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Another young couple went to the cinema in New York on the night of 16 April 1977. They were 18-year-old Valentina Suriani and her boyfriend, 20-year-old Alexander Esau. After they had seen the film, they went on to a party. Around 3 a.m., they were parked in a borrowed Mercury Montego outside Valentina’s apartment building in the North Bronx, only three blocks from where Donna Lauria had been killed. Valentina was sitting on Alexander’s lap with her legs stretched out across the passenger seat and they were enjoying a prolonged series of goodnight kisses when bullets shattered the passenger window. Two hit Valentina’s head, killing her instantly. Another two hit Alexander Esau in the top of the head as he dived across the seat towards the passenger door. He died two hours later.

When the police arrived, they found a white envelope in the middle of the road by the car. It was addressed to Captain Joe Borelli, Timothy Dowd’s second-in-command. The letter was all in capitals and full of spelling mistakes. It appeared to be the work of a madman. The writer claimed that he had been ordered to kill by his father, who was a vampire. His father’s name, the writer said, was Sam – hence the killer’s macabre sobriquet ‘Son of Sam’. In the letter, he professed to love the people of Queens, but said he intended to kill more of them – particularly the women, which he spelt as if it rhymed with ‘demon’. The writer signed off with the words:

‘I SAY GOODBYE AND GOODNIGHT. POLICE:

LET ME HAUNT YOU WITH THESE WORDS; I’LL BE BACK! I’LL BE BACK! TO BE INTERPRETED AS – BANG BANG, BANG, BANG, BANK, BANG – UGH!! YOURS IN MURDER, MR. MONSTER.’

By the time the letter reached the police labs, eight policemen had handled it. Only tiny traces of the writer’s fingerprints remained. He appeared to have held the letter by the tips of his fingers and there was not enough of a print on the paper to identify the sender. Consequently, the police kept the existence of the letter secret. But they showed a copy to celebrated New York columnist Jimmy Breslin, who dropped hints about the letter in his column in the New York Daily News.

On 1 June 1977, Breslin himself received a letter. It had been posted two days before in Englewood, New Jersey, just over the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan. Although the Daily News was then the biggest selling newspaper in America – its offices on 42nd Street double as those of the Daily Planet in Superman films – it held back publication of the full letter for six days, instead reproducing it in four parts to give the public a taste of what was to come and to heighten anticipation: on 3 June 1977, they ran the front page headline: ‘THE .44 CALIBER KILLER NEW NOTE: CAN’T STOP KILLING’. The next day, they ran: ‘.44 KILLER: I AM NOT ASLEEP’. By Sunday, they were running: ‘BRESLIN TO .44 KILLER: GIVE UP! IT’S THE ONLY WAY OUT’. This edition sold out within an hour of going on sale. So the presses kept rolling. By the end of the day, the Daily News had sold 1,116,000 copies – a record that would be beaten only on the day Berkowitz was arrested. The editors assumed that interest had peaked and reproduced the letter in full in the Monday edition. Like the Zodiac Killer’s letters, it was written all in capital letters and was as rambling and incoherent as the letter he had sent before to the police. It signed off:

‘NOT KNOWING WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS I SHALL SAY FAREWELL AND I WILL SEE YOU AT THE NEXT JOB, OR SHOULD I SAY YOU WILL SEE MY HANDIWORK AT THE NEXT JOB? REMEMBER MS. LAURIA. THANK YOU. IN THEIR BLOOD AND FROM THE GUTTER, “SAM’S CREATION” .44.’

Then there was a long postscript:

‘HERE ARE SOME NAMES TO HELP YOU ALONG. FORWARD THEM TO THE INSPECTOR FOR USE BY THE NCIC: “THE DUKE OF DEATH”. “THE WICKED KING WICKER”, “THE TWENTY TWO DISCIPLES OF HELL”, JOHN “WHEATIES” – RAPIST AND SUFFOCATER OF YOUNG GIRLS.

PS: J.B. PLEASE INFORM ALL THE DETECTIVES WORKING THE SLAYINGS TO REMAIN.’

At the police’s request, this last page was withheld from publication.