by Bill Wallace
Wojciech Fryokwski, a friend of Polanski, awoke on the couch in the living room to the large figure of Tex Watson looming over him. ‘I’m the devil, and I’m here to do the devil’s business,’ Watson hissed at him. The other occupants of the house were wakened and brought in – Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, America’s top men’s hair stylist and twenty-five-year-old Abigail Folger, heiress to a coffee fortune.
Watson tied Tate’s and Sebring’s necks together and threw the other end of the rope over a roof beam. It was done in such a way that they would choke if they tried to escape. Folger offered them money, thinking they were robbers. She went to get her purse and they took the seventy dollars she had in it. Of course, they were not robbers, they were killers and the killing started when Watson plunged his knife into Folger a number of times. Frykowski, having desperately worked his hands free from the towel they had used to tie him up, tried to make a break for the door, but Watson caught him and hit him on the head a number of times with his gun. He then fired two bullets into him. At this point, Linda Kasabian appeared, trying to bring a halt to proceedings, she later said, by shouting that someone was coming.
Folger, bleeding but still on her feet, ran to the pool area where Krenwinkel cornered her, stabbing her repeatedly, along with Watson. Frykowski, trying to crawl across the lawn, was also stabbed by Watson and was later found to have fifty-one stab wounds. Meanwhile, in the house, Sharon Tate was pleading for her life and that of her unborn baby. Shouting at her coldly that she didn’t care about her or her baby, Atkins stabbed her sixteen times. Manson had asked them to leave a sign when they left. Atkins grabbed a towel and wrote the word ‘pig’ on the front door in Sharon Tate’s blood.
The following night it was the turn of Leno LaBianca, a supermarket executive, and his wife, Rosemary. This time, Manson went himself, ‘to show them how to do it’. Manson broke in and woke the sleeping couple, tying them up and covering their heads with pillow cases. He left at this point, instructing Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten to go into the house and kill the couple. Watson began stabbing Leno with a chrome-plated bayonet, but in the bedroom, Rosemary was putting up a fight. Watson stabbed her, however, and she fell. Returning to the living room, he carved ‘war’ on Leno’s stomach. In the bedroom, Krenwinkel was stabbing Rosemary with a kitchen knife and Watson ordered Van Houten to stab her, too. Rosemary LaBianca was stabbed a total of forty-one times.
Using the couple’s blood, Krenwinkel wrote ‘Rise’ and ‘Death to pigs’ on the walls and misspelled ‘Healther Skelter’ on the refrigerator door. She stabbed Leno a further fourteen times, even though he was already dead, leaving a carving fork sticking out of his stomach. Before she left, she stuck a steak knife in his neck.
The LAPD were baffled by the killings and critically failed to make any connection between the death of Sharon Tate and her celebrity friends and a hard-working couple. The Tate killings had been attributed to a drug deal gone awry. Neither was any connection made with the murder of Gary Hinman, despite the writing on the wall at all three murder scenes.
When Helter Skelter failed to materialise, the Family began to drift apart. Susan Atkins went back to prostitution to earn money and was eventually arrested. While incarcerated, however, she boasted to another prisoner about the Family and the killings. The prisoner told the police and on 15 October, police raided the ranch on which the Family were living, arresting more than twenty of them, including Charles Manson whose longest period of freedom in many years was at an end.
Linda Kasabian was granted immunity in exchange for her testimony against the others but it was one of the strangest trials in American legal history. The girls and Manson played jokes throughout, even all arriving in court with their heads shaved at one point. When Manson carved a cross into his forehead, the girls all copied him. In an act of perverse defiance, that cross would later be fashioned into a swastika.
Throughout the proceedings the girls maintained that Charlie was innocent, but it made little difference to the outcome. When the verdict was announced on 25 January 1971, Manson, Krenwinkel and Atkins were found guilty on seven counts of murder and Leslie Van Houten on two counts. Sentenced to death, their sentences were commuted to life when the US Supreme Court declared execution unconstitutional in 1972. Tex Watson was also given a life sentence in a separate trial.
On 23 May 2007, Corcoran State Prison inmate number B33920 was denied parole for the eleventh time. Charles Manson had made his first application in 1978 and will again be able to make an application in 2012. Manson has been at Corcoran since 1989, having been transferred to its Protective Housing Unit from San Quentin State Prison. A great deal of his time in prison has been spent in the ‘hole’ – solitary confinement – for infractions of the rules. He is now seventy-five years old, balding, with an unkempt grey beard and his grey hair cut short at the sides. His eyes stare frighteningly as ever from a recent photograph and the swastika he carved into his forehead sometime in the 1970s is still visible.
Of course, the parole hearings are empty gestures. Charlie Manson will never be released. He will end his days in prison for the horrific crimes he ordered others to commit, crimes which contributed to the end of the hippie dream of the 1960s. Some suggest that he is exactly where he wants to be, having spent more than two-thirds of his life in institutions of some kind.
David Berkowitz – ‘Son of Sam’
David Berkowitz, self-styled Son of Sam and one of the scariest killers America has ever known, has been locked up since he was sentenced to 365 years in 1977. Responsible for the deaths of six people, he was heavily influenced by the occult in his murders. In prison, however, he has become a born-again Christian. He wrote in 2002 to the Governor of New York that he wanted his parole hearing to be cancelled, explaining that with God’s help, he had long ago come to terms with his situation and accepted his punishment. He believed that he should remain in prison for the rest of his life.
Berkowitz has at last found a purpose to his life, even if it has to be fulfilled within the confines of the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, New York. But life has not always been like that for him. He was put up for adoption just a week after he was born Richard David Falco in Brooklyn in 1953. Adopted by hardware store owners, Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz, he had a troubled childhood. He was of above average intelligence but school held no attractions for him. Petty theft and pyromania, on the other hand, thrilled him. A bully with a mean streak, who was always big for his age, his neighbours and the local kids became wary of him
When his adoptive mother died of breast cancer when he was thirteen, Berkowitz was devastated and became increasingly introverted and reclusive. Home life was strained by his father’s new wife who he disliked intensely. However, his stepsister was interested in the occult and she would spark a similar fascination in him. Later, he would pursue that interest rather more enthusiastically.
He enlisted in the US Army in 1971, serving in South Korea and receiving an honourable discharge in 1974. The following year, he attacked two women with a knife on Christmas Eve. He had always felt uncomfortable and inadequate in the company of women, feeling that they despised him and considered him unattractive. Now he wanted revenge.
Around 1974, he began hearing voices as he lay in bed at night in his filthy apartment. The voices were telling him to kill and he began to scrawl messages all over the walls, messages such as ‘Kill for my Master!’
He obeyed those voices for the first time on 29 July 1976.
At around one in the morning, eighteen-year-old Donna Lauria and her friend, nineteen-year-old Jody Valenti were chatting outside Donna’s apartment block in Jody’s car. Suddenly, Donna spotted a man standing beside the car’s passenger door. He pulled out a pistol from inside a paper bag in his hand and fired five bullets into the interior of the vehicle. Donna died instantly when a bullet hit her in the neck. Judy experienced horrific pain as a bullet tore into her thigh but retained the presence of mind to slam her hand down hard on the c
ar’s horn. The man turned and fled.
The officers who arrived to investigate the incident were puzzled. There seemed to be no motive for the attack whatsoever. Had it been a case of mistaken identity or an opportunistic psychopath?
Three months later, on 23 October, he struck again. Rosemary Keegan drove Carl Denaro home from a party at a bar in Queens. Parked near his house at around 1.30 a.m., they sat in her Volkswagen Beetle and talked. Suddenly, the side window of the car seemed to explode and bullets were whizzing past them. Keegan pressed her foot down on the accelerator and sped from the scene back to the bar. Denaro had been hit in the head but survived following an operation to have a piece of his skull replaced by a metal plate. They saw nothing of their attacker.
Once again, it was a motiveless incident but police did not connect it with the first shooting, initially, because the two incidents had occurred in different boroughs of the city and were investigated by different police agencies.
Towards the end of the evening of 26 November, sixteen-year-old Donna DeMasi and eighteen-year-old Joanne Lomino were chatting outside Lomino’s house after walking home from a movie when a man suddenly approached and began to ask in a high-pitched voice, ‘Can you tell me how to get…?’ He left the phrase incomplete, however, instead pulling out a revolver. He shot each of them once and then while they were on the ground fired several more bullets seemingly at random, hitting a nearby building before running away. A neighbour came rushing out and saw a blonde man run past with a gun in his hand.
The girls survived, but Joanne Lomino was rendered paraplegic by the bullet which had hit her spine.
On 30 January, engaged couple Christine Freund and John Diel were in Diel’s Pontiac Firebird, which was parked in Queens, when their car was shot at. Christine, hit twice, died two hours later in hospital while her companion was unharmed.
A task force named Operation Omega was assembled to deal with the thousands of leads that were coming in from the panicked populace of New York. Two detectives, Sergeant Joe Coffey and Captain Joe Borelli investigated the background of the victims, but found nothing to link them apart from the fact that they were mostly attractive young women.
On 8 March, Virginia Voskocherian was shot in the face and killed instantly by a man who approached her as she walked home from college. As he ran away, the shooter passed a man who was just coming round the corner of the street. ‘Hi, mister!’ he shouted as he ran past. The killer on this occasion was described by some as a teenager of about sixteen to eighteen years of age, although others gave a description that applied more to the man who was finally arrested. The bullet that killed Virginia Voskocherian was fired from the same gun as the one that had killed Donna Lauria the previous July, confirming that it was still the same perpetrator. They issued a description of the suspect – a white male, twenty-five to thirty-six years old, six feet tall, of medium build and with dark hair.
The next victims were a couple of young lovers shot as they kissed near the Hutchinson River Parkway at three o’clock on the morning of 17 April. A car pulled up alongside theirs and someone opened fire from inside. Eighteen-year-old Valentina Suriani died at the scene and her twenty-year-old boyfriend, Alexander Esau, died later in hospital.
Now the letters started. At the latest murder scene a letter was found, addressed to Captain Borelli. Complete with misspellings, it read:
Dear Captain Joseph Borrelli,
I am deeply hurt by your calling me a wemon hater. I am not. But I am a monster. I am the ‘Son of Sam.’ I am a little brat. When father Sam gets drunk he gets mean. He beats his family. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. Sam loves to drink blood. ‘Go out and kill,’ commands father Sam. ‘Behind our house some rest. Mostly young – raped and slaughtered – their blood drained – just bones now. Papa Sam keeps me locked in the attic too. I can’t get out but I look out the attic window and watch the world go by. I feel like an outsider. I am on a different wavelength then everybody else – programmed too kill. However, to stop me you must kill me. Attention all police: Shoot me first – shoot to kill or else keep out of my way or you will die! Papa Sam is old now. He needs some blood to preserve his youth. He has had too many heart attacks. ‘Ugh, me hoot, it hurts, sonny boy.’ I miss my pretty princess most of all. She's resting in our ladies house. But I’ll see her soon. I am the ‘Monster’ – ‘Beelzebub’ – the chubby behemouth. I love to hunt. Prowling the streets looking for fair game – tasty meat. The wemon of Queens are prettyist of all. It must be the water they drink. I live for the hunt – my life. Blood for papa. Mr Borrelli, sir, I don’t want to kill anymore. No sur, no more but I must, ‘honour thy father.’ I want to make love to the world. I love people. I don’t belong on earth. Return me to yahoos. To the people of Queens, I love you. And I want to wish all of you a happy Easter. May God bless you in this life and in the next.
Another letter was delivered to the famous reporter Jimmy Breslin who wrote for the New York Daily News. The killer wrote:
Hello from the cracks in the sidewalks of NYC and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed in the dried blood of the dead that has settled into the cracks. Hello from the gutters of NYC, which is filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine, and blood. Hello from the sewers of NYC which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks. Don’t think because you haven’t heard [from me] for a while that I went to sleep. No, rather, I am still here. Like a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest; anxious to please Sam. Sam's a thirsty lad. He won’t let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood. Tell me, Jim, what will you have for July 29? You can forget about me if you like because I don't care for publicity. However, you must not forget Donna Lauria and you cannot let the people forget her either. She was a very sweet girl. Not knowing what the future holds, I shall say farewell and I will see you at the next job? Or should I say you will see my handiwork at the next job? Remember Ms Lauria. Thank you. In their blood and from the gutter – ‘Sam’s creation’ .44.’
The Daily News immediately renamed the killer they had been calling the ‘.44 Caliber Killer.’ They called him ‘Son of Sam’.
The name ‘Sam’s creation’ had actually come from an incident in which Berkowitz had shot a dog belonging to a neighbour, Sam Carr. The dog had kept Berkowitz awake at night and he had sent a series of poisonous letters to Carr. The police had been informed, but nobody considered that he might actually be ‘Son of Sam’.
It was not over. On 26 June, in Queens, Salvatore Lupo and Judith Placido were shot and wounded in their car. Five weeks later, on Sunday 31 July, just over a year since the murder of Donna Lauria, ‘Son of Sam’ claimed his last victims. Stacy Moskowitz was shot and died later in hospital while her boyfriend Bobby Violante was hit twice in the face, but survived.
This time, however, Sam committed a fatal error. When he returned to his Ford Galaxy which had been parked in front of a fire hydrant, he found he had been given a ticket for the violation. Angrily ripping it from his windscreen, he threw it to the ground. However, he was seen doing this by a woman who when she saw him again later, thought that he might have something up his sleeve resembling a gun. She informed the police who traced the ticket and ran a check on the vehicle, coming up with the name David Berkowitz, a man living in the New York suburb of Yonkers.
On 10 August, officers waited outside Berkowitz’s apartment building at 35 Pine Street. A man walked out of the building towards the Ford Galaxy and climbed in. Before he could start the engine, how-ever, a police officer approached the car from the rear, pointing a gun at Berkowitz and screaming ‘Freeze!’
The man turned slowly, a smile of acceptance on his face. He was ordered out of the car and told to put his hands on the roof.
‘Now that I’ve got you,’ said the officer, ‘who have I got?’
‘You know,’ the man replied in a soft voice.
‘No, I don’t. You
tell me.’ Said the officer.
He paused and, the smile still on his face, laughed, ‘I’m Sam. David Berkowitz’.
Peter Sutcliffe – The Yorkshire Ripper
Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was at last locked up at Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight on 22 May 1981, bringing to an end five years of terror in which he had killed thirteen women and left seven others for dead. The women of Yorkshire could again feel safe on the streets of their county’s towns and cities. For the Ripper, however, it was the beginning of a torrid time.
At his trial he had been found to be sane but soon after arriving at Parkhurst, he was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia. However, all attempts to have him removed to a secure psychiatric facility were blocked. On 10 January, he was attacked and seriously wounded in prison by a thirty-five-year-old Glasgow criminal, James Costello. Costello plunged a broken coffee cup twice into the left side of Sutcliffe’s face, leaving wounds that required thirty stitches.
In March, 1984, he was finally transferred to Broadmoor Hospital under Section 47 of the Mental Health Act, but twelve years later he was the victim of another vicious attack when Paul Wilson, a convicted robber, attempted to strangle him with the electrical flex of a pair of headphones. He was saved only by the intervention of two other inmates.
In March 1997, he was attacked again, by fellow inmate Ian Kay. This time, he lost the sight of his left eye and his right was seriously damaged.
Sutcliffe could conceivably be released in the near future – his name was noticably absent from a 2006 Home Office list of prisoners who should never be released.
He seemed an unlikely candidate for a serial killer, a quiet man who appeared devoted to his wife Sonia. Born in 1946 in Bingley, to John and Kathleen Sutcliffe, he was something of a disappointment to his parents and especially to his sports-mad father who wanted young Peter to succeed at sport. Unfortunately, he failed in that as well as in his school work and left school, aged fifteen.
