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five years ago new york city quilt’Son of Sam Killer David Berkowitz Back in the 1970s, a teenage girl was shot to death Bronx Now a retired detective believes her killing may be linked to Berkowitz as he calls for the case to be reopened.
Mike Lorenzo, whose father was involved in the Berkowitz investigation, told reporters new york post The 1970 murder of 16-year-old Margaret Inglesia bears striking similarities to the crimes that would later make Berkowitz one of America’s most notorious serial killers. American history.
“This is a case that needs to be reexamined,” said Lorenzo, who works with Son of Sam expert Manny Grossman, urging new york police department Reopening decades-old cases. Lorenzo worked for the Yonkers Police Department for 20 years before retiring in 2008.
“This was the Son of Sam before the Son of Sam.”
Inglesia was walking home from a party around 2 a.m. on October 18, 1970, when she was shot on East 169th Street between Morris Avenue and Grant Avenue in the Morris-Sarnia section of the Bronx. Witness reports at the time said she was shot once in the front and twice in the back as she lay dying.
She was killed in the only fatal shooting of six attacks by an unknown sniper in the same neighborhood over two months that year. No arrests were ever made.
But Lorenzo and Grossman believe Berkowitz, who was 17 at the time, may have been the culprit.
From June 1970 to June 1971, Berkowitz worked at his father’s Melrose Hardware Company, about a mile from the attacks, before joining the U.S. Army.
They also point to evidence discovered after Berkowitz’s 1977 arrest, including a 100-yard shooting target found in his home, suggesting he may have been honing his long-range shooting skills before his infamous killing spree.
“Why would he have a 100-yard target? He’s not a hunter,” Lorenzo pointed out.
There are significant differences in this theory. Berkowitz confirmed that attacks in 1976 and 1977 were carried out at close range with .44 caliber revolvers, often through car windows. The Bronx sniper used a .22 caliber rifle. Still, Lorenzo thinks the similarities outweigh the differences.
“It wasn’t next door to my dad’s store, but it wasn’t 20 miles away, and it wasn’t in another borough, which would fit his MO,” Lorenzo said. “It’s the same thing as the Son of Sam murders, just with a different gun. Shooting a car is also sniping.”
new york city In the 1970s, the economy was in ruins—the economy was tight, crime was rampant, and people were terrified. But between July 1976 and August 1977, the fear escalated further when a faceless gunman stalked young women and couples in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn.
The killer, who called himself “Son of Sam,” taunted police and the media with handwritten letters and random acts of violence. Berkowitz, a Yonkers postal worker, was eventually identified as the gunman who killed six people and wounded seven others, including teenagers and young couples who were sitting in parked cars.
After more than a year of false tips and growing panic, a parking ticket near the shooting scene eventually led police to Berkowitz’s car, and he was arrested on August 10, 1977.
In 1978, he was found guilty of six counts of second-degree murder and seven counts of attempted second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Berkowitz, 72, remains incarcerated at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Ulster County.
Lorenzo said the Bronx sniper case has haunted him long before he began working with Grossman on other Son of Sam-related investigations.
“I really think there’s something in these documents,” Lorenzo said.
The pair had previously helped uncover a previously unknown victim of Berkowitz’s… Wendy Savino, survivor of 1976 shooting She was hit five times while sitting in a car in the Bronx.
“I discovered Wendy because I saw that the sketch she did for the shooter matched Berkowitz perfectly,” Grossman told Post. “Then I found a police report that showed her shooting had all the hallmarks of a Son of Sam shooting.”
He then called Savino and said she told him she had identified Berkowitz as the shooter after his arrest in 1977. “She will never forget his face,” he added.
The findings were later brought to the now retired new york police department Police sources said Detective First Class Robert Klein concluded Savino was shot by Berkowitz, although Berkowitz denied the crime in a jail interview.
Interest in the Son of Sam case has surged again in recent years, driven by Netflix. documentary series Berkowitz’s crimes are reexamined using never-before-heard prison audio and archival footage.
youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=mLENEDZK3h4&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.the-independent.com%2F&source_ve_path=MjM4NTE
Grossman believes the Inglesia case deserves closer study — regardless of whether Berkowitz is ultimately proven to be the killer.
“This is a major forgotten case,” Grossman said. “There is a criminal there, and we believe he is Berkowitz.”