Serial Killers

How could one man conceive of committing three hundred killings? Henry Lee Lucas was probably the only serial killer whose killings had an unmistakably rational basis in his psychological upbringing. Born in 1936, this man would challenge law enforcement to prove, disprove, and prove again just which killings he was culpable for. Was Lucas making the whole thing up, or was his legal representation managing a master stroke of defense?

The childhood of Henry Lee Lucas set the stage for a violently unbalanced life and an irrational attitude towards socialization, sexuality, and crime. Yet the mind of Henry Lee Lucas would prove sharp as a tack, prompting cynical law enforcement personnel to doubt the viability of the unsolved cases. The boy who was stabbed by a brother in the eye and dressed like a girl by his mother would make the front page of American newspapers and on news bellwether “60 Minutes”.

Found guilty of the second degree murder of his mother, Lucas had been let out of prison in 1970 due to overcrowding. The visual image of Henry Lee Lucas, his face distorted by a destroyed eye, frightened a generation of awestruck Americans tantalized by his tales of triple digit killing. In an era when such killings were just beginning to make the news, the deeds of Henry Lee Lucas astonished a rapt public. Law enforcement tripped over each other trying to close cases. The television and newspaper coverage detailed double digit confessions of killings allegedly performed for no other reason than a random taste for blood.

Lucas never denied being raised in want and claimed “I hated everybody.” Despite a tendency to brag, Henry Lee Lucas was believed culpable for several dozen filed murder cases. Yet if Henry Lee Lucas was to be believed, there were hundreds more waiting to be discovered. Could the uneducated son of poor mountain people with little to no resources really kill that many people without witnesses or evidence?
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The lives of five young women and one man, their families’ grief, and the tension of a city under siege are the heritage of the Son of Sam killer, one of the most notorious serial killers ever. North and South of La Guardia airport, inside New York City for about a year residents never knew when a pair of hands would reach for them, or when a gunshot would herald their last breath. Killing some but leaving seven others wounded, the “Son of Sam” haunted the Bronx and Brooklyn streets in the dawn hours, leaving a grisly aftermath.

The city of New York was undeniably held in the grip of terror in the mid-1970’s by a Brooklyn born killer known as the “Son of Sam”. The Son of Sam was also known by his weapon of choice as the “44-caliber killer”. But the pathology of this killer was so twisted that it was not the anonymous city life or face-in-the-crowd anomaly, or even sexual lust, that drove him wild, but a hybrid chain of attempts of one man’s mind to make sense of it all.

Born in 1953, David Berkowitz might have been any child in the northernmost precincts of NYC. The child of kosher Orthodox Jews, Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz enjoyed their family life with their adopted son. But the concept of being an adopted child and the unwelcome peer mockery for this in a time of little tolerance subdued Berkowitz’ spirit. An only child, Berkowitz would have few confidantes and no peers to know of his internal torments.
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