Killers_ The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time - Cawthorne, Nigel [60]
Seventeen-year-old Bronx schoolgirl Judy Placido went to the same school as Valentina Suriani and had been to her funeral. Three weeks after the Breslin letter appeared, on 25 June, she celebrated her graduation from high school at a discotheque called Elephas in Queens. There she met a handsome young man called Salvatore Lupo, who worked in a petrol station. They hit it off immediately and went outside to a car for some privacy. As Salvatore slipped his arm around Judy’s shoulders, they discussed the Son of Sam killings. At that moment, their lurid speculation turned into murderous reality. A .44 bullet smashed through the passenger window, passed through Salvatore’s wrist and into Judy’s neck. A second bullet hit her in the head, but miraculously failed to penetrate her skull. A third bullet entered her right shoulder. Terrified, Salvatore threw open the car door and ran back to the discotheque for help. But it was too late. The shooting was over and the attacker had fled. Although she had been hit three times, Judy was quite unaware that she had been shot. She was shocked to see in the rear-view mirror that her face was covered with blood. She too jumped out of the car and headed for the disco, but she only made it a few yards before she collapsed. Salvatore suffered a shattered wrist and cuts from the flying glass. And in hospital, it was found that Judy had unbelievably escaped without serious injury.
Nevertheless, the city was in panic. Takings at discotheques and restaurants – particularly in Queens – fell off, while newspaper circulations soared. Not only did they have the gory details of the latest shooting to relay, they could speculate about the next killing.
In the Son of Sam’s letter to Jimmy Breslin, he had written: ‘TELL ME JIM, WHAT WILL YOU HAVE FOR JULY TWENTY-NINTH?’ That was the date of the first murder. Was he planning to celebrate the killing of Donna Lauria with another murder? New York’s English-born Mayor Abraham Beame could not wait to find out. He was running for re-election. He quickly announced that even more officers were being seconded to the Omega investigation. Overnight it became the largest single operation in the history of the New York Police Department. Two hundred men were on the case. They recruited from precincts in every borough of the city. The investigation cost more than $90,000 a day to run. Volunteers like Donna Lauria’s father, Mike, manned special Son of Sam patrols and the number of calls to Omega’s hotline, which started at 250 a day, peaked at 5,000 a day. A team of psychiatrists tried to come up with some sort of profile of the killer. The best they could come up with was that he was ‘neurotic, schizophrenic and paranoid’. This description was duly released by the police. It did not help anyone to identify the gunman.
Fortunately, 29 July passed without incident. But two days later, with a sense of relief, two sisters from Brooklyn, 15-year-old Ricki Moskowitz and 20-year-old Stacy, decided to go out. In a Brooklyn restaurant, they were approached by a handsome young man who introduced himself as Bobby Violante. The next day, Bobby and Stacy went to see the film New York, New York. Afterwards, they went to dinner, then headed off to a quiet place where they could be alone. They drove to a secluded spot on Shore Parkway near Coney Island, South Brooklyn, which was used as an urban lovers’ lane. They felt safe enough there. So far