Summer of 'Son of Sam' a world away

By Justin Rocket Silverman, amNewYork Staff Writer | jsilverman@am-ny.com

August 10, 2007

Thirty years ago Friday night, police surrounded the Son of Sam's apartment in Yonkers, finally arresting the most infamous serial killer in the city's history. It was a turning point in the dark summer of 1977.

Just a few weeks earlier, at 9:34 p.m. on a Wednesday night, a citywide blackout plunged the city into chaos. It took 25 hours for the lights to come back on, and by then the FDNY had responded to 1,000 fires, the NYPD had arrested 3,500 people and the world saw a metropolis poised at the brink of collapse.

"It's remarkable actually, just how different the city is today," said Jonathan Mahler, author of 'Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning,' a popular book about that summer.

"You have to imagine a city covered in graffiti. Times Square was filled with XXX theaters and prostitutes. The piers were crumbling and the whole area by the rivers was a wasteland, totally unpoliced. There were so many neighborhoods where you just didn't go at night."

The groundwork for the summer of '77 was laid a few years before, when the city, billions of dollars in debt, laid off 20,000 city workers and shut down 26 firehouses. Among the laid off were 5,000 cops.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, then a lieutenant in the 10th Precinct in Hells Kitchen, called the layoffs "demoralizing and debilitating."

During a recent panel discussion on the Son of Sam, Kelly recalled catching a murderer at the scene of a stabbing with blood on his hands, and then waiting 20 minutes before a squad car could be found to take the prisoner to jail.

"It always seemed like we didn't have enough cops to do anything," he recalled.

Crime rates reflected this reality. In 1977 there were 1,557 murders in the city (last year there were 596). In 1977 there were 179,000 burglaries (down to 22,000 last year).

Yet as dangerous as the city was, nothing could compare to the unique brand of terror wrought by the Son of Sam himself, 24-year-old David Berkowitz.

The serial killer terrified the city with a string of utterly random shootings that left six people dead and seven injured, most in Queens and Brooklyn. When it was reported that many of his victims were long-haired brunettes, women took to cutting their hair short or wearing blond wigs.

"It was a nasty thing with that guy, he sure changed the whole summer for me," said newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin, who received letters from the Son of Sam during the height of his terror.

"The way this guy wrote, he could have put me out of business. It was like an insane man hurling sparks out of a raging fireplace."

Despite the many dangers of that summer, New York was, as it always is, also a scene of innovation and progress. The World Trade Center complex was completed during that summer, and the first supersonic commercial flight from London landed at JFK. The first MRI was tested in Brooklyn.

There was also an energy of freedom and creativity on the gritty streets that young New Yorkers living in modern gentrified neighborhoods may never know.

"I don't think there is anything wrong with a little bit of nostalgia for a certain feel the city had back then, a certain wildness," Mahler said.

"It was no coincidence that in this moment of decay and danger, great cultural movements flowered. From punk rock to disco to graffiti, these all grew out of the city as it was at that time."

Costs of living 1977-2007
-Average one-bedroom apartment rental in Manhattan: $250 vs. $2,600
-Gallon of gas: 65 cents vs. $3.15
-Hershey Bar: 20 cents vs. 85 cents
-BMW 3 Series Sedan: $7,990 vs. $32,400
-Movie ticket: $2.25 vs. $11
-Minimum wage: $2.30 vs. $7.15
-Apple II computer $1,398 (with 4K RAM) vs. iMac $1,199(with 1GB RAM)

Top hits of '77
-Music: The Eagles "Hotel California," Bee Gees "How Deep is Your Love." Fleetwood Mac "Go Your Own Way."
-Movies: Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Saturday Night Fever
-TV: Laverne and Shirley, Happy Days, Three's Company