A woman who was shot by the “Son of Sam” killer almost 60 years ago had to revisit her terrifying experience this week when she was confronted by one of David Berkowitz’s friends.
On Wednesday, Wendy Savino was at the Valley Cottage Library in Rockland County, New York, when she was confronted by Frank DeGennaro, a friend of Berkowitz’s who insisted the Son of Sam killer did not shoot her.
Savino, 88, told the New York Post that when she left the library, she saw a man standing outside staring at her.
“So I try to walk around him and he says, ‘You’re Wendy Savino, aren’t you? Well, I just want you to know David is very upset about what happened to you. David wants to talk to you,” she said, quoting DeGennaro. “‘David wants you to know he didn’t do it.'”
Savino was injured in 1976 when Berkowitz, now 72, shot her while she was sitting in her car in the Bronx. She said she tried to play dead after she realized the gunman was still outside her car, but Berkowitz fired twice more into her back.
She managed to crawl down a street to a restaurant where the staff called for help.
Last year, NYPD investigators announced that her shooting was the first victim of the Son of Sam, who went on to kill six victims and wound two others between 1976 and 1977.
Berkowitz never faced charges for the shooting because the statute of limitations had expired.
After DeGennaro told Savino that he was friends with Berkowitz, she asked him to write down his name. She then gave the name to her son, Jason, and they called the Clarkstown Police Department to report the encounter.
“He had me backed into a corner,” she said. “He’s just talking and talking about the same thing. ‘David’s a really good person.’”
DeGennaro told the New York Post that he received a call from the police, but wasn’t charged as he had committed no crime. He insisted he wasn’t trying to scare Savino.
He told the paper that he became friends with Berkowitz 30 years ago after writing him a letter from prison. He said the two men bonded over their shared Christian faith.
DeGennaro said that he also happens to live in Clarkstown and visits the same library as Savino. He said he was surprised to run into her and added that he had not told her Berkowitz wanted to talk.
“I realize now that it was probably the wrong thing to do, to even talk to her,” he told the paper. “This is getting blown out of proportion.”
While the encounter was likely terrifying for Savino and perhaps sobering for DeGennaro, it’s a great bit of unintentional marketing for Netflix, which is releasing a documentary about Berkowitz on July 30 titled “Conversations with a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes.”
The documentary focuses on recently discovered recorded interviews with Berkowitz.
The Son of Sam killer confessed to his crimes in 1978, pleading guilty to six counts of second-degree murder and seven counts of attempted second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each murder, and has been denied parole 12 times.
Savino said the encounter left her “very nervous.”
“I was always afraid someone would come to me and say ‘I’ll finish you off for David.’”
