Crime Stories of the Century
The awful acts of the past 100 years forced America to look at itself in the mirror
Berkowitz struck randomly at night or in the predawn hours, transforming traditionally indifferent New Yorkers into a city of 8 million panic-stricken people. Teens gave up favorite lovers' lane spots. Some women cut their hair, wore hats to hide it, or routinely wore it up, because he seemed to favor women with long, brown hair. "He was a fat, lumpy, little boy, and he shot young women in their cars when they weren't looking," says Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin, who covered the story for the Daily News.
Detectives finally caught Berkowitz after tracing a ticket on a cream-colored Ford Galaxy sedan parked illegally at a fire hydrant near his last shooting in Brooklyn to his Yonkers apartment building. When they found the car outside Berkowitz's suburban flat, they looked inside and saw a machine gun poking out of a sack and a letter with printing similar to other writings from the mysterious killer, who had identified himself as the Son of Sam. Berkowitz told police that he received "commands" from a man named Sam who lived 6,000 years ago and spoke to him through a dog. Police believed that Berkowitz was obsessed with a neighbor named Sam, who had a dog. After pleading guilty, Berkowitz was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each of the six slayings.
1980S
Jeffrey Dahmer, cannibal
He was a former chocolate factory worker with a fetish for flesh. In his putrid, one-bedroom apartment in Milwaukee, he saved painted skulls and severed heads, including one stashed in the fridge next to a box of baking soda. He had a kettle and a freezer of body parts. He stored torsos in a vat of acid. He drilled holes in his victims' heads and had sex with dead bodies. He chewed on body parts, once using Crisco and meat tenderizer on a biceps. Over 13 years, mostly through the excessive 1980s, Jeffrey Dahmer, alone in his poisoned world, was monstrous, repulsive, depraved. But the most frightening thing about Dahmer is what he was not: insane. He was objectively judged to be sane. He did what he did with his wits intact." He was a man who made a decision that he would satisfy himself," says E. Michael McCann, the Milwaukee district attorney who put Dahmer away in 1992. "He liked sex with dead bodies. It was the ultimate in self-indulgence."
In an interview with NBC's Dateline in March 1994, Dahmer said lust drove him to lure his victims, most of them black and gay, from bars, bus stops, and shopping malls, to his apartment, where he drugged, strangled, and dismembered them. "Once it happened the first time, it just seemed like it had control of my life from there on in," he said. "The killing was just a means to an end. That was the least satisfactory part. I didn't enjoy doing that. That's why I tried to create living zombies with . . . acid and the drill."
His killing spree started in 1978 with an 18-year-old hitchhiker whom Dahmer met and brought home for a few beers. Dahmer, who had just graduated from high school, battered him with a barbell, cut up the body, and scattered the crushed bones behind his parents' house. By the time he was arrested on July 22, 1991, after a man he had handcuffed escaped from his apartment and flagged down a police car, Dahmer had killed 17 men and boys. He confessed, saying simply, "I carried it too far, that's for sure."
advertisement
