Conversaciones con asesinos: Las cintas del Hijo de Sam

In the summer of 1976, a killer brought terror to New York, randomly killing people and shooting them as they sat in their cars.

I didn't know a huge deal about Berkowitz. In episodes one and two, we're given real insight into the mind of the Son of Sam. We learn what happened to him in his youth and adult life. Berkowitz is an unusual character; he doesn't seem to follow the same pattern or have the same traits.

Episodes one and two were very good and insightful. The third episode was a little slow and somewhat padded out; had it been two episodes long, it would have worked better, although I was fascinated by Wendy Savino's story.

I'm always fascinated by what life must have been like in New York in the 1970s; it must have been quite something. Berkowitz was clearly able to exploit the lawlessness of the district.

As is always the case with these documentaries, there is some incredible footage from that time and some remarkable interviews. The linking and cutaway scenes work very well; they help to drive the story forward.

Definitely an interesting watch.

7/10.

Let's be sure that laypeople are in full possession of the facts before viewing this program:

1.) All of the canonical Son of Sam crimes were committed with .44 caliber handguns. Wendy Savino was shot with a .32.

2.) Savino didn't fit the Son of Sam victim profile. Most conspicuously, she was significantly older than any of the Son of Sam victims.

3.) The official narrative holds that David Berkowitz acted alone. Eyewitnesses reported that Savino's shooter "drove off in a car with two other men" (New York Daily News, April 11, 1976). If Berkowitz shot Wendy Savino, who were these two men? Who assisted his getaway?

4.) The shooter "probably was Italian," Savino said at the time (see aforementioned Daily News story). The police sketch reflected that observation.

The case made by the NYPD for Savino as a Son of Sam attack is laughable, and the case made for David Berkowitz as the lone Son of Sam shooter is equally spurious. What the average observer may not know is that Berkowitz never stood trial: he simply confessed to all of the attacks, and that was that. Evidence of the involvement of other individuals and vehicles was swept under the rug; the numerous holes in Berkowitz's 1977 confession were ignored. Berkowitz didn't know the color of Rosemary Keenan's car, for example. He told police that the vehicle was red, but it was navy blue. Also, he insisted that Joanne Lomino and Donna DeMasi were running up the porch steps of the Lomino home when they were shot. Not so, Lomino told prosecutors (quoting from Maury Terry's "The Ultimate Evil"): "We were on the sidewalk talking. We walked over to the porch and we were standing for about five minutes. I heard a voice, then turned around and the guy pulled a gun and started shooting at us." (The Lomino-DeMasi shooter was described by both victims as a slim man with straight, dirty blond hair. After his arrest, Berkowitz told police that he "just popped out" from a lot around the corner before shooting the young women - but no such lot existed.) These are basic details that Berkowitz would have known if he had actually been the lone attacker.

Ballistic evidence likewise came up short: all of the Son of Sam attacks were *not*, in fact, linked to a single weapon. The bullets recovered from the scene of the Carl Denaro-Rosemary Keenan shooting, for example, were too deformed to be traced back to any gun - Berkowitz's or otherwise. (And who was the shaggy blond-haired shooter in the final Son of Sam attack, that of Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante? Berkowitz didn't look even remotely like this individual.)

Bear these facts in mind, and reiterate them, when someone tells you that David Berkowitz was solely responsible for the Son of Sam attacks or that he was the shooter of Wendy Savino. "Conversations with a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes" is irresponsible in both conception and presentation, and prominently features one self-appointed "authority" with an extensively documented history of insulting and threatening other members of the research community and even surviving Son of Sam victims. These attacks are of the grossest sort, and the individual in question has made himself an object of universal loathing.

Son of Sam is not an unapproachably esoteric case. Portions of investigative journalist Maury Terry's case notes have been made publicly available; by checking the names of additional suspects against newspaper records, and making phone calls to individual sources, you can confirm much of what is alleged to have happened. The answer is yes: Berkowitz had accomplices, there *was* a cult in Yonkers, and its members were involved in precisely the kind of activity (child trafficking, drugs, et al.) that Terry, Berkowitz, and other sources have said they were.

Joe Berlinger's recent documentary fails to deliver a historically accurate or responsibly produced account of the Wendy Savino shooting-or the broader Son of Sam case. As someone who has spent years researching this case, I can say with confidence that the documentary not only includes glaring factual errors, but also gives a platform to unreliable sources and misrepresents key interview material.

Chief among the concerns is the involvement of podcaster Manny Grossman, whose work is widely regarded in the research community as riddled with disinformation. Grossman, alongside former first-grade detective Mike Lorenzo, claimed to contact the NYPD cold case unit after finding a sketch of a supposed Savino-related suspect in the Donna Lauria file. However, the Lauria case has long been suspected to be an organized crime hit-dating back to its initial investigation.

One early suspect was Vinnie Minutolo, Donna Lauria's ex-boyfriend, who owned a .44 caliber weapon and has a documented criminal history and questionable ties to organized crime. He had a documented history of stalking and harassing Lauria after their breakup. After the shooting, Jody Valente fled the state out of fear for her safety.

Despite this, Grossman recommended Minutolo for the documentary, and Berlinger included him-an editorial decision that severely undermines the film's credibility.

Even more troubling is Grossman and Lorenzo's claim that David Berkowitz was living out of his car after leaving the Cassara household on April 8, 1976, linking this transient period to the shooting of Wendy Savino the next day. This is verifiably false. Berkowitz applied for his Pine Street apartment on March 27, 1976, was approved by March 30, and moved in around April 1. His post-arrest warrant for non-payment of rent confirms he was a legal tenant at the time. He was never living in his vehicle.

When this factual discrepancy was brought to Grossman's attention, he responded by posting a selectively edited image of Berkowitz's lease application, mislabeling it a lease agreement, and attempting to mislead his audience-until he was called out for manipulating evidence. This is not only irresponsible journalism but a breach of basic research ethics.

Equally troubling is the documentary's failure to meaningfully engage with well-documented facts about Wendy Savino herself. Savino was under investigation for financial misconduct at the time of her shooting, and had been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury in late 1976. She refused to return to the U. S. to testify. While the exact nature of that subpoena remains unclear, it coincides with ongoing scrutiny of her insurance brokerage business.

Savino had numerous connections that could have drawn attention to her case-especially after Berkowitz's arrest in August 1977. She had personal ties to Bronx District Attorney Mario Merola (with whom she reportedly had a "history") and access to publisher Christopher Hagedorn. In a FOIA release regarding her case, organized crime figure Richard J. Naclerio is mentioned, but the NYPD appears to have never questioned him. Public records show that Savino was involved in real estate ventures with Barbara Naclerio, Richard's wife. Despite this, Savino attempted to present herself as merely a "housewife"-a narrative clearly contradicted by public documentation.

This pattern of omission and distortion runs throughout the documentary. Interviews with participants were also taken out of context, giving a misleading impression of both events and individuals. Several contributors have since expressed concern about how their words were used. This has been an eye-opening experience for me in particular.

In October 2024, at Berkowitz's own request, I submitted my research on the Savino case to Berlinger's team for inclusion. At the time, they were already in post-production and understandably unable to incorporate the material. So, I opted to begin to publish my findings through a blog in order to support Berkowitz.

The final product of this documentary does nothing to advance historical understanding of the Savino shooting or the broader case. The result is a sensationalized narrative shaped by questionable sources, selective editing, and avoidable errors.

While it is understandable that there are legal challenges to presenting certain material, the documentary's editorial choices raise a larger question: if these limitations prevented the filmmakers from telling the story truthfully and accurately, would it not have been better to forgo making it at all?

Further clouding the documentary's ethical standards is Grossman's alleged violation of a non-disclosure agreement concerning the investigative files of Maury Terry. Those documents, once in the hands of filmmaker Joshua Zeman were mishandled. Zeman has yet to enforce the NDA violation with Grossman. The fallout has made Berkowitz's life extremely difficult in maximum security, culminating in his public retraction on June 8, 2023, where he stated he acted alone-an apparent attempt to end the ongoing chaos.

Berlinger's failure to properly vet Grossman is baffling, especially considering he did vet another podcaster in early 2024-reportedly at Grossman's urging. According to a credible source, Grossman spent over an hour on the phone with Berlinger to discourage him from contacting this individual for participation in the documentary.

This selective gatekeeping, coupled with a disregard for fact-checking and source reliability, seriously undermines the integrity of the project. The handling of the Wendy Savino case in particular exemplifies the dangers of blurring entertainment with investigative journalism-especially when the stakes involve organized crime, historical truth, and real lives affected by decades of misinformation.

This is the result of sheer desperation on NYPD's part. It's impossible for them to honestly address the evidence that David Berkowitz was not the lone Son of Sam shooter, but they're taking advantage of growing public interest in the case by dredging up an attack with no credible link to Son of Sam (wrong caliber of weapon, wrong victim profile, shooter flees the scene with two other individuals when Berkowitz is alleged to have acted alone) and hoping that it will serve as an effective distraction.

This documentary is strictly for non-researchers, and that includes resident "Son of Sam expert" Manny Grossman, who never undertook a moment's research when I worked with him. Other people present him with material; he acts as a mouthpiece. Despite his preening as an authority on Son of Sam, he betrays a lack of confidence in his own position by launching nasty personal attacks against researchers, other podcasters and even his own listeners. Who would conduct himself in such a reprehensible manner if he actually believed that he had solved the case?

What we have here is not an examination of the evidence, but a curated presentation which OMITS abundant evidence that Son of Sam was a group effort. (The majority of that evidence was gathered by late investigative reporter Maury Terry, though other researchers - myself included - have followed in his wake.) "The Son of Sam Tapes" is nothing more than the same hole-ridden story that NYPD has been peddling for almost fifty years.

Well, this is the 4th entry in the Conversations with a Killer documentary series on Netflix, and once again, it's a pretty solid Joe Berlinger effort. Having directed the other 3, Berlinger knows how to strike a balance between handling the sensitive side of the killings and conveying the essence of the series' title, i.e., the tapes. Berkowitz was not an easy person to understand - some of his actions stemmed from deep-seated trauma, anger, and hatred (right from his unsettling childhood), while some others felt spontaneous, attention-seeking, and trying to capitalize on notoriety.

Like the rest, we get 3 episodes of roughly an hour each, told in a non-linear fashion, cutting and stitching across various timelines in Berkowitz's life. The re-enactments are pretty good, as is the case with Berlinger's earlier works, blended with real footage from those times, adding to the retro intensity. How Berkowitz held a large section of NYC in fear for over a year is something that's worthy of a larger discussion. I appreciate how Berlinger concluded the series with the friends, lovers, and acquaintances of the victims sharing why they believe the victims deserve to be remembered beyond being Berkowitz's "targets."

P. S. Parts of episode 3 felt filler-like, especially because that was extensively covered in The Sons of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness.