PART 6: THE ULTIMATE EVIL,INTO THE MAZE&BLOOD IN THE BADLANDS

THE ULTIMATE EVIL
BY MAURY TERRY


X 

Into the Maze 

On Wednesday morning, December 28, Jim Mitteager and I linked up near the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which unites the borough of Staten Island and the south shore of Brooklyn, and veered east on the Belt Parkway toward Coney Island. As we passed under the footbridge crossed by Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante that fatal night five months earlier, Mitteager remarked that someone had hung a crucifix on the light pole the couple parked beneath. 

"Someone also sent a letter to the 60th Precinct that week before," I answered. "It warned of an attack in Coney Island or Seagate. It was taken seriously and diverted some attention from this spot." 

"That's slick planning if it's connected," Jim said. "Maybe we'll find out before this is over." 

A few miles to the east, we pulled off the highway and stopped at a local deli where Mitteager picked up eight containers of coffee and an assortment of pastries. "I was a cop, remember? The last guy in always picks up the coffee and rolls." 

I wanted to ask how someone knew he would be the last to arrive for duty, but I let it go. Once inside 10th Homicide, which was located on the second floor of the 60th Precinct, we were greeted by Sgt. Bill Gardella, the young supervisor who participated in Berkowitz's arrest. I took a liking to Gardella, finding him perceptive and intelligent. We were then joined by Lt. Robert Kelly, and, later, Ed Zigo materialized briefly. 

We summed up the purpose of the visit, and painstakingly went through the Moskowitz scenario as we then knew it. (The most important evidence was not yet discovered.) Surprisingly, with the exception of Zigo, the detectives were not unreceptive to the sales pitch. 

"You've done your homework," Gardella said. "You've caught some things no one else in the media did. There are some unanswered questions about the shooting; we won't deny that. But sometimes, like it or not, those questions are never answered." 

Kelly added: "All we know is that we had probable cause to arrest Berkowitz. Once the arrest went down, the files were out of here. Everything was turned over to the DA. It's his case now. We have nothing more to do with it." 

"Between here and Westchester there are quite a few unanswered questions, to use your phrase," I said to Gardella. 

"I can't talk about Westchester," he responded. "We're here in Brooklyn. We don't know anything about these incidents going on up in Yonkers, and we honestly never heard of John Carr until now." 

Mitteager pulled out a copy of a note Berkowitz wrote at Kings County Hospital which mentioned John Carr. "That's John Wheaties," he pointed out. "He's real, not just an alias." 

Zigo leaned forward, looked at the note and grudgingly said, "That's Berkowitz's handwriting all right. Where'd you get this?" 

Jim brushed off the question, and Zigo, evidently bored with the discussion, soon left the room. But Kelly and Gardella remained attentive. "I think you brought up some interesting things here," Gardella remarked. "We want you to see the DA." I looked at Kelly, who nodded in agreement. 

"Gold?" Jim inquired. 

"No, Shelly Greenberg. He's the chief assistant and he's coordinating the case for Gold." 

"I don't know if we'd get anywhere," I said. It was more a question than a statement. 

"We think you should see them," Kelly responded. "We'll call over there and tell them you're coming in about an hour." 

Mitteager readily consented, but I had reservations. I wanted to hear Jim's impressions of this conference before committing to another and asked the detectives to tell Gold's office that we'd call for an appointment in a few days. On the way back, we rehashed the morning's events and agreed to carry the information to the DA. 

"I think we touched a nerve," Jim said. "I wonder if we just might be running interference for a few people with integrity at the Tenth?" 

"Maybe. They weren't just patronizing us. You were right to set this up. We're right into the damn lion's den now."

Mitteager had been urging just such a strategy and had accused me of undue caution. He was right to an extent. I was acutely conscious of the mountain we were trying to move and wanted to be as secure with our facts as possible before presenting them to the authorities. We weren't espousing a popular cause; we were going against the established grain. One slip, one error, and our budding credibility would be eagerly destroyed. We couldn't afford to let that happen. 

I then told Jim about a Christmas Day conversation I had with my cousin, Mary Ellen, whom I hadn't seen for several months. In describing what we were working on, I mentioned John Carr and said I knew very little about him. Mary Ellen chided my faulty memory. 

"You knew John Carr. He was in our freshman class in high school." 

"Are you serious?" 

"He was in another homeroom," she explained. "He was thin, had light, sandy-colored hair, and he was always cutting up. This was high school, and yet he was always throwing spitballs around and doing other antics that were more like a kid in grammar school would do. But he obviously thought it was all funny." 

As Mary Ellen spoke, I was starting to remember John Carr. "What else do you recall?" 

"Not much. He wore a red blazer a lot, and I can remember that he wanted to join the Piper's Band." 

With the mention of the Piper's Band, my mind switched to the Borrelli letter. The sentence, "Ugh, me hoot it 'urts, sonny boy," was written with a Scottish inflection and was a puzzle the police were unable to solve. They couldn't explain how Berkowitz, allegedly the letter's author, had come up with a Scottish phrase; or, more importantly, why he did. However, John Carr was interested in playing in a bagpipe band, complete with kilts, while a high school freshman in Yonkers. 

"Did he actually join it?" I asked. 

"I don't know if he did or not. But he liked the whole idea, and he may have tried out or gone to one of their meetings. Do you remember him now?" 

"I think so." 

When I pulled out an old yearbook later, I put the name and face together at once. I had indeed known John Carr for one year. But I hadn't seen or thought of him since we were freshmen, sixteen years before. My memories were vague. He was just someone I would occasionally spend some time with between classes or during lunch breaks. We didn't socialize after hours, and Carr transferred to Gorton High the next year. Our paths hadn't crossed again—until now. 

I also recalled that he attended Holy Rosary grammar school in Yonkers and, despite the puerile conduct my cousin spoke of, was an intelligent person. 

"Catholic schools," I thought, remembering the police belief that the writer of the Borrelli letter had received a Catholic education. 

The yearbook picture was too old to be of much use; Carr was only fourteen when it was taken. Nonetheless, his hair color, eyes and cheekbones approximated those in a Son of Sam sketch released after the Lomino-DeMasi woundings. At least the photo didn't rule him out. Little pieces were slowly coming together. 

When I related the Carr story to Mitteager, I did so sheepishly, saying that I should have remembered him. 

"Why?" Mitteager asked. "A kid you knew casually sixteen years ago? You didn't even hang out with him after school. Screw it. We've got the information now, and that's more than we had before. We're starting to get a feel for this guy." 

We were also starting to get a handle on another early suspect, and the source of the information was former football star Kyle Rote. Rote was a collegiate all-American and Hall of Fame gridiron standout from Southern Methodist University who later starred with the great New York Giants teams of the fifties and early sixties. After retiring, he was a Giants assistant coach for two seasons before branching out into broadcasting, working at W.N.E.W radio and W.N.B.C-TV in New York City. He was also a color commentator on N.F.L games broadcast nationally by N.B.C. 

We met in 1972 and became close friends over the succeeding years. In November 1977, I was having dinner with him and his wife, Nina, in their Manhattan apartment. While talking about Son of Sam, the Rote's recalled an incident that happened in September, just a month after Berkowitz's arrest. At a business dinner they were introduced to a salesman from Westchester who, as the night passed, inexplicably engaged Nina in a discussion of mysticism and black magic. 

"He then lowered his voice and said, 'Son of Sam was in a satanic cult in Yonkers and they helped commit the murders " she explained. "I didn't believe him, so I asked him how he knew about it, and he said he was acquainted with some people who were connected to it." 

The relevance of this statement by the salesman, whom I will call Roger Flood, is that the assertion was made only weeks after Berkowitz's apprehension, when the public was universally satisfied that Berkowitz was a lone killer. It was long before any reference to a satanic cult was made. Flood also claimed that the group operated in Yonkers. It would turn out that this statement was accurate, too. 

Flood would be questioned in the future by investigators for the Queens district attorney's office, who tracked him down on the West Coast. And while he admitted that the meeting with the Rote's occurred, he denied any knowledge of the cult. Since Flood was in California, authorities were left with limited legal means through which to pursue his purported links any further. He either made an extremely accurate guess, or he was in fact aware of the cult's activities. At this time, the answer remains unknown. 

I had just completed compiling some preliminary data on Flood's job history when I received an unexpected phone call on the night of January 3. Bill Gardella wanted to know if we'd contacted the Brooklyn DA's office yet, which we hadn't. 

"We talked to them and they're expecting you," the detective sergeant explained. "If you don't call, we're going to make the appointment for you." Gardella was being friendly, but it was apparent he was also serious. I was reasonably certain he, and presumably Kelly, thought we might be on to something. But I also believed he couldn't come out and say so. I decided the phone call spoke for itself, and simply thanked him for his interest. 

"I'm just doing my job," Gardella said. "You came in with information that we think should get into the right hands." He gave me Sheldon (Shelly) Greenberg's extension, and said he would learn of the meeting's outcome from the prosecutors. 

On January 5, Mitteager and I convened with Greenberg, the chief assistant district attorney, and Ron Aiello, head of the homicide bureau, in Greenberg's office in the court complex in Brooklyn. 

Greenberg was a large, assertive man of forty-one. Aiello, who was younger, was more amiable than Greenberg, who opened the ninety-minute meeting by reminding us that a court-imposed "gag order"—which prevented principals from speaking publicly about the case—was now in effect. While the edict applied to comments to the press, we weren't there in that capacity. I thought Greenberg was hiding behind the order, and said so. But he insisted his hands were tied. 

"Think of me as a big sponge. I'm here to absorb information, so let me soak up what you've got," he pronounced grandly. 

Jim and I looked at each other. "And just what do we get in return?" Mitteager asked. 

"Nothing. I can't say or release a thing." 

For a moment, we were sorely tempted to say sayonara to the "sponge." But we opted to stay, hopeful that in the course of the meeting something would slip out anyway. 

We told the prosecutors about John Carr, the Moskowitz scene, the occult references, the dead dogs and Roger Flood's statement about the cult. Both men asked numerous questions. When Aiello saw the Eliphas Levi occult symbol and compared it with Son of Sam's, he whistled: "I'll bet this knocked your socks off when you found it." At another point, Greenberg stated: "I once talked to a girl who knew John Carr." 

The hints were dropping, but we wanted more; and we pressed hard to get it. Greenberg kept walking the tightrope. Finally, he blurted: "Don't you think I'm not pissing in my pants wanting to talk to you? I want to talk to you—but I can't. So if you don't stop pushing, we'll call this off right now." 

"We're not here to fight, Shelly," I said. "We're supposed to be on the same side." 

"Look, here's where I stand. We'd like to copy your material, and we want to listen to the rest of your ideas. More than that, I can't do. If you don't like it, you can leave. Otherwise, we'll continue," Greenberg stated. 

After nearly five months of work, Greenberg's position was infuriating to us. Aiello attempted to mediate, but he was unsuccessful. After some more bickering, I was clutching at straws. 

"Would you at least tell us if you know where John Carr is —just if you know—so we can stop looking if you do?" 

The bulky prosecutor rested his head on his hands. "For all I know, he's on the moon. . . . Does that answer your question?" 

"Shit," Mitteager muttered

"No, wait," I interjected. "It might answer the question at that. You don't know where he is, do you?" 

"No comment." 

"Look, Shelly," I went on, "your time is valuable and so is ours, believe it or not. We've put in a lot of hours on this, and we came forward to you people. We haven't tried to exploit what we found. All we want to know—without any details—is if there might be some value in all this. Just tell us if we're wasting our time and money pursuing this." I was trying for any left-handed confirmation I could get. 

"Word games," Mitteager spat. "Everybody in this room is playing games. It's a bunch of garbage. We're out there trying to get to the truth and you guys sit there like you're anointed. You represent 'the people'—well, we're the people, too." 

Greenberg shifted in his chair, pushed his glasses to the tip of his nose and glared at Mitteager. "I will respond to your associate's question by saying that if good citizens feel they have reasons to continue to check on certain things, we're here to listen. That's listen—not share—listen." 

Mitteager groaned. 

"That's noble of you, Shelly," I said. "But would I be reading something incorrectly if I took your statement to mean we're not wasting our time?" 

"No comment. Let me read this gag order to you just in case you haven't heard about it." 

Our frustration level had peaked. Fortunately, Aiello chose that moment to take our typewritten material to a secretary for copying. Five minutes later, as we walked to the car, I exploded. 

"Those bastards. They danced around the whole time. They took our information and we have zero except for some hints that we're moving in the right direction. They're just trying to cover their tails. I thought Aiello was willing to be reasonable, but Greenberg was the ringmaster in that circus." 

"Now you're the one who's mad," Jim answered. "You kept the lid on pretty good in there." 

"It wasn't easy." 

"Well, it wasn't so bad, at least not a total disaster. They did give us a few things. And they would have laughed us out of there if the case really was a lock; they wouldn't have sat there debating with us." 

"I don't think there even would have been a meeting with those two if they were so sure Berkowitz was alone," I offered.

"First, Gardella calls me; then we meet with Gold's top people —not some fifth-level assistant. And they asked a hell of a lot of questions." 

Jim stopped walking and said, "You know, it's possible, just possible, that they didn't know much at all, and that we knew more than they did." 

"Who knows? I did hear some non direct confirmations, and they didn't give us the ten-minute brush-off. But if anything ever comes of this, they'll pretend they did it all and we never existed." 

"No, they won't," Mitteager answered. He opened his camera case and pulled out a small tape recorder. 

"I don't believe this—you taped them? In Greenberg's own office!" 

"Only about two minutes' worth. I wanted to be able to prove we were there. And I wanted John Carr's name on there to prove we warned them about him." 

Jim turned on the machine, and we heard ourselves discussing the missing John "Wheaties." Greenberg's pants-wetting comment also was recorded. When I heard that statement, my anger and tension broke and I began to laugh. 

"I'm sorry," I stammered, "but the image of him sitting there blustering away and wetting his pants at the same time is too much for me to deal with." 

Mitteager grinned. "That arrogant son of a bitch. Maybe he'd like to hear himself saying that on the six o'clock news." In truth, less than two minutes of conversation appeared on the tape. "If they were up front with us I'd never have turned it on at all," Jim explained. "But once I caught Greenberg's act, I thought they'd take everything and shaft us the first chance they got if the case ever breaks. Two can play their game." 

"O.K., but please, no more of that. Besides not being kosher, it's also risky." 

"For all we know they were taping us, too. At least we're even." 

At this time, we weren't aware of the confidential police reports and other information available to the DA, or of the office's failure to interview its own witnesses, such as Cacilia Davis. But with this meeting, the Brooklyn district attorney was advised of a probable John Carr and satanic cult link to Berkowitz. The notification was formal, and on the record.

And soon, another police agency would receive the same advisement's. 

I subsequently spoke to Ron Aiello twice. Each time, while evasive, he indicated Mitteager and I weren't chasing the wind. And through another contact in Gold's office, I learned several assistants were shown copies of our material, and that John Carr's whereabouts were unknown by the Brooklyn prosecution. 

There would be fallout from our excursion. Inquiries would be made, rippling a heretofore placid pond. In six weeks the swell would reach significant proportions. But first, an incident that grabbed our attention occurred in New York. 

On Friday, January 6, the day after the Brooklyn gathering, the bullet-riddled body of Robert Hirschmann, twenty-five, was found a hundred feet off the Taconic State Parkway in East Fishkill, an hour's drive north of Yonkers. Hirschmann, who had a minor theft record, was shot at least six times. He worked for a moving company and lived in Queens. 

The next day his wife, Mary, twenty-three, was found slain in a vacant lot near Flushing Airport in Queens, about sixty miles from where her husband's body was discovered. Fully clothed, she was slashed, stabbed and strangled. 

The couple were married seven months earlier and then separated for a time. But three days before the killings, they checked into a room at the Aqua Motor Inn in Queens, near Aqueduct Race Track. They were last seen there the day before their deaths. Hirschmann's body was adorned with tattoos, one of which was a swastika with the words "Brother Tom" beneath it. Hirschmann's first name was Robert, but "Brother Tom" was consistent with a Process ranking and name-change practice. 

This double homicide wasn't the first outburst of violence I noted since the arrest of Berkowitz. In October, Suzette Rodriguez, twenty-two, who had a shoplifting record in Yonkers, was shot in the head three times at point-blank range as she stood on a sidewalk in Elmsford, New York, a Westchester village several miles north of Yonkers. Curiously, Rodriguez, who may have been thrown from an auto before being shot, was found dead on a lawn next door to the home of Elmsford's police chief, who heard the shots and saw a light-colored car speed away. 

Rodriguez was wearing an occult coiled-snake ring and another ring police euphemistically described as being "popular with gypsies." 

Six years later, in the northern New Jersey town of Mountain Lakes, another coiled-snake-ring victim would be found stabbed to death. The young woman, who was unidentified, also wore a satanic pentagram type of ring, which had a crescent moon mounted beneath the star-shaped pentagram. The woman was killed just days before Lammas Day, a major satanic holiday, and she was the fourth woman slain in that area during an eight-month period. 

On November 21, 1977, a rifle-toting sniper gunned down thirteen-year-old Natalie Gallace as she stood in her ground floor apartment in New Rochelle. A family friend, Susan Levy, thirty-eight, was seriously wounded in the 10:40 P.M. attack. A full-sized dark green car with a white vinyl roof was seen racing from the site. Not released by police, and perhaps not even known by them at the time, is the fact that six months earlier —during the height of the Son of Sam spree—a full-sized dark green car with a white vinyl roof was also observed at another bizarre sniper incident in Westchester County. That victim also was a teen aged girl, and she also was shot with a rifle through a ground-floor window. But unlike Natalie Gallace, Lisa Gottlieb survived. 

Lisa, sixteen, lived in Greenburgh, a township in central Westchester about fifteen miles from New Rochelle. On a warm night in late May 1977, she was dropped off at her house at 1 A.M. by several friends. The teenagers noticed an unfamiliar, full-sized dark green and white-topped auto parked near Lisa's home. Moments after she entered her residence, a rifle shot—fired through a ground-floor window—wounded her. 

Because of the similar green cars, the other common circumstances and the unusual, apparently motiveless nature of both crimes (which remain unsolved), they were noted by me as I looked for something resembling a cult pattern. Their potential importance was raised appreciably three years later when I learned of the satanic cult letter Berkowitz had left behind in his apartment. The wording warned of random attacks on "at least 100" young women and men in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. 

What sparked my initial interest in these ground-floor sniper attacks was another series of similar assaults which took place in the same general time frame—with a dart gun.  
The assailant was known as the infamous Westchester Dartman (a depiction of "Death" in the Middle Ages), and before he (or they) disappeared, twenty-three women, almost all of whom lived in ground-floor residences, were wounded by inch-long steel darts fired into their heads, necks or chests from a dart gun. 

The Dartman prowled the night, selecting ground-floor victims and shooting into their homes in several communities in Westchester—including Yonkers—and Rockland County, which lies across the Hudson River from central and northern Westchester. The Dartman attacks preceded Son of Sam and overlapped other bizarre Westchester events—commencing on February 28, 1975, in Yonkers and ceasing May 13, 1976, in the Rockland community of Nanuet. It was a strange time, indeed, for Westchester County. 

"Strange? Not strange. This is incredible," Mitteager exclaimed as I briefed him on the county's recent crime history. "All of this completely off-the-wall stuff going on at the same time. Fred Cowan shooting up New Rochelle; Son of Sam; dead German shepherds here and eighty-five more an hour away; sniper killings and wounding; a girl with an occult ring blown away in front of a police chief's house; and a goddamned Dartman from out of the fifteenth century or somewhere." 

"Oh, and let's not forget the Westchester Child Rapist," I added. "Between April and November of '76 there were about fourteen attacks on young girls between the ages of about ten and eighteen. Most were under fifteen. They got somebody on that." 

"Did he do all of them?" 

"It's still in the courts. You know how it goes—whether he did or didn't, they'll try to wipe the books clean. What is unusual is that this guy supposedly was driving about five different makes of cars." 

"So maybe he didn't do all of them," Mitteager said. "And John Wheaties was called a rapist of young girls." 

"I hear you. But all of this wacko stuff going on at once does tend to be curious. And these are just the things we know about. Who knows what we might have missed? None of this has ever happened before." 

Mitteager was incredulous. "A Dartman—a Dartman who wounds twenty-three women? This is like the Twilight Zone around here. How many murders occur each year in Westchester?" 

"About twenty or twenty-five; no more than that. This is peaceful suburbia." 

"Well, it looks like somebody decided to start a war," Mitteager observed. "Some of these things would seem like they'd almost have to be connected, especially if the crime rate is usually steady and the types of crimes aren't as unique as these are." 

"I would tend to agree with you. Unfortunately, we have no proof yet." 

"Does Dunleavy know about all of this?" Jim asked. 

"Not in this context—except for Fred Cowan and the sheps." 

Steve Dunleavy, in fact, was preoccupied with a phantom telephone caller who was regularly regaling him with lurid tales of a satanic cult to which she insisted Berkowitz belonged. The woman, who contacted Dunleavy several times, had the Post's flamboyant columnist convinced she was at least sincere. 

"She's driving me batty, mates. I don't know if she's crazy or not, but she's naming names. I haven't been able to get anywhere with it. Do you think you can find her or any of these people?" 

"But she's never given her name. How are we supposed to find out who she is?" Mitteager complained. "The world goes beyond this city room, Steve. There are millions of people out there." 

"But it would make sense if we could locate her before going off on what could be a fool's errand as far as these other conspirators go," I said. "It's funny, though, there's not a word about Westchester in here." 

The story merits repeating because its future implications would be considerable. Briefly, the mystery lady charged that Berkowitz belonged to a devil cult operating in Queens and Staten Island. She claimed that a station wagon belonging to a girl named Jane was used in the Moskowitz murder and then abandoned in a pile of rushes adjacent to Little Neck Bay, off the Cross Island Parkway in Queens. Jane had then been chopped up and dumped into the bay. 

She named a former N.Y.P.D detective as one of the cult's dope suppliers, and said he could be found by surveillance of  the Blue Dolphin diner in Queens. More murders were planned. The cult's leader was said to be an accountant and former drug user, whom I will call Reeve Carl Rockman.* Rockman maintained two addresses, one of which was very proximate to the Son of Sam killing ground in Forest Hills. A major cult "safe house," complete with Black Mass ceremonies, was said to be located at an address on Van Duzer Street in Staten Island. 

The information was so detailed and specific that Dunleavy rightly was intrigued by it. With a copy of the woman's latest letter in hand, I met George Austin after work at Gambelli's restaurant in White Plains on January 25, a Wednesday night. After reading the note, he asked, "What are you going to do about all this? She talks about a mutilation murder three years ago and says they used a hairbrush on the girl—and Berkowitz witnessed it?" 

"That's just the thing, George. That crime did happen. We checked it out today—and the hairbrush part was never made public." 

"So she knows?" 

"She sure as hell knows something. Jim lives on Staten Island, and he's sniffing around that Van Duzer house tonight. He'll get plate numbers, but no one's going near that front door. Who knows what the hell is going on in there?" 

"And you have no idea who wrote the letter?" 

"Not a hint. She told Dunleavy on the phone that she knew people in the group and was getting out of town in fear of her life." 

"What about the police?" 

"No way. They don't want to hear about any conspiracy, and if we turned it over to the Brooklyn DA, we'd never know what happened. We're staying on our own from now on." 

"Why not the Queens DA, Santucci, or Merola in the Bronx?" 

"For what? It's all a big runaround. Everyone we've seen so far is stonewalling. It's horseshit trying to get to the bottom of all this and seeing the 'public protectors' covering their butts. Mitteager's right. He says the truth doesn't count—it's politics and perception that's important. The system takes care of its own. All this work we're doing is outside the system's appraisal of the case." 

My evaluation was based on more than our Brooklyn experience. I had made one additional pilgrimage, and it would soon prove to be a consequential journey.

Not at all convinced that Brooklyn would follow up on the local Yonkers activities we suspected, I spent more than an hour with Sal DeTorio, the Westchester Sheriff's Department's chief of criminal investigations, to inform him about the satanic cult connections we'd uncovered concerning Berkowitz, John Carr and the dead German shepherds. 

I explained to DeTorio that despite contrary statements by the Carr's and the N.Y.P.D, we strongly suspected that Berkowitz and John Carr, at least, were acquainted, and that both may well have belonged to a Westchester-based satanic cult. John Carr, I told DeTorio, was our top suspect. I gave DeTorio a copy of the material we'd earlier provided to Brooklyn, and explained that while I knew the .44 homicides weren't in his jurisdiction, any regionalized cult activities or crimes were in his domain. It was hoped that both investigatory ends could meet in the middle. 

I also discussed another topic with DeTorio. It concerned his department's investigation of the four threatening letters Berkowitz anonymously sent to volunteer sheriff's deputy Craig Glassman. I was very interested in confirming that a certain return address—that of Berkowitz's former New Rochelle landlord- appeared on one of those envelopes. DeTorio avoided that issue. 

The meeting transpired in mid-January, shortly before Jim and I received the Dunleavy letter. When I left De'lorio's office in Valhalla, I didn't know that he would soon begin a quiet investigation, which meant—strictly speaking—that the .44 case was reopened then on at least a limited, local basis. Among other things, the department would begin to make inquiries about John Carr. DeTorio, whom I contacted occasionally thereafter, never revealed that a John Carr probe had begun. I later learned why. 

DeTorio would attempt to wash his hands of any culpability, but he would become, perhaps unwillingly, a player in the game of cover-up which was about to begin anew. Technically, he would claim non involvement on jurisdictional grounds, but one will be able to judge the extent of his responsibility—with the cloak of territorial innocence removed. 

In fairness to DeTorio, it's possible he protected his standing in his department's hierarchy by adhering to Son of Sam marching orders dictated by the man who was then his boss, Sheriff Thomas Delaney. Delaney was a former captain in the New York City Police Department. The N.Y.P.D was engaged in an all-out battle to protect its "sole killer" interests in the .44 case, and Delaney's ties there were numerous. 

We didn't know it, but the clock had now begun to wind down on Mr. John Wheaties Carr. We had set it in motion ourselves. 

Standing at the bar in Gambelli's, George and I continued rehashing the frightening Dunleavy letter as the night wore on. At about 8 P.M., an acquaintance named Jim Duffy took over our side of the serving area as the bartenders changed shifts. Duffy, thirty-two, wore glasses and sported curly brown hair and a friendly demeanor. He knew of my involvement with the Sam case, and asked me how the conspiracy hunt was going. 

"Tell him about the letter," George suggested. 

"Yeah, this is the latest entry in the sweepstakes. Some unknown woman is calling Steve Dunleavy and sending him letters about this Satan cult. It's eerie stuff, to put it mildly." 

"What's she saying?" Duffy asked. 

"Blood, gore, murder and mayhem. She names a couple of people and says there's some supposed cult house out on Staten Island." 

"Staten Island?" 

"Yeah, my partner lives out there and he's checking on it now." 

"Where on Staten Island?" Duffy wanted to know. "I used to go to college there, at Wagner." 

"Well, I don't know Staten Island, but this address is on Van Duzer Street." 

Duffy's eyes widened like globes. "Where on Van Duzer? I used to live on Van Duzer. It's a small residential street." 

"Really? Then maybe you'd know where this is. It's number 583." 

Duffy dropped the bar towel. "That's the house I rented a room in!" 

George opened his coat like a cop flashing a badge. "You're under arrest. . . . Search this man for dog biscuits."

I was laughing. "Great collar—put him on the chain gang." 

"Yes, as soon as we shepherd him out of here." 

"Hey, you shitheads—I really did live at 583 Van Duzer Street," Duffy insisted. 

We weren't buying the story at all. There were millions of addresses in the New York area, and it was statistically impossible that the second person I'd tell about 583 Van Duzer would have lived there at one time. Moreover, it was at least forty miles from White Plains. But Duffy remained adamant. After another five minutes of deriding him, I decided to put an end to his joke. 

"You claim you lived there nine or ten years ago when you were in college. Who owned the house then?" 

"The Meehans." 

"First name?" 

"Jack—actually John. John Meehan." 

I went to the pay phone and dialed information to learn if a John Meehan still resided at 583 Van Duzer in Staten Island. In a minute, I was back at the bar. I gave Duffy a quizzical look. "You'll be interested in knowing that they're still there." 

George was startled. "Jesus Christ, it's for real—could your old landlord be running a cult house, Duffy?" 

Duffy was suddenly as mystified as we were. In the right wrong debate about the address itself, he'd forgotten why the subject was broached in the first place. 

"Awww, no. No way. They're a nice family. They couldn't be involved in any of this deranged stuff." 

"The letter says they are. Maybe something snapped out there since you lived in the house, or maybe they've got some boarders into this thing and the Meehans don't even know about it," I suggested. We were all still shaken by the incalculable coincidence. 

"Hell, after tonight anything's possible, I guess," Duffy replied. "But I still can't believe the Meehans—I can't believe any of this is happening!" 

It was time for a plan. Without Duffy, we could be staking out the house for months. We needed to get inside, and Duffy could provide a way in—through the front door. I asked the stunned bartender if he'd accompany us to Staten Island the next night, and told him Mitteager, who had police experience, would come along. 

"You know them," I explained. "We'll all knock at the door. You can say you were visiting Jim and me and stopped by to say hello for old times' sake. We'll play it by ear from there." 

"I don't know. That letter sounded pretty specific. If it's accurate it could be dangerous out there." 

"Come on," I said lightly, "the Meehans know who you are. They're not going to butcher you in the basement. Even killers take a night off now and then." I was smiling, but didn't feel any mirth. The potential for danger did exist. 

Duffy thought for a long moment. "O.K. I'll do it. This might be something to tell my grandchildren someday." 

The next night, after convincing Mitteager that he, too, wasn't being set up for some diabolical joke, we knocked on the door of 583 Van Duzer, a quaint wooden house on a narrow street. Before approaching, we took down plate numbers of all nearby cars and looked around the back of the house. The Meehans, to our relief, seemed like a pleasant, middle aged couple. But we wanted to meet their children, and then there was the matter of any boarders in the house. 

As the Meehans and Duffy talked over old times, Mitteager and I, trying to appear unconcerned, took in as much of the surroundings—and the Meehans—as we could. At one point, their son arrived, and we eyed him cautiously. Finally, after a prearranged signal, Duffy timidly mentioned that Jim and I were reporters who wanted to discuss "something" with them. 

I grimaced. Duffy was supposed to ask the first tentative question so as not to alert or alarm the couple, but he tossed the ball to us instead. Fortunately, Jim was ready for it. 

"Have you had any kind of trouble recently with anyone in the neighborhood?" It was a safe, nonthreatening question, and if it struck the right nerve, a floodgate could open. 

"Now that's something out of the blue. How did you know about that?" 

"We'd rather hear it from you, Mr. Meehan, if you don't mind," I responded. 

Meehan and his wife, at ease because Duffy was with us, said that a "strange woman" who wore "long robes" had lived in the neighborhood until several months previous. The woman, they said, would "stare at the house all the time" and stop their son and say, "I know who you are and what you're involved with. Don't think you're going to get away with it." 

"When did this start?" I asked. 

"Last summer. She wasn't really threatening to us, she was just very strange," Mrs. Meehan answered. 

I then threw out the name of another Staten Island resident —from a different neighborhood—whom Dunleavy's caller accused of being a cult member. 

"Do you know a Mike Wollman*?" 

"Yes, of course we do. He's a good friend of our son." 

"Does he come to this house?" Jim asked. 

"Yes." 

After another series of questions to both the Meehans and their son to satisfy ourselves they were being truthful, we knew right where we stood. "Do you happen to know the name of this 'strange' woman and where she lived?" Jim inquired. 

"No," Mrs. Meehan replied. "We don't know her name, but she lived down the street. An elderly woman named Erna owns a two-family house. This woman, her husband and I think a black girl lived on the other floor. They rented from Erna, who is a sweet, harmless old lady. I don't think she'd know anything." 

"Would you show us the house and introduce us?" Jim questioned. 

"Sure, Jack will take you down there." 

Jim and I had been circumspect about our reason for talking to the Meehans. But as we left their house, Jack Meehan asked, "So what's this all about, fellows? Is this woman in trouble?" 

"It wasn't her, Mr. Meehan, it was you," I replied. "You're supposed to be David Berkowitz's accomplices and hold Black Masses in your basement." 

Meehan, flabbergasted, stopped dead in his tracks. After we summarized the allegations, he was enraged at the letter-writing "strange woman." "She should be thrown in jail," he stormed. "And telling this to the newspapers! God knows who else she slandered us to!" 

"We're not sure it's her yet," I said. "But you just found out about this tonight. She's been haunting Dunleavy for months —that should make you feel at least a little better." 

"I'm afraid it doesn't," Meehan said. 

"It would if you knew Dunleavy," Jim deadpanned, but Meehan just gave him a blank stare. 

"Don't worry," Jim added quickly. "We're upset about this, too. We're not sure yet it's this woman, but we're going to try to find out." 

Erna Wagner was a frail, white-haired woman well into her eighties. She was infirm, hard of hearing, and couldn't understand much of what we were saying. Her home was filled with statues of various saints and the Blessed Virgin. She kept no records, and couldn't remember the name of her former tenant. We were about to give up when I asked if she'd ever heard from the lady again. 

A spark of recognition lit the old woman's eyes, and she hobbled to a bureau and produced a letter. On the envelope was a name and return address in Bayside, Queens. The enclosed message was rife with crosses and symbols and mentioned the Meehans, Son of Sam, bodies in Little Neck Bay and Black Masses on Van Duzer Street. The writer claimed she was on a "secret mission" for the police. "Hush, Erna, you must not tell anyone," the letter warned. 

"We got her," I exclaimed. "And she's got this poor old woman caught up in this dreadful stuff." I looked at Erna. "Are you O.K.? Does any of this frighten you?" I asked, indicating the letter. 

Erna shrugged her sloped shoulders. "I don't see so well," she whispered. 

"You mean you weren't able to read this?" 

"Only a little. But she told me about bad people." 

"And how did you feel about that?" Jim almost shouted.

Erna gestured toward her myriad statues. "I pray." 

We asked Erna if we could take the letter and envelope with us, and she handed them to Jim. As gently as possible, we told her there was nothing to fear in the neighborhood; and Jack Meehan came in and assured her he'd stop by frequently to see how she was getting along. And then we left Erna Wagner; alone and feeble as we'd found her, but perhaps with a sense of security she hadn't felt in months. 

"Veronica Lueken? Are you guys sure?" Steve Dunleavy was shocked that we'd solved his five-month mystery in two days. "How the hell did you ever come up with this? This is great work, mates." 

"Just good detective work, Steve." 

"How'd you ever figure out it was her?" 

"That's a long story," Jim said. He and I decided to refrain from telling Dunleavy about the ten-million-to-one shot involving Duffy. 

"After we found out it was her, we went looking for this Jane Jacklin* who was supposed to be fish food in Little Neck Bay," I continued. "It turns out Jane is still alive; we found her, too. She told us the cops practically broke down her door a few months ago because someone called to tell them a murder was taking place." 

"Then we went to Lueken's house in Bayside," Mitteager explained. "Her husband let us in. He seemed O.K., like he didn't know what was going on. Their number is unlisted, but I asked to use the phone and copied it off the dial. She was in the house, but wouldn't come out of the bedroom—the chickenshit bitch." 

Dunleavy was astonished. "What about the cult and this Reeve Carl Rockman who's the leader?" 

"If there's a cult she knows about, it's not in that house on Staten Island," I said. "We checked out Rockman. He does exist, with two addresses under two different names—which is interesting. In one listing he's 'Reeve C. Rockman' and in the other he's 'Reeve T. Carl.' But what does it all mean? This whole thing is Lueken's hallucination." 

"That's right," Jim said. "She had a chance to explain when we went to her house, but she dove under the bed." 

Dunleavy was shaking his head in disbelief. "Hey, Steve," Jim said, "the letter did sound legit; it had a lot of detail and specifics. It had all of us going. But it's bullshit." 

"Christ, but you guys didn't talk to her. She was driving me crazy with these phone calls and this sinister plot. She sounded believable; she really did." 

"To her, it probably seems real," I added. "That's why she was so convincing. I'd love for us to write something about all this, but it would only hurt the investigation. But can you see the headline? 'FAMOUS SEER OF BAYSIDE EXPOSED.' " 

In a real way, Veronica Lueken was in fact famous. Since 1970, the heavyset, middle-aged housewife and mother had been known to countless New Yorkers and others in the United States and Canada as the woman who periodically packed the former World's Fair grounds in Queens with devout believers who listened to the Virgin Mary and Christ speak through the mouth of—Veronica Lueken. 

Lueken's legions numbered in the many thousands. Busloads of the faithful would depart for hallowed Queens from points throughout the country when they received "the word" that Mary or Her Son was about to enlighten them with a new series of messages transmitted through Lueken's trance like meditations, which took place in full view of the hordes of pilgrims. 

One cannot help but wonder how the multitudes would have responded had they known that this living embodiment of Mary and Jesus was filling her idle hours with scurrilous accusations. 

Lueken's society, which did not discourage contributions from believers, issued a variety of literature, including a newspaper called Michael Fighting, which was named for the Archangel Michael. The publications fervently reported the Sacred Word, as spoken by Veronica, who foretold of World War III, the end of civilization, earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters unless humankind reversed its evil course. 

During these public pronouncements, thousands of ears heard and thousands of eyes read the Blessed Mother's kind words for Veronica herself. This phenomenon would occasionally spawn another minor miracle—the simultaneous opening of hundreds of wallets and purses. 

Veronica-Mary-Jesus frequently bemoaned the dangers of temptation in the modern world, and did so by reminding her disciples that Satan was very much about in the twentieth century. The evil serpent, who lost a heavenly battle to the Archangel Michael, was seeking an earthly inroad via infiltration of the media, the entertainment business and certainly world government. 

Veronica's visions, which she vividly described to the throngs of believers as they were occurring, would invariably involve great flashes of light in the sky—which only Veronica could see—before the Virgin or Christ appeared. Frequently, the Blessed Mother would shed tears as she recounted, through Veronica, the dark times to come unless mankind chose the path to salvation. The Communists and Russia were also routinely discussed on the heavenly hot line. 

Lueken was shielded from her disciples during her visionary sessions by a carefully chosen honor guard of white-bereted followers. She counts among her membership a number of police and fire officials. 

Not surprisingly, Lueken's preaching has been viewed with a measure of disdain by the Archdiocese of New York; and she and her followers have caused headaches for the N.Y.P.D and other law enforcement agencies over matters such as crowd control, freedom of assembly, trespassing, permits and the like. Scuffles have been reported occasionally as her followers surged against the white-beret platoons of bodyguards. 

And now Veronica had been feeding us vile information— anonymously, she had thought—about the Son of Sam case. Dunleavy, Mitteager and I consigned her allegations to a circular file in early February 1978. Little did we know she would surface again. 

The determination that the Lueken allegations were false had taken but a few days, but its depressing effect lingered. The anticipation that a break might have been in the offing was high; the ensuing crash discouraging. With his shining star, Lueken, burned out in a flash of futility, Dunleavy became temporarily moribund. There also was no word from Brooklyn or the Sheriff's Department in Westchester; and we were now of the belief none would be forthcoming. 

John Carr, our chief suspect, was still among the missing, and prosecution efforts to convict Berkowitz as a lone killer were grinding through the judicial system. Essentially, we were nearly out of options. We'd made the attempt, but were now on the brink of failure. 

On the eighth of February, a blizzard buried New York and my downstairs neighbors threw an open-air fish fry in defiance of Mother Nature. On the ninth, I ventured through the snow to see Saturday Night Fever, whose Brooklyn discotheque setting reminded me of the previous summer's .44 shootings. Given my state of mind, I could have done without the flashback. 

I saw the film with a new acquaintance, a pretty physical therapist from Mamaroneck whom I was seeing socially because my wife and I had separated a few months before. We'd made a sincere effort, but the mutual magic had eroded. We did, however, remain friendly. 

On Saturday, February 11, I cut through the remaining snow drifts and drove by the Carr home in Yonkers for the first time in more than two weeks. In the large driveway, I vacantly noted the usual assortment of autos, most of which belonged to operators who worked for Carr's telephone answering service. There was one vehicle I hadn't seen there before, a blue 1971 Mercury. Unlike the others, it was still covered with snow—to the extent that I couldn't read its license plate. I was about to drive on when I started to think about that snow, which suggested the car hadn't been moved for at least several days. 

Looking around the street, I saw no one. It was dusk, it was cold, and most people were indoors. I took a small pad and a pen from my glove compartment, pulled over and cautiously ventured up the driveway. Quickly, I knelt out of sight of the house and scraped the snow from the rear license plate. It was North Dakota plate number 462-653. 

I had finally found John Wheaties Carr.

XI 

Blood in the Badlands

 

I was too young to remember that October day in 1951 when Bobby Thomson hit the dramatic ninth-inning home run that lifted the New York Giants to a stunning, come-from-behind pennant win over the Brooklyn Dodgers in one of the most emotional moments in sports history. But through film clips, the past comes to life: the line drive hooking into the Polo Grounds' left field stands; Thomson dancing around the bases as players and fans flood the field; announcer Russ Hodges screaming, "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!" 

It was a Polo Grounds in miniature that roared in my head as I drove from the Carr home with the treasured plate number safely in hand. From the depths of the valley, the pinnacle was suddenly visible through the clouds. It was time to begin stalking John Carr. 

I immediately contacted Mitteager and we formulated a plan. During the next week I cruised by the house nightly, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive suspect. The strategy was to stick with him if he went out, on the chance he might lead us to others. We also hoped to photograph him from a distance. But by the following Friday, the car, still laden with snow, hadn't moved. Still not discouraged, Jim and I decided to maintain the sporadic surveillance for as long as it took. 

Since neither Brooklyn nor Westchester authorities contacted us again, we returned the favor by not informing either agency that Carr was located. But I'd later learn that the Sheriff's Department, in the course of the secret probe we sparked, noticed the auto, too. 

On Saturday, February 18, I was preparing breakfast when the phone rang. It was my mother on the line, calling from the family home in Connecticut. 

"What's new in your little corner of the world?" I asked. 

"There's something you need to know," she replied. 

"What is it?" 

"John Carr is dead." 

At first, I refused to believe it. Then slowly, like an insidious rip tide, the realization slapped at my heels, rose up suddenly and swept me away with a thunderous crescendo. 

"What the hell . . . John Carr dead . . . How do you know?" The questions flew in a staccato burst of confusion and panic. 

"I don't know. I don't know. There's a little death notice in this morning's Westchester paper. It's not a full obituary—just a small paragraph in that column of notices. No details or anything. Just that it happened Thursday in Minot, North Dakota." 

"Dakota? Thursday? It must be somebody else. His car is sitting in the driveway on Warburton Avenue. I've been watching it all week." 

"No, it's him," she insisted.

"Then are you sure it doesn't say he was from North Dakota? He's been out there on and off for years." 

"It definitely says in Minot, North Dakota. What are you going to do now?" 

"I don't know. I never would have expected this to happen. I've got to reach Jim. I'll get back to you." 

Mitteager, in the midst of a lazy Saturday on Staten Island, was astounded, upset and excited all at once. 

"He's dead? For six months you chase a guy. He lives all these years just fine, and just like that he's gone after we turn him in to Brooklyn and Westchester. This is one hell of a development." 

We then realized we had to learn just what happened to Carr. For all we knew he had been ill or hit by a bus. Mitteager volunteered to contact the Minot police to find out. A long, nervous hour later he was back on the phone. 

"Listen to this carefully 'cause you're not going to believe it. It was violent—gunshot. And they think it's murder, although there's a chance it could be suicide. But they're treating it as a homicide! Either way, the guy is dead violently right in the wake of our handing him over." 

I was too startled to answer. 

"You know what this means, don't you?" Jim prodded. 

"Yes, but for Christ's sake, what a way to find out for sure." 

"If he was murdered, and he was Berkowitz's accomplice, that would mean there's someone else out there, too," Jim continued. "Someone who shut him up." 

"Yes," I agreed. "Either somebody caught up with him before we did or he heard something, freaked out and knocked himself off. There are no other choices here." 

"Hell no. Not with this timing," Jim concurred. "And they've got no motive out there. Now, we've got to pull all this together and get the story out. With any luck, everyone else will miss that little death notice and nobody knows he's John Wheaties, anyway. That Greenberg in Brooklyn will croak over this one." 

"I'm down there watching the guy's car and he's out in Dakota disappearing from the planet," I said quietly. "It just doesn't seem possible. Why in hell is his car in Yonkers?" 

"Because he just flew back to Dakota from here the other day. In a hurry," Jim answered. 

"Damn. I wonder if I was seen in the driveway." 

"I don't know. But son of a bitch, we're in the middle of the biggest of them all," Jim stated. 

It took several hours for the import of Carr's death to register fully. On the one hand, it vividly demonstrated the plausibility of my long-held suspicions. But for the first time, the fear factor also surfaced. Someone—some unknown force—had likely emerged from the netherworld of the investigation and struck down John Carr. But why now? Had that person heard of our work, and would he look for us next? 

For months, I'd believed my analysis of the case was accurate, but it was frequently an academic exercise—written reports, interviews and remote observations and digging. Not anymore. Now, the crushing reality of death set in. 

Moreover, if Carr was in fact slain, there was a conspiracy of at least three. But how many more? The specter of satanic cult involvement loomed ominously over the investigation. 

For the next four days, we scrambled to tie the story together. On the afternoon of the twentieth I phoned Sal DeTorio at the Sheriff's Department to tell him Carr was dead. DeTorio said he just heard about it and asked what we'd discovered. I briefed him and wanted to know what, in light of our meeting of a month before, he was going to do about the Carr connection. DeTorio acknowledged that his office was now looking into the occult in Westchester County. "But we're not into the Sam case per se. That's someone else's case," he said. 

DeTorio was evasive and didn't tell me that his force's inquiry had already widened. But he confirmed that a conversation occurred between his department and the Brooklyn DA. "They're not dismissing any of this, but they won't admit it to you," he hinted. 

I'd later learn there was a significant exchange between Westchester and the Brooklyn prosecution. 

Meanwhile, implying he was an official investigator, Mitteager cultivated a source within O.S.I, the Air Force police agency. O.S.I was involved in the case because Carr's death occurred in the bedroom of a housing unit on the Minot Air Force base. Carr, it turned out, had left the Air Force sixteen months earlier. The home was that of his girlfriend, Linda O'Connor, whose estranged serviceman husband, Craig, had moved off the base. 

The information we received was sketchy. But we did learn that Carr closely resembled the Son of Sam composite drawing released after the Lomino-DeMasi shooting, and that he owned a fatigue jacket and was left-handed. The gunman fled that scene carrying the .44 in his left hand and appeared to have worn a fatigue jacket. 

The O.S.I source also reported that Carr wasn't despondent before his death, which pointed to murder; had expressed a "passing interest" in witchcraft and that his brother, Michael, "counseled people in Scientology." 

On the night of the twentieth, Jim and I staked out the Yonkers funeral home where Carr was being waked, writing down license plate numbers. Unknown to us, the Sheriff's Department was doing the same thing; we probably flagged the plate numbers of an official car or two. 

Fortunately, the rest of the media missed the death notice, and at 6 P.M. on February 21 Mitteager and I sat at adjacent typewriters in the Post city room to pound out the copy for the next day's editions. 

But something happened along the way. Somehow, the probable homicide turned into an "apparent" suicide as Dakota officials suddenly steered our inquiries away from murder. Mitteager and I fought to keep the muddled circumstances intact in the story, but were overruled. 

We also knew that Minot authorities had received calls from Westchester Sheriff's investigators, the Yonkers police, and the Brooklyn DA's office and 10th Homicide, where our recent visits were clearly remembered. The "closed" .44 case was ajar, after all. However, those details were also edited from the story, as was a sidebar piece that raised other questions about the Son of Sam case, including the contradictions at the Moskowitz scene. 

The Post was jittery and chose extreme caution—especially since a call to the DA's office produced a comment that Gold's people "tended to discount any connection" between Carr's death and the .44 case. That was a fallacy, and we knew it. But we lost a concerted battle to publish a comprehensive story. 

On Wednesday, February 22, the compromise version of the article appeared on page one under the headline: "SON OF REAL SAM KILLS HIMSELF." To our dismay, the death was called a suicide, the result of last-minute editing after Mitteager and I left the paper. 

The story reported that Carr left North Dakota in late January and drove to New York, telling Minot friends he wouldn't be back for months. (Like us, he was unaware that authorities, because of our initiative, were now interested in locating him.) But then, said Ward County, North Dakota, Sheriff's Lt. Terry Gardner, "He suddenly changed his mind and flew back here. We don't know why. We don't know what went on in New York." 

Carr was in Yonkers for just ten days before leaving his Mercury behind and flying into Minot in the early evening hours of Tuesday, February 14. Two nights later he was dead. 

Carr's skull was demolished by a bullet fired into his mouth from a .30-30 Marlin rifle on the night of the sixteenth in Ms. O'Connor's home while she was out for the evening, the story said. 

The rifle, which was owned by Linda's husband, belonged in the house. It was found lying in a peculiar position, on top of the dead man's leg. No suicide note was written. 

The article described the "John Wheaties" alias in the Breslin letter and compared it to the John Wheat Carr listing in the Westchester telephone directory. 

The story also mentioned that official sources in New York City discounted any link between Carr and Berkowitz, but Gardner was quoted as saying: "If I were them, I'd be interested in that angle, but that's not my jurisdiction. Our own investigation is completed."

No, it wasn't. Gardner deliberately played with the truth, but it would be eighteen months before I'd learn why he did so. 

That night, with the story on the streets, I watched the early evening newscasts, which reported the information as it appeared in the Post. Later, I joined Tom Bartley, his wife, Madeline, and other friends for a Westchester nightclub performance by the Drifters, a well-known rock group of the late fifties and early sixties. Our table was festive, my date enjoyable, and even Bartley had praise for the work done on John Carr. 

"You may really have something here, after all," he said. 

I arrived home late, only to be awakened by a 7 A.M. phone call from Mitteager's wife, Carol. She was close to tears. 

"Where were you?" she asked. "I was trying to get you until three this morning. There's big trouble." 

"Take it easy, Carol. Tell me what's up," I soothed, still weary from the night's celebration. 

Carol broke down and began sobbing. 

"Jim's been arrested!" she cried. 

Suddenly I was wide awake. Not nine hours after the Carr story appeared, and while I was out singing "Under the Boardwalk" with a gathering of friends, Jim was hustled off to jail and charged with bribery of a guard in the "Sam Sleeps" photo epic. 

The investigation was conducted by the Department of Correction and the State Special Prosecutor's office, which was mandated to root out corruption in official agencies. The timing of the arrest was highly suspicious, although authorities said the indictment was secured some days before. Still, it wasn't acted on until the article was published in the Post. 

In effect, Mitteager was removed from the conspiracy probe, and his reputation and credibility were tarnished by the charges, which carried a possible prison term of up to seven years. 

He was held overnight in a Manhattan jail before being arraigned and released on his own recognizance pending a trial. Hearing the numbing news from Carol, who at this time didn't know if or when Jim would be freed, I was speechless. The mercurial emotions of the last thirteen days, beginning with the discovery of John Carr's auto on February 11, had finally taken their toll. I hung up the phone immobilized, not knowing where to turn or what to do. 

At the same time, officials in New York City and Westchester were pointedly denying the relevance of the Post article and privately castigating the paper for speculative reporting. The story was dead in a day. The rest of the media reported the denials, and the Post, stung by the reaction, would back away from the conspiracy hunt and not venture forth again—even though information I uncovered that day showed Carr was being sought for questioning by New York authorities at the time of his death. 

After several hours, I summoned the presence of mind to call Peter Michelmore at the Post. I told him of the arrest, which he already knew about, and informed him that I just learned New York authorities had wanted to question Carr. Michelmore wasn't interested. 

"We got blasted by every cop and prosecutor in town for running that story," he said. "I think we're right, you think we're right and Dunleavy thinks we're right—but they've pulled the rug out from under us. We've got nowhere to go on this anymore. It's over." 

"And what about Jim?" I asked. "You had him at Kings County, me up here, and you people were coordinating the whole thing. I never wanted those damned pictures to run, Peter. I swore it would cut us off from Berkowitz, and it sure did that. And now Jim's in goddamned jail over it." 

Michelmore was sympathetic but unmoved. "Jim wasn't working for us. He was working for himself. As a free-lance reporter, he supplied information and was paid for it." 

I realized what Michelmore was saying. "So you're cutting yourselves off from him—no legal assistance, no standing behind him?" 

"I'm sorry about it, but he was working for himself. We didn't know anything about any arrangements between him and this guard." 

"I find that a little difficult to believe, Peter." 

"Well, that's the way it was and that's all there is to say about it." 

"And what about Son of Sam and Carr?" 

"Like I said, we're dead in the water. They got us good on that story." 

And so the conversation ended. 

Later in the day, Mitteager vehemently denied that the Post was unaware his source was a Department of Correction guard. 

"They knew all along. They even supplied the spy camera used to take those damn pictures. I told the photo editor to preset the damn thing because the guy taking the pictures was an amateur and wouldn't know how to work it otherwise." 

I was ignorant of any financial agreements between Mitteager and the Post or between Mitteager and the guard. Money was a subject we never discussed. In fact, it was mid-January, six weeks after the photos were published, before Mitteager even told me a guard had taken them. He didn't offer any other details, nor would I have expected him to do so. I did learn, however, that the reason it took so long to receive Berkowitz's replies to my questions was that the guard, Herb Clarke, had only sporadic access to the alleged .44-Caliber Killer. 

"They got along well," Mitteager explained. "And Clarke would often be in Berkowitz's area and say hello and all. But he needed to be alone with him to get the questions answered. That's why it took so long." 

In fact, Clarke's inability to sit with Berkowitz more often set the stage for Mitteager's apprehension. Jim asked if Clarke knew a guard who had more access to Berkowitz, and Clarke recommended Frank Jost. Mitteager met with Jost in a Staten Island restaurant and told him he was hopeful Berkowitz could be enticed to unravel the conspiracy. He asked if Jost would deal with Berkowitz and get the information out. Jost reported the conversation to his superiors. 

At the same time, authorities had become suspicious of Clarke and confronted him. Clarke was then offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony against Mitteager. With his permission, Clarke's phone was then tapped and officials monitored his conversations with Mitteager. Among them were comments Jim made about the Carr case before the Post article appeared, which included information he'd gleaned from the O.S.I source in North Dakota. 

"Why they would give immunity to a civil employee, a guard who did act improperly, to go after a writer is something I'll never understand," Mitteager said. He insisted he was advised by the Post that his work was within the law. He prepared to mount a defense based on the contention that he acted as an agent of the paper in his dealings with Clarke and was made a scapegoat—singled out for "selective prosecution." 

"I never thought of it as bribery," he said. "I was after a story and trying to help crack this case open if I could. I told Clarke, and it was on their tapes, that I knew I wasn't doing anything illegal and I hoped he was sure he was covered in that respect." 

Mitteager said the photos, which had no connection to the conspiracy probe, were taken at the urging of both Clarke and the Post. "Clarke wanted money; so he pushed for the pictures. And the Post wanted them, too. I was in the middle of it. I did want a full-time job at the Post, and I was trying to earn a living. The money from the pictures did help me out there." 

With the Post out of the picture, so to speak, Mitteager under indictment and the John Carr link officially denied, I was left without a partner, a suspect or a public forum. I continued some halfhearted work on the case, specifically on Michael Carr, but my main preoccupation was with the fatal reversal of fortune. It was almost as if John Carr never existed. But he did. 

John Charles Carr was born in Yonkers on October 12, 1946. He shared a birthday with the notorious black magician and cultist Aleister Crowley. 

Carr attended Holy Rosary Grammar School in Yonkers, spent one year at a Catholic high school there and then graduated from Gorton High. He apparently enrolled at an upstate New York college, but left to join the Air Force, where he remained a dozen years. He was discharged—allegedly for drug and disciplinary reasons—on October 13, 1976, the day after his thirtieth birthday. Carr had been stationed in Thailand, Korea and Panama City, Florida, before transferring to the large Strategic Air Command (SAC) base outside Minot in the summer of 1972. 

His military specialty was aircraft maintenance, and at Minot he was assigned to the 5th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, performing mechanical work on the F-106. He took some courses, including accounting and psychology, at Minot State College while in the military, and was a staff sergeant at the time of his discharge. After leaving the service, Carr shuttled back and forth between Minot and Yonkers. 

Authorities placed him in the New York area at the time of at least four, and probably five, Son of Sam attacks, including the Lomino-DeMasi shooting, whose composite he closely resembled. He was also in New York at the time of the Christine Freund homicide in January 1977 and the shooting outside the Elephas discotheque on June 26 of that year. He also was believed to have been in New York at the time of the Donna Lauria murder in July 1976 and that of Stacy Moskowitz on July 31, 1977. 

Carr was married and divorced by 1974, and had a daughter who was five years old at the time of his death. (Her name, and that of her mother, will be withheld here out of respect for their privacy.) Friends dated Carr's deteriorating slide to the aftermath of the divorce. 

Carr's ex-wife remarried and moved to Beaumont, Texas— near Houston, site of the .44 purchase. Carr was known to visit that area, and his brother, Michael, told Linda O'Connor that John was in Houston on June 12, 1976—the day Berkowitz obtained his .44 Bulldog. 

Carr, police said, was a moderate-to-heavy user of marijuana and psychedelic drugs, and he was hospitalized on three occasions in 1976-77 for drug overdoses. Police also stated that Carr dealt drugs in Minot, and perhaps in New York, an assertion supported by several of his friends who admitted buying narcotics from him on a regular basis. He was also a heavy drinker—a fact which I'd later learn was known by Berkowitz, who considered him "unstable" and "a weak link." 

In the months preceding his death, Carr received drug therapy and underwent psychiatric counseling as well. A bottle of Haldol, a powerful prescription drug used to treat psychiatric disorders, was found in the O'Connor home in Minot. It was Carr's medicine. 

In the months before his death, he was on the move. He was in New York for several weeks in June 1977, where, among other things, he attended a circus with a Long Island friend. He returned to Minot, traveled to Austin, Texas, for unknown reasons in mid-July and apparently was back in New York at the end of the month. He arrived in North Dakota just before Berkowitz's arrest on August 10, when he made that "Oh, shit" comment as news of the capture flashed on the TV screen. 

In December 1977, Carr left Minot and traveled to the Houston area, where he dropped in to see his daughter in Beaumont. His ex-wife told us it was the first time she'd seen him in several years, although he'd been in Houston in the recent past. Returning to Minot, he decided to leave for New York again in late January. He packed some belongings in the '71 Mercury, which was registered to the Carr home in Yonkers—not North Dakota, which made tracing the plate futile —and departed for New York on January 31. It is certain he didn't know he was now being sought for questioning. 

On February 10, he sent a Valentine's card to Linda O'Connor, and conducted a lengthy phone conversation with her the night of the eleventh, several hours after I spotted his car. I would later learn that during this conversation with Linda he said "the cops were hot on his trail and he'd have to leave [New York] for a while." He told Linda he'd contact her soon. 

On February 14, leaving his car behind, he unexpectedly flew into Minot, and he died forty-eight hours later. He hadn't planned to return to Minot for months. 

John Carr was running. 

The information we uncovered convinced us Carr was involved with Berkowitz, but there was nothing we could do. The authorities in New York had shut us down. I finally called Sal DeTorio at the Sheriff's Department and was told: "There are indications of cult activity in Berkowitz's neighborhood, but we can't prove it." 

This was a strong comment, supporting what I'd been working toward all along. But DeTorio offered no specific information, and revealed nothing about the death of John Carr, although I'd later learn there was a lot of data in hand. 

I also tried to elicit cooperation from North Dakota authorities, but was rebuffed there as well. With nowhere to turn, I delved heavily into my corporate job, hoping to hide my frustrations in the pages of the magazine I edited. But the case kept gnawing at me, and I commiserated weekly with friends at Oliver's in White Plains, where the bartenders also chimed in with suggestions and bits of information they'd picked up. 

Ironically, two of them, Dave Spence and Steve Sturz, were friends of Norman Bing, the young supervisor Fred Cowan was gunning for when he terrorized the Neptune warehouse in New Rochelle a year before. Bing, who was in frail health, escaped injury by hiding under a desk that endless day, but his condition had steadily deteriorated since. He appeared at the bar on occasion, a shadow of his former self. He'd die several years later, effectively the final victim of neo-Nazi Fred Cowan. 

But despite some encouragement at Oliver's during the dreary late winter of 1978, it was starkly evident that most people wanted to believe Berkowitz had acted alone. The dread was still very much alive. 

In mid-April, I began dating an attractive brunette secretary named Georgiana (Gi), a former Queens resident. At twenty four, she'd been affected by the fear that engulfed New York's women a year earlier, and to my surprise she expressed interest in the later developments. It was a welcome change from the setbacks and blank stares Jim and I often endured. 

On our first evening together, we went to dinner at Thwaite's restaurant on City Island in the Bronx—a quaint finger of land on the edge of Long Island Sound which harbored marinas, bait and tackle shops and a number of excellent seafood establishments. On the way back, I realized it was the first anniversary of the Suriani-Esau murders and we drove to that scene and to that of Donna Lauria's death a few blocks to the east. 

I pulled into the same darkened spot on the service road where Valentina and Alex parked, and explained what had happened that night. Rather than feeling fright, Gi was inquisitive and struck by a somber reverence. The narrow street was deserted and the dim light from a distant streetlamp flickered in the haze as we talked. 

"One year ago tonight," I said quietly. "And in the next instant they were gone. What's that song out now—'Dust in the Wind'?" 

"I close my eyes; only for a moment and the moment's gone," she recited. 

"Yes, that's it. And who's here in their place exactly one year later and up to his damned neck in all of it? I never would have believed it. I used to live a normal life. And now Berkowitz is only a couple of weeks from taking the fall for everything. It's almost finished—dust in the wind." 

"It's not over for you yet," Gi replied. "I think you know that." 

"I don't think I make a very good Don Quixote," I answered. "I have an aversion to windmills." 

"Don't you think you owe it to yourself, to Jim and maybe even to the victims who died here?" she asked. 

For a long moment we sat in silence. A thousand images of that shooting and the past eight months spun in my mind. Nothing was clear; there were only fractured flashes of myriad events. 

"I just don't know anymore," I finally said. "I simply just don't know. Let's get out of here now. We've paid our respects." 

"You haven't finished paying yours yet," she remarked. "Not by a long shot." 

The words just hung in the air. Starting the engine, I pulled from the haunting parking spot and drove back to White Plains, nudging the speed limit all the way. 

A week later, the hammer fell again as my close friend Ben Carucci died at forty-four. He and his wife, Lee, were opening their summer home when death struck. I was deeply saddened by the loss and observed from a distant daze as Berkowitz prepared to plead guilty. In a final gesture, I phoned one of his attorneys, Leon Stern, and urged him to confront Berkowitz with the evidence we'd found. A few days later, Stern's associate, Ira Jultak, advised me Berkowitz refused to answer any of the questions. 

"We're interested in John Carr, and Michael, too," Jultak told me. "But we're getting no cooperation at all from our client." 

The way was finally cleared. There were no options left, and on May 8 Berkowitz stoically entered guilty pleas in Brooklyn before a panel of three judges—one from each borough in which shootings occurred—in a courtroom jammed with spectators, press and victims' families. I couldn't bring myself to attend, but Jim, rousing himself from his own adversity, covered the session for us. 

It was, as many noted, a carefully programmed event. No trick or probing questions were put to Berkowitz. His answers were mainly "yes" and "no" responses stipulating that he indeed committed all the crimes. And then it was over. 

With summer on the horizon, I retreated to Fire Island for three weeks in July to decide what to do in the future. Our old friends were also there. Along with the socializing, I spent several hours discussing the case with Carl Kelly, an N.Y.P.D officer. 

He wasn't surprised that the evidence, as we then knew it, was disregarded, and was concerned that the case would eventually tarnish the whole of the N.Y.P.D. "The information flowed upward," he said. "There were only a few people at the top who had access to all the details. 

"This case is a hornet's nest," he added, indicating the folders he'd read. "It was so big they didn't dare admit they might have screwed it up. A lot of cops would be ticked off to know all this was allowed to go on." 

"The precious 'system' strikes again," I responded bitterly. "And Mister District Attorney Eugene Gold is one of its main components." 

"Those people aren't going to like you guys at all if you keep on with this," Carl warned. 

"So what else is new? Mitteager might end up in prison as it is." 

And it was through the beleaguered Mitteager that the initial upswing would come. 

At the end of July, Jim sent word to the beach that Allan Wolper, a columnist for the SoHo Weekly News in Manhattan, had expressed interest in the bribery case. "The photo thing goes hand in hand with the conspiracy angle," Jim explained, when I phoned him from the dock. "I'll tell Wolper about all of it. And if he decides to write it up, maybe both stories can come out." 

For the first time since late February a wisp of optimism drifted in the air. Allan Wolper was indeed interested in the photo case and said that he'd reference the search for accomplices in that context. He subsequently devoted numerous columns to the saga of "Sam Sleeps," wondering aloud why the Post escaped indictment. And, true to his word, he cautiously raised the conspiracy flag. Finally, someone was listening. 

Buoyed by the positive turn, Jim and I sought out several principals in the .44 case, including key Brooklyn witness Tommy Zaino, who observed the Moskowitz-Violante attack from his borrowed blue Corvette. Zaino's statements added more optimism. We were now convinced that Berkowitz wasn't alone that night and almost certain that he didn't shoot the young couple, either. 

Zaino also revealed that 10th Homicide Det. Ed Zigo asked him not to talk to us, which only sparked Zaino's curiosity because he had remained inwardly troubled by the police assertion that the long-haired man he saw pull the trigger was Berkowitz. It was Zaino who was told by police that Berkowitz might have drenched his short, curly hair with water to make it appear long and straight. 

"Did they say he carried a garden hose with him, or did he just duck under the hydrant he was parked at?" Jim asked incredulously. 

"Hey, I didn't buy that, either," Zaino said. 

After hearing Zaino's account, which hadn't reached the public, it wasn't difficult to see why Zigo—who knew us from the meeting at the Tenth months before—tried to discourage him from cooperating. 

Meanwhile, another important event was dawning on the legal front. After his arrest, the financially strapped Mitteager secured the services of attorney Felix Gilroy, head of Staten Island's Legal Aid Society. 

Gilroy, an affable, quick-witted lawyer in his late thirties, listened intently as Jim filled him in on both the bribery case and the Son of Sam investigation. In due course, he came to believe that Berkowitz was part of a conspiracy. During one brainstorming session among the three of us, the groundwork was laid for a unique legal strategy. 

Since bribery was often considered a crime of "intent," it was reasonable to seek to establish that Mitteager's intentions were aboveboard. It would also be beneficial to find a witness who could shed some light on the intrigue at Kings County Hospital. 

Gilroy then filed a motion before State Supreme Court Justice Ernst Rosenberger in Brooklyn. In early October, he received the judge's ruling and called to tell me what it was. 

"Pack your bags and your questions," he said. "We're going to meet the Son of Sam." 

to be continued...next
PART II WEB OF CONSPIRACY: 
THE DOMINOES FALL