On April 17, 1977, on a quiet service road off the Hutchinson River Parkway in the Bronx, 20-year-old Alexander Esau and his 18-year-old girlfriend, Valentina Suriani, were shot while seated in a parked Mercury Montego after returning from a movie date. A figure approached the driver’s side and opened fire with a .44 caliber revolver. Valentina was struck twice in the head and died almost instantly. Alexander, a tow truck operator and recent Brooklyn Technical High School graduate who studied architecture, was critically wounded with a gunshot to the head and died at Jacobi Hospital about two hours later without being able to describe his attacker.

Investigators found a four-page handwritten letter near the scene in which the killer identified himself as the Son of Sam, linking this attack to a string of similar shootings. The killings heightened fear in the neighborhood, coming just two blocks from a previous, similar shooting. The case was later resolved when David Berkowitz was arrested on August 10, 1977; he confessed and pleaded guilty to six counts of second-degree murder and received six concurrent life sentences.

Did anyone who knew Alexander or Valentina see them that night or notice suspicious activity near Suriani’s apartment building?