz confessed, it was like,

"This guy's out of his mind. He's batshit crazy."

After that, nothing's ever gonna convince anybody

that this happened in any other way

except how the authorities want to believe it happened.

[man] When it was over, Berkowitz had pleaded guilty to six murders

and the wounding of seven other victims.

[Klausner] After the court drama,

the police didn't have to think about the illegal search and seizure.

They didn't need the evidence any longer.

They didn't have to make that decision on what was admissible or not.

He pleaded guilty.

[claps once]

Done. Over.

[man] In two weeks, Berkowitz will be sentenced

and probably get the maximum under New York law,

from 25 years to life in prison for each killing.

[Terry] Altogether, John Carr's sudden death, Mitteager's arrest,

and Berkowitz's public confession, it was a fatal reversal of fortune.

My investigation was now dead in the water.

[dog barking]

[Byrne] I met Maury Terry in 1978.

The first night I met him,

he was a bit disheveled.

Um, his hair was kind of thick and pushed over,

kind of like an early Beatles look.

He was down and out and very upset.

But there was something about what he was saying

that was just fascinating.

The Son of Sam case was a unique situation in New York,

and I was at the right age to understand the meaning of it

and how dangerous it was.

Maury and I went out on our first date.

He picked me up.

And Maury never owned a new car in his life. Okay?

It was an old, green Impala.

Dark green. Ugly car.

He wore polyester pants and a Members Only jacket.

He wasn't interested in those things.

We went to the Bronx Zoo, which was the most unique date I'd ever had.

So he was different in that way, and I thought, "This is good."

And then afterwards he said, "You know, today's April 17th.

It was a year ago tonight

that Alexander Esau and Valentina Suriani were killed.

Would you like to go to where they were killed?"

He was fascinated with the Son of Sam case.

[Terry] I pulled into the same darkened spot

where Valentina and Alex parked.

Rather than feeling fright, G was inquisitive

and struck by a somber reverence.

The narrow street was deserted,

and the dim light from the distant street lamp flickered as we talked.

[Byrne] I started to listen to him.

And I believed him.

I never felt that David Berkowitz had acted alone,

and this made perfect sense to me.

[dog barking]

[Byrne] It was so moving at that moment, because of where we were sitting,

in the same spot where two people had been killed.

He tried to kiss me, and he kissed me.

We're in the car, and the song "Dust in the Wind" came on the radio.

And I said, "It's not over for you yet," and that everything was dust in the wind.

And it wasn't dust in the wind for him. He had a long way to go.

[Terry] We sat for a long moment in silence.

The past eight months spun in my mind.

I used to live such a normal life.

But I knew there was no going back.

And then, suddenly, the answer became clear.

Yes, my investigation had hit a roadblock here in New York,

but there was another path forward,

right into America's heartland.

[eerie music playing]

[Michael Knoop] Minot, at the time, was a population of about 35,000 people.

Temperature's well below zero in the winter,

40, 50-below wind chills.

And, uh, there was an air force base just north of town.

Maury comes in to meet with us.

And, uh, I'd only been on the department a few years.

[Terry] As the local officers took me around town,

we discussed my theories about John Carr.

We all agreed the first place to go

was to the housing unit on the Minot Air Force Base

where Carr's body was found.

[man] I'm a retired law enforcement officer from North Dakota.

I worked in Ward County Sheriff's Office.

[Zeman] If you could describe the events of that night.

[Gietzen] A man was trespassing in base housing.

I went to the house, and, uh, as I approached,

I introduced myself as Glenn Gietzen from the Sheriff's Office.

-Bam, the shot went off inside… -[gun shot echoes]

…and I went in right away.

His girlfriend was there, and she took me to the bedroom.

He was slumped over.

Uh, the gun was slid away.

Uh, blood was on the ceiling.

There was skull fragments and brain matter against the wall.

He was identified then as John Carr from New York.

Everybody in the country knew about the Son of Sam cases,

and I found out that this John Carr was the son of Sam Carr,

and right away, things started clicking to me.

There's an issue here.

Why is he here? You know, what was he doing here?

[siren wailing]

Why would he kill himself rather than be arrested?

[Terry] The Dakota policemen lined up several interviews for us

with John Carr's friends.

We spent a lot of time chasing people around

and got a statement saying that John Carr and David Berkowitz were associates.

We heard that David Berkowitz came to Minot on one occasion.

[man] Do you remember seeing David Berkowitz?

[Shago] Yeah.

-[man] Remember where you saw him? -[Shago] Sloat's house, the Falcon's Nest.

[man] Was he with John at that time?

-[Shago] John was there. -[man] I see.

We have reports from people close to John

that they have seen him write the Son of Sam…

Uh, what do you wanna call it? Logo? It's a good word for it.

…on a telephone book numerous times, prior to David Berkowitz being arrested.

[Taylor] He drew it in the back of a Minot telephone directory.

Do we see… You see the male sign up in the top part here?

The female part was at one part.

It's supposed to be a snake. This is supposed to be like a "S."

[Terry] According to Taylor, John Carr was drawing the symbol

four months before it was ever published in the newspaper.

We had one more person to talk to.

A mental health counselor named Lee Slagter.

I met John Carr for the first time in February of 1978.

He came in to the clinic as an un-referred person,

walking in off the street as I understand it.

But he was just agitated and was upset.

I asked him to sit down. He sat down.

He'd get up and pace a little bit, sit back down again.

And then it's like, "What's going on here?"

He said, "I think somebody's trying to kill me."

Or, "I think somebody's gonna try and hurt me."

He talked about thinking he might be in trouble with the law in New York.

That's when he said that he had a connection with David Berkowitz,

the Son of Sam killer.

And that he had information

he thought the police would be very interested in.

And things took a real right turn from there.

[crows cawing]

He talked about participation in some sort of, um, witchcraft.

We'd heard about that activity in the Minot area.

They had found satanic symbols being painted on trees and that kind of stuff.

Whether that was true or not, I don't know.

These people said that John was the leader of the group.

That John performed rituals numerous times.

We know of one case where John killed a German shepherd dog…

[sniffs]

…right back out here behind the building. There used to be two houses out here.

And they were drinking the blood.

Talking about drinking blood, urine out of a chalice.

It was mind-blowing.

Maury had uncovered similar activities in New York City.

Ritualistic killing of animals.

We had no idea how widespread it actually was.

[Anthony] Other dogs were found here?

Yes. We didn't find 'em,

but we have documentation from other people that were present.

One of John's friends

had a German shepherd ear mounted by a taxidermist.

I've got the receipt to show proof of that.

[man] Dog was, uh, shot on Warburton Avenue.

We found a dog. His ear was cut off.

This is not just one person here, but they've got a tie, a connection.

And this was a big hornet's nest.

It doesn't take much to figure it out that you got Sam Carr, John Carr,

the Son of Sam, Berkowitz.

They're all connected.

I can put two and two together, come up with four.

[Knoop] You've got a conspiracy case.

This group is all over the country.

If John Carr was involved,

maybe he was considered to be unreliable, not trustworthy,

somebody who, if caught, could very easily have spilled his guts

and told everything about the Son of Sam shootings.

[Gardner] I think John was forced to take his life.

Or it was gonna be,

"I'm gonna kill ya, John, but I'm also gonna go kill your ex-wife,

your daughter, your mother and father.

I'm gonna kill your sister and your brother."

[Anthony] Sounds like pretty explosive stuff for an investigation

back in New York City that you did indeed find out

that John Carr was a leader of a satanic group here,

and that he knew Berkowitz.

What was the response from the New York City police

when they were told about this?

Nothing ever was pursued.

I felt that this was a little bit strange.

The guy is supposedly… Could be involved in a mass murder.

[Terry] For weeks, the authorities in Minot

were sending verified reports

that were forwarded to the Brooklyn DA's office.

Reports that stated Berkowitz knew John Carr and had visited Minot.

[Anthony] Maybe a credibility problem,

they thought, "These fellas out in North Dakota, what do they know?"

[chuckles] Yeah, they gave me that impression that…

they were dealing with a couple of hick cops, you know?

Which is far from the truth.

[Terry] First New York and now Minot.

Everything I had uncovered

suggested a connection between this cult and the Son of Sam crimes.

And now John Carr was dead under suspicious circumstances.

Could they also have been behind the death of one of their own?

I brought these unsettling thoughts with me back to New York,

where, shortly after arriving, I was met with shocking news.

[car engine starts]

[Ott] Michael Carr was driving a car on the West Side Highway in New York…

and was killed in a car accident that was questionable.

There were tire marks and stuff from another vehicle,

which was an indication that somebody ran him off the road.

[Gietzen] They said he ran his car at high speed into a highline pole

and killed himself.

You don't accidentally run your car into a highline pole at 97 mph.

[chuckles] Those things just don't happen.

You got John Carr, Mike Carr, all suspects,

dying "accidentally."

[chuckles] You know?

It was too much of a coincidence.

Sometimes you gotta open your eyes wide and see the whole picture.

[Zuckerman] For Maury Terry's purposes,

the investigation in Minot gave him fresh meat.

He was ready to run with it.

We put it into print.

I do remember, at the time,

being convinced that there was a "there" there.

It's the kind of stuff you turn to the public,

and say, "Could that be a coincidence?"

[Terry] Seeing all I had uncovered in my Minot investigation,

Gannett was finally willing to give me free rein.

It'd be the first time

anyone had publicly connected the Son of Sam attacks to a cult.

I knew my information was explosive. And the articles had just lit the fuse.

[man] Does it shock you that a law enforcement officer in North Dakota

now believes that John Carr was a member of a satanic cult

and might have been a second trigger man?

Not at all. Not in the least.

I felt Berkowitz didn't engineer the whole thing.

[Lauria] There's a cult involved in this. I believe there is.

How come nobody has tried to do anything to find out if it is true?

I know there is definitely a cult.

How safe are we on the streets?

Or anybody, for that matter? Even the police.

Or our good old DA Gold.

[man] Brooklyn DA Eugene Gold,

who's furious about reports of the possibility of cult influence,

said no to an interview for a third time.

[Terry] While the Brooklyn DA was outraged by my story,

it was unclear how the other district attorneys were taking it.

John Santucci, the DA for Queens, called a press conference.

Last time I'd gone against the official story,

Mitteager had ended up in cuffs.

Could I be next?

I had spent two years of my life

looking into one of the most notorious cases in US history,

and now the next few minutes could change everything.

My mind was racing as Santucci finally took the stage.

[indistinct chatter]

[camera shutters clicking]

I believe that David Berkowitz did not act alone.

That, in fact, others did cooperate,

aid and abet him in the commission of these crimes.

[man] Make a hole.

[indistinct chatter]

[tense music playing]

[Terry] The Queens DA was officially investigating the Son of Sam case.

Finally, the immovable mountain had been shaken.

They were examining the conspiracy I had uncovered,

searching for the cult that was hiding in the shadows.

[siren wailing]

[barking]

[Terry] But what I didn't know

was just how far this cult would reach.

[dramatic music plays]

-[man] How you doing, Charlie? -Good. And you?

[man] Good.

[eerie music plays]

[closing theme music plays]