mules 5.mul.0003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

The Battle of Day’s Gap, fought on April 30, 1863, was the first in a series of American Civil War skirmishes in Cullman County, Alabama, that lasted until May 2, known as Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Raid. Commanding the Union forces was Col. Abel Streight; Brig. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest led the Confederate forces.

Background

The goal of Streight’s raid was to cut off the Western & Atlantic Railroad, which supplied General Braxton Bragg‘s Confederate army in Middle Tennessee. Starting in Nashville, Tennessee, Streight and his men first traveled to Eastport, Mississippi, and then eastward to Tuscumbia, Alabama. On April 26, 1863, Streight left Tuscumbia and marched southeastward. Streight’s initial movements were screened by Union Brig. Gen. Grenville Dodge‘s troops.

Battle

On April 30 at Day’s Gap on Sand Mountain, Forrest caught up with Streight’s expedition and attacked his rear guard. Streight’s men managed to repulse this attack and as a result they continued their march to avoid any further delays and envelopments caused by the Confederate troops.

Aftermath

This battle set off a chain of skirmishes and engagements at Crooked Creek (April 30), Hog Mountain (April 30), Blountsville (May 1), Black Creek/Gadsden (May 2), and Blount’s Plantation (May 2). Finally, on May 3, Forrest surrounded Streight’s exhausted men three miles east of Cedar Bluff, Alabama, and forced their surrender. They were sent to Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia. Streight and some of his men escaped on February 9, 1864.^[1]

reading 4.rea.00100 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

On David Berkowitz’s official home page, the convicted serial killer explains how he has been locked up for the past two decades. “My criminal case,” Berkowitz says, “is well known and was called the Son of Sam shootings.”

David Berkowitz

Eleven years prior to penning these opening Web lines, Berkowitz adds, while he was “living in a cold and lonely prison cell,” God grabbed hold of his life and set him on the righteous path. He says his story—or, rather, his path toward righteousness—is an example of “hope.”

Book cover: Every Move You Make

This letter to his readers was written in 1999. The date is important to what you are about to read — because my book, Every Move You Make, where I first published excerpts from the lost Son of Sam letters, was published five years later, in 2005.

Today, Son of Sam claims to be “free” from the confines of prison. He claims Jesus Christ has led him to the light of a new way. He calls his Web page, “Forgiven for Life.”

M. William Phelps

This Crime Library story is about the real Son of Sam, not the façade Mr. Berkowitz wishes to display in his Web writings. It is about the person who murdered six people and tormented and terrorized a city. As for prison life, Berkowitz says his days and nights behind bars are a constant “struggle,” and that he’s had his “share of problems, hassles and fights.” He claims another inmate cut his throat once and he almost died.

“Yet all through this—and I did not realize it until later—God had His loving hands on me,” he writes.  Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Further along on his Website, Berkowitz says that while he was “reading Psalm 34” one night, he “began to pour out [his] heart to God.” He says this moment of clarity, when God entered his soul, took place in 1987; he gives no specific date, just the year. “Everything seemed to hit me at once,” Berkowitz claims. “The guilt from what I did … the disgust at what I had become …” And then, he says, he “got down on [his] knees and … began to cry out to Jesus Christ.”

This revelation by Mr. Berkowitz is a complete fabrication. Pay close attention to the date he gives us—1987—as you read this Crime Library story. For when you get to the lost Son of Sam letter excerpts I quote, you’ll have a hard time believing God’s hands were resting on the shoulders of Mr. Berkowitz as he wrote them.

future 8.fut.0001 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire  New York City Mayor Abraham Beame called what he saw as a much needed press conference to discuss the Son of Sam case. It was the kind of name that the press would really grab on to and create a media persona. Beame dreaded the whole thing: “The killings were a horror. The police were under terrible strain. Everyone was beginning to question his ability to capture the gunman. The letter fused everything together. It was a man against an entire city. He had written this one policeman, but I knew it wasn’t that captain he was writing about. It was every cop who was after him, all twenty-five thousand of them.”

Two letters left by Berkowitz

Dr. Martin Lubin, former head of forensic psychiatry at Bellevue, along with some forty-five other psychiatrists, convened to contribute to the psychological profile of the man they were seeking. In May of 1977, the police knew they were looking for a paranoid schizophrenic, who may have considered himself possessed of a demonic power. The killer was almost certainly a loner who had difficulty with relationships, particularly relationships with women.

The Omega task force was flooded with calls. Everyone, it seemed, knew the killer: he was the neighbor who came home late every night, the odd brother-in-law who played with guns all the time, the weird guy in the bar who hated pretty girls. The list of suspects was endless. Every one of these thousands of leads had to be checked out and disqualified — a huge chore for any task force.

While the police were chasing down every suspect, checking registrations for .44 weapons, tracing activities of former mental patients and generally running themselves ragged, the Son of Sam had become emboldened by the publicity. He decided to write to Jimmy Breslin, a reporter for the Daily News.

“Hello from the cracks in the sidewalks of NYC and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed in the dried blood of the dead that has settled into the cracks.

“Hello from the gutters of NYC, which is filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine, and blood. Hello from the sewers of NYC which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks.

“Don’t think because you haven’t heard [from me] for a while that I went to sleep. No, rather, I am still here. Like a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest; anxious to please Sam.

“Sam’s a thirsty lad. He won’t let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood. Tell me, Jim, what will you have for July 29? You can forget about me if you like because I don’t care for publicity. However, you must not forget Donna Lauria and you cannot let the people forget her either. She was a very sweet girl.

“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”

The Daily News withheld some portions of the letter at the insistence of the police. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire  The omitted passage read: “Here are some names to help you along. Forward them to the Inspector for use by the NCIC [National Crime Information Center] Center. They have everything on computer, everything. They just might turn up, from some other crimes. Maybe they could make associations.

“Duke of Death. Wicked King Wicker. The twenty-two Disciples of Hell. And lastly, John Wheaties, rapist and suffocator of young girls. P.S., drive on, think positive, get off your butts, knock on coffins, etc.”

Partial fingerprints were salvaged from the letter, which were of no value in finding the suspect, but would be valuable to match against a suspect once captured.

bedroom 99.bed.21 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

A couple of months later on July 22, 1991, two Milwaukee police officers were driving around in the very high-crime area around Marquette University. The heat was oppressive and the humidity almost unbearable. The smell of the neighborhood was all the more pungent in the heat: the garbage on the streets, the urine and feces left by the homeless, the rancid stink of cooked grease.

Around midnight, as the two officers sat in their car, they saw a short, wiry black man with a handcuff dangling from his wrist. Assuming that this man had escaped from another policeman, they asked him what he was doing. The man started to pour out a tale about Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire this “weird dude” who put the cuffs on him in his apartment. The man was Tracy Edwards.

Edwards’ story smacked of some homosexual encounter that normally the police would avoid, but the two policemen thought they ought to check out this man that had cuffed Edwards who lived at the Oxford Apartments at 924 North 25th Street. The door to Apartment 213 was opened by a nice looking thirty-one-year-old blond man.

Dahmer was very calm and rational. He offered to get the key to the handcuffs in the bedroom. Edwards remembered that the knife that Dahmer had threatened him with was also in the bedroom.

Once of the officers decided to go into the bedroom himself and take a look. He noticed photographs lying around that shocked him: dismembered human bodies, skulls in the refrigerator. When he collected his wits, he yelled to his partner to cuff Dahmer and place him under arrest.