On the morning of July 29, 1976, 18-year-old Donna Ann Lauria was sitting in a parked car with a friend outside her family’s apartment in Pelham Bay, Bronx, after a night out. As she opened the car door to go inside, a man approached, crouched, and fired a .44 caliber revolver into the vehicle. Donna was struck in the back and died instantly; her friend Jody Valenti was shot in the thigh and survived.

Initial attention fell on Donna’s ex-boyfriend, but similar shootings of young people in parked cars across the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn established a pattern. The attacker sent taunting letters signed Son of Sam and later confessed shootings were linked to a .44 caliber pistol. The investigation led to the August 10, 1977, arrest of David Berkowitz, who confessed and later pleaded guilty to six murders, including Donna Lauria’s.

Did anyone in Pelham Bay remember Donna, where she worked or went out that summer?