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I AM THE SON OF SAM!
 
David Berkowitz is serving six life terms for the Son of Sam murders in New York 25 years ago. Before his June parole hearing Berkowitz, now a born again Christian with his own website, declared that he doesn’t want to be released. John Vincent Sanders re-examines the case, asking whether Berkowitz was the only killer using the Son of Sam MO and if he was linked to a Black Magic underground.
 
 
As you clear the trees after an uphill climb in New York’s Untermyer Park, you cannot fail to notice what appears to be a rather bizarre-looking rock formation. Closer examination reveals iron handrails and other signs of human handiwork. Locals have always referred to the large structure more than 40ft (12.2m) high at its west face  as the Eagle’s Nest. It was erected about 75 years ago as a cascading fountain, and the gazebo at its summit offers a fine view of the Hudson River and the New Jersey Palisades.
 
 
The park was once the estate of multi-millionaire Samuel Untermyer, who had large stones from Great Britain incorporated into the fountain he built for his daughter’s wedding. There is reason to believe that the wealthy lawyer had an interest in arcane spiritual beliefs, and the design of the Eagle’s Nest suggests a deliberate attempt to imitate megalithic sites of Wiltshire. After Untermyer’s death in 1940, his sprawling estate was donated to the municipality of Yonkers, just north of New York City. At the north end of the park lay the classical gardens with their impressive mix of Greek style architecture and Assyrian style statuary. The gardens give way to the so called Thousand Steps leading down to other scenic viewpoints. Not far from the foot of the steps, in a densely overgrown area behind nearby St John’s Hospital, there once stood a large pump-house. For reasons never made public, it was knocked down about 15 years ago, and not even a trace of its foundation can be seen today.  
 
Untermyer Park and the demolished pumphouse once known as Devil’s Cave are more than points of local interest. Along with other nearby locations, they represent little known pieces in a jigsaw puzzle of mass murder and ongoing controversy.


 

Twenty-five years later, the satanic activity that used to occur in this area has become urban legend. The characteristics of Untermyer Park in particular made it a perfect location for such things; even today, fully half the grounds are densely wooded. Furthermore, several locations there, including the Eagle’s Nest and the so-called ‘temple’, are still tagged with occult/satanic graffiti, much of it recently applied. Population shifts over the last three decades have resulted in a large Hispanic presence in the area. An individual familiar with the neighborhood today assured me that evidence of Santeria ritual fowl sacrifices are occasionally found in woods adjacent to the Aqueduct. Former employees of nearby St John’s Hospital can still recall nights when chanting and torch flames were seen and heard in the depths of the woods, especially from the area of the now demolished Devil’s Cave. There are those who maintain that harmless teenagers were the only ones frequenting the backwoods at night during the Seventies, but that belief flies in the face of some disturbing facts. Over Christmas 1976, dead Alsatian dogs, with their ears carefully excised, were found on the Aqueduct just south of Untermyer Park. In November 1979, a Westchester County Police Officer stumbled upon a sinister night time gathering in the Lenoir Nature Preserve: a group of robed and hooded figures carrying torches and leading two leashed Alsatians.

 

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