The 1970s were a scary time in America’s history. While wars had raged on battlefields for most of the century, the seventies saw the killings arrive on the doorsteps of US residents. The sixties had the ‘Summer of Love’, but the seventies had the ‘Summer of Sam’.
As well as the titular figure, the country was widely ravaged by a spree of serial killers who all seemed both enticed by the infamy of murder and the competition that was now available to them: who could kill the most?
It’s a dark tale that only gets more twisted when unpicking the threads of the narrative. It’s something that countless true crime documentaries have done over the year’s, and now Netflix are throwing their hat in the ring with The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness, a brand new docuseries which lands on May 5th.
As you might expect, the series will focus on the run of fatal shootings that happened across New York in the seventies as well as doing some more in-depth analysis on the man behind the murders, David ‘Son of Sam’ Berkowitz. Largely informed by Maury Terry’s mammoth expose on the spate of murders, Terry makes claims that Berkowitz didn’t act alone as believed.
“Originally, I thought the rumours were nothing more than Satanic Panic, but that’s when two NYPD detectives sat me down to tell me a story,” Director Joshua Zeman told Rolling Stone.
“They said there was far more to the Son Of Sam case than the public knew. They told me to read Maury Terry’s book Ultimate Evil — which both fascinated and scared the shit out of me. Eventually, I sat down with Maury and put his theories to the test. Much to my surprise, I found myself seriously considering the unimaginable — that Berkowitz didn’t act alone, and that there were other Sons of Sam out there.”
You can watch the trailer for The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness below.
