A smile appeared on the devil’s face.
Wendy Savino remembered the fateful night of April 9, 1976, when David Berkowitz walked up to her car in a Bronx parking lot, smiling, and began laughing as he shot her five times.
Three months later, Berkowitz’s bloody reign of terror gripped New York City and America.
Savino lost his right eye in the shooting and said he felt relieved to finally be recognized as one of Berkowitz’s victims.
New York Police Department officers confirmed this week that she was the first official victim of the “Son of Sam” serial killer.
“From the day I was shot, I carried the sketch that the NYPD had done for me in my purse every day. I didn’t know the guy’s name, but I certainly knew what he looked like. I said, ‘This is the guy who shot me.’ And of course, when they arrested him, they recognized my sketch as David Berkowitz.”
While recovering from the shooting at Jacobi Hospital, Savino worked with an NYPD sketch artist and jotted down details about his attacker on paper as he underwent a tracheotomy.
“I said his face was heart-shaped, shaped like a hawk, he had sideburns and a little hook on the end of his nose. I said his lips were like the rosebud lips you see on Cupid.”
“Then I saw him walking towards me with a smile on his face. I had locked my doors so I thought I was safe. He was smiling and had blue eyes and I wasn’t scared at all. I leaned over to the left to get my seat belt and he was right by my window. And I saw two fingers and I thought he was trying to ask me for directions. But my chest was just about to explode and I said, ‘Oh my God. I’ve been shot.'”
She raised her left arm to protect herself.
“He was standing at the window of my car, to the left of the driver’s door. The second bullet went through my arm, ricocheted off the dashboard and went through my right eye. The third bullet came in through my shoulder, traveled out, punctured my trachea and lodged in my spine. At that point, my head was on the passenger side. It was a 1976 silver Jaguar bucket seat.
“I was lying there with eight pieces of glass in my left eye, a bullet in my right eye and my chest was deflated like a balloon. I said, ‘I can’t let him get to me before I get out,’ so I put my head in the bucket and lay there, pretending to be dead, closed my eyes and looked through the one eye I could still see.”
Two more shots were fired, hitting Savino in the back.
“Five bullets in my back. I said, ‘He’s trying to take my jewels,’ but he didn’t try. So I said to myself, ‘Of course he wants to kill you.’ I just lie here and hope he leaves before I pass out.”
Hearing a man’s footsteps “moving away from the car,” she got up and “opened my car door and walked out into the parking lot, which was a gravel road. I crawled across the parking lot and found a wall. I put my hands against the wall and followed it. When I got to the end of the parking lot, I thought I’d see if I could see the man. I thought if I did, I’d freeze up with fear. I thought, ‘I’ll give it a try.’ So I kept going around the door. I couldn’t look back.”
She went into the restaurant’s kitchen, “and the waiters and everyone threw their hands and pots and pans in the air and started screaming and yelling, and I said, ‘This isn’t going anywhere,’ and I just walked into the dining room. As I walked into the dining room, they threw a white tablecloth over my head and there was quite a reaction. I ripped it off and I said, ‘Don’t do that, I can’t breathe.'”
A wooden chair was carried up to her from the floor. “I grabbed the back of the chair because I know I can’t walk, because if I walk I’ll fall over, so I tried to sit sideways on the seat of the chair, but it didn’t work. I grabbed the back of the chair and fell to the right, and now I’m lying on the floor. I lay there, took off my jewelry, and asked the waitress or bartender to take it for me and give it to my husband, Joe. She said, ‘I still can’t believe you said please.'”
An NYPD officer came through the front door. “He knelt at my head and put his fingers in my face. I said, ‘Can I sleep? Please. I’m so tired.’ And he put his fingers in my face and he kept saying, ‘Stay with me. The longer you stay with me, the longer you’ll live. Don’t sleep.’ I’m so grateful for what he did, because all I wanted to do was sleep.”
She was rushed to Jacobi Medical Center, where she worked with police to create a composite sketch. After she was released from the hospital, she said her husband, concerned for her safety, left her with family in England.
“I was really scared. I didn’t go out when it was dark. When my kids were playing on the cricket field during the day I’d say, ‘If they’re not in by dark I’m not coming to pick them up’. I didn’t answer the phone. I didn’t answer the door. When I went shopping and got scared, I’d pay and leave my shopping basket in the car park. If I ran a red light I’d just go through it. I was scared.”
She lived with her sister and brother-in-law, a British police officer, and her two sons were sent into hiding in Florida.
“When he was arrested, I saw his face [I’d seen] He was the Son of Sam and he was the one who attacked me.”
Eventually, a local inspector came to visit her with a stack of photos sent to her by the NYPD.
“He laid out pictures on my table. Number seven was David Berkowitz. ‘That’s the guy who shot me.’
Savino said he’s grateful that the NYPD is vindicating what he’s been saying for years.
“No one believed me, even though I showed them the sketches I had of his face,” she said.
If he were to talk to Berkowitz today, “I would say, ‘You’re a freaking motherfucker.'”
