Woman shot by Son of Sam receives chilling message from notorious serial killer during trip to library
Wendy Savino had been inside the Valley Cottage Library in Long Island, on Wednesday when she was approached by Frank DeGennaro.
The 88-year-old told The New York Post that DeGennaro approached her outside the building, claiming he told her 'David wants to talk to you'.
She said: 'So I try to walk around him and he says, "you're Wendy Savino, aren't you?".'
The man added: 'Well, I just want you to know David is very upset about what happened to you. David wants to talk to you. David wants you to know he didn't do it'.
Following the strange comment, she asked DeGennaro to write down his name, her and her son Jason then took it to Clarkstown Police Department to file a report.
She added: 'He had me backed into a corner. He's just talking and talking about the same thing, "David's a really good person".'
DeGennaro told the outlet that he was called by the police but not charged, adding that he never intended to scare Savino.
He said: 'I didn't corner her. I didn't stand in her way', adding that he became friends with Berkowitz after exchanging letters with the killer who remains behind bars.
'I realize now that it was probably the wrong thing to do, to even talk to her. This is getting blown out of proportion', he added.
Savino was shot several times by Berkowitz - who admitted to killing six people - in her car on April 9, 1976.
It was later determined that Savino was the first victim of Berkowitz in a series of violent murders that crippled the New York City.
For 13 months from July 1976 to July 1977, the 'Son of Sam' carried out a killing rampage that claimed the lives of six and left seven other victims wounded.
Armed with a Bulldog revolver, he hunted in the shadows, targeting mostly young couples in cars and on lovers' lanes across Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.
When he earned the nickname the .44 caliber killer in the press, the notorious murderer coined his own chilling moniker - the Son of Sam - in a letter taunting the police captain on his tail.
The killer claimed that he was driven to kill by a 6,000-year-old demon named Sam which spoke to him through his neighbor's dog.
The Son of Sam shootings took over the city's consciousness and filled pages and pages of the daily papers.
Young women - noting a pattern of brown-haired victims - began dying theirs blonde or wearing wigs. Other New Yorkers avoided going out altogether.
Then finally, on August 10, 1977, the Son of Sam - a 24-year-old postal worker from Yonkers by the name of David Berkowitz - was captured.
Berkowitz was sentenced in 1978 to the maximum prison term of 25 years to life for each of the six slayings. He first became eligible for parole in 2002.
He has since expressed remorse and said he is a born-again Christian. He is being held at Shawangunk Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in New York.
Speaking with the Daily Mail last month, Berkowitz said t hat he was 'thankful to be alive, and by the grace of God do good things today with my life today.'
'The past could never be undone. I wish it could, but it's not possible. So I just have to keep moving forward,' he said.
'I am also grateful for the friends I have in my life today. These are good law abiding individuals who love me for who I am today, not for who I was in the past when a [sic] let the devil rule my mind.'
But, despite the apparent regret for his crimes, the Berkowitz suggested that he was simply a passive pawn being 'used' to do the devil's bidding.
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