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Yes, Son of Sam Slept Here
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
Jim Faulkner’s house figured in the Son of Sam case.
Rising above him is the apartment building that was the
home of the killer, David Berkowitz.
By COREY KILGANNON
Published: February 15, 2007
YONKERS — The name has been changed. So has the address. But still, 30 years after 1977 — the so-called Summer of Sam — they still stop and stare.
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Hal Goldenberg/Associated Press
David Berkowitz
“People come here all the
time asking, ‘Is this really the Son of Sam
building?’ ” said Fuad Naji, 19, a resident of
the building, 42 Pine Street. “I know they’re
not from Yonkers because everyone around here knows 42 Pine
is the Son of Sam building — even me, and I
wasn’t even born when this guy was loose.”
Some memories are hard to shake, and try as they may, the
management and residents of 42 Pine Street have been unable
to let the sands of time obscure the fact that David
Berkowitz once slept here.
Mr. Berkowitz, 53, the postal worker who terrorized New
York with his “Lovers’ Lane” killing
spree, lived for 16 months in Apartment 7E here, a studio
with sweeping views of the Hudson River.
Apartment 7E was immortalized in the tabloids as
“Satan’s Lair.” Photographs taken after
his arrest let the world see the room with the mattress
flat on the shag rug, the floors littered with books and
pamphlets, the walls adorned with cryptic messages and
clippings. Around holes in the walls, bizarre notes were
scrawled saying that little baby killers lived inside.
Mr. Berkowitz was arrested in front of the building on Aug.
10, 1977, after getting into his gold Ford Galaxie with his
.44-caliber revolver by his side. He would later plead
guilty to shooting 13 people in New York City, killing six
of them. He is serving life upstate at the Sullivan
Correctional Facility.
Three decades ago, this seven-story, 110-unit building on a
narrow street just off North Broadway was known as 35 Pine
Street. The address, in countless news clips and books,
became synonymous with evil, and the street number was
later changed to 42. The rental building (Mr. Berkowitz
paid $230 a month) went co-op, and Pine Hill Towers, as it
was known, was renamed Horizon Hill.
Still, they come.
“We still get film crews around here,” said Jim
Faulkner, 58, who owns 316 Warburton Avenue, the house once
owned by Sam Carr. Mr. Berkowitz claimed he took orders to
kill from Mr. Carr’s black Labrador retriever, even
scrawling “Sam Carr — My Master” near his
mattress.
Mr. Faulkner, a building contractor and lifelong Yonkers
resident, ran last year as
a Republican for Congress in an unsuccessful
challenge to
Representative Eliot L. Engel.
And yes, Mr. Faulkner does have a dog: a mutt named Duke.
“People always ask me, ‘Does he talk to
you?’ ” Mr. Faulkner said. Asked about the
wooden ornament in the shape of a Labrador retriever that
he keeps on his lawn, he chuckled and said, “You can
make of that what you want.”
At one point, the apartment building hired security guards
to keep the public and the press away. But they returned on
anniversaries, and especially in 1999 when Spike Lee
released “Summer of Sam,” about the killing
spree, parts of which the director filmed in Yonkers. Then
in 2002, a jealous former boyfriend murdered a 20-year-old
woman in the building.
The apartment is at the end of the hallway, which has a
rough white finish and gray carpeting. On its blue metal
door, the number is highlighted in black, unlike those on
the other apartment doors nearby.
Louis Pena, a real estate agent who lives in the apartment
next door, said he now owns the studio. Reached by
telephone, Mr. Pena declined further comment.
“To me it was a tragedy, but it’s past
history,” he said. “I wish people
wouldn’t keep harping on it. Let me let it go at
that.”
Many other building residents also refused to talk about
David Berkowitz. A man who said he was the superintendent
said, “I don’t want to have nothing to do with
that,” and slammed his door.
An official with Quantum Management, which handles the
building, said yesterday that he could not comment and hung
up the telephone.
A young architect named Douglas Cutler bought the apartment
in 1982, when it was first offered as a co-op. Mr. Cutler,
49, now an architect in Wilton, Conn., said he paid $15,000
for it and spent four years living there with no knowledge
of the Berkowitz connection.
“Naturally, they kept it a secret because it would
hurt the sale,” he said. “Most people
weren’t aware of it because the building tried to
erase it. I didn’t really care because it was all
cleaned up and renovated, and anyway, I’m not a trash
news kind of guy. It’s just bricks and mortar and
gypsum board. It was a great place, great views of the
Palisades.”
Just before he sold the apartment in 1986 for about
$50,000, a neighbor told him the studio’s legacy.
Yes,
Son of Sam Slept Here
Published: February 15, 2007
(Page 2 of 2)
“A woman on the floor told me,” Mr. Cutler said. “She told me a story that she was putting her garbage down the hallway trash chute one time when the killings were still unsolved. She jumped when someone suddenly appeared behind her, but when she saw it was Berkowitz, she said, ‘Oh, David, it’s only you.’ Only him. She was relieved.”
Pablo Fandino, 29, who recently bought a sunny studio down the hall from 7E, said he paid roughly $100,000 and has a $400 monthly maintenance fee.
“They never told me anything about this man,” said Mr. Fandino, a Colombian immigrant who works as a systems analyst.
“It would not have made a difference. I’ve never even heard of him. They just said the seventh floor is the best, with the best views, and the building has a pool and a gym and a sauna.”
Lisbel Ramirez, 21, a bank teller, lives with her husband in 6E, the apartment directly below 7E. She said they bought that studio last summer for about $50,000 and have a monthly maintenance fee of $300.
“When I told my friends I was moving here, they told me this was his building,” she said. “It’s scary.”
In 1977, a volunteer deputy sheriff named Craig Glassman lived in 6E. Mr. Berkowitz sent him threatening letters ranting about Satan and demons, and on Aug. 6 set a fire in front of Mr. Glassman’s door.
After the arrest, Mr. Glassman spoke of hearing Mr. Berkowitz constantly pacing back and forth overhead.
His daughter, Shayna Glassman, 19, of Mahopac, N.Y., was 4 years old when her father died in a car accident in 1991. She said her father had long claimed that investigators ignored his urgings to look into the unstable tenant living above him.
Ms. Glassman said on Tuesday that her family always felt Mr. Glassman had made a contribution to catching Mr. Berkowitz that had never been fully appreciated.
She has long worked to publicize her father’s role in the case by repeatedly doing presentations in school, beginning in fifth grade, and she plans on writing a screenplay about his involvement.
“I tell kids my dad lived below the Son of Sam and helped capture him, but they don’t even know who the Son of Sam is,” she said. “My dad’s father was named Sam and he’d write to my dad, and Berkowitz would see the letters, so to Berkowitz, my dad was the son of Sam.”
At 42 Pine Street, Ms. Ramirez looked down at the dented lower part of her door.
Referring to the fire Mr. Berkowitz set outside 6E, she said, “Is that the reason my door is so banged up?”
She said she learned about David Berkowitz from Spike Lee’s film.
“I’m kind of a scaredy-cat,” she said, “but it’s not like I lay awake at night staring at the ceiling wondering if his spirit is still up there.”