SUMMER OF FEAR, Part 1: Son of Sam and the Bankrupt New York That Let David Berkowitz Start Killing

Fifty years ago this month, New York City was broke, burning, and about to meet the .44 caliber killer. In Part 1 of the five-part series Summer of Fear, Garret Fisher walks into the New York of 1976: a bankrupt city $14 billion in debt, five thousand police officers laid off, a police union handing out a survival pamphlet titled "Welcome to Fear City," the South Bronx going up in insurance fires, and six million people crowding the harbor to watch the tall ships sail in for the Bicentennial. Twenty-five days after those ships sailed, on July 29, 1976, eighteen-year-old EMT Donna Lauria was shot dead in a parked car in Pelham Bay, and Jody Valenti, nineteen, was wounded beside her. Nobody knew a serial killer had started. Over the months that followed, Carl Denaro, Rosemary Keenan, Donna DeMasi, and Joanne Lomino were shot in two more attacks across Queens — and no one connected them, because the precincts didn't talk. This is the story of David Berkowitz, and of the city that wasn't looking.

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