‘I want people to understand what really happened’: did the Son of Sam serial killer act alone?

Netflix’s The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness re-examines the infamous New York serial killer through the eyes of one man’s obsession with the case

For anybody who grew up in New York City, this is the case,’ said the series’ director, Joshua Zeman. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix
For anybody who grew up in New York City, this is the case,’ said the series’ director, Joshua Zeman. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix

The Sons of Sam, a four-part series which jumps off from the panic of summer 1977, argues that Berkowitz probably did not act alone, based primarily on the work of the late investigator Maury Terry, whose zeal for solving the case spiraled from grounded skepticism to manic obsession over the course of several decades. Terry, who died at 69 in 2015, was initially skeptical of the NYPD’s explanation for the case, not least because the department was under enormous public pressure to capture the killer and lock up the investigation. Although Berkowitz eventually claimed, from prison for six consecutive life sentences, that he acted in concert with others as part of a satanic cult, the official narrative remained that Berkowitz was the sole culprit.

Link to article: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/may/05/the-sons-of-sam-netflix-docuseries-serial-killer