The face of evil had a smile.
Wendy Savino recalled the fateful April 9, 1976, night a smiling David Berkowitz waltzed up to her car in a Bronx parking lot, and started laughing as he shot her five times.
Three months later, Berkowitz’s bloody reign of terror would grip New York City and America.
Savino lost her right eye in the shooting. She said she’s relieved to finally be recognized as one of Berkowitz’s victims.
NYPD 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 had my sketches the NYPD made for me, and I carried that around in my handbag every day. I did not know his name, but I certainly knew what he looked like. I said ‘this is the man that shot me.’ And of course, once he was arrested, I knew my sketch was David Berkowitz.”
Savino worked with an NYPD sketch artist while recovering from the shooting in Jacobi Hospital, and gave the descriptive details about her attacker on a pad of paper, because she had a tracheotomy.
“I said he had a heart-shaped face, widow’s peak, sideburns, a little hook on the end of his nose. I called his lips rose-bud lips like what you see on Cupid.
“At the time, I saw him walking toward me smiling. I had locked my doors and thought I was safe. He was smiling, blue eyes, didn’t look at all scary. As I ducked to my left to get my seatbelt, he’s right at my window. And I see, I thought it was two fingers, and he was going to ask me for directions. Instead, my chest exploded and I said, ‘Oh my God. I’ve been shot.’”
She put up her left arm, to shield herself.
“He stood at my window, to the left of the driver’s door. The second bullet went through my arm, bounced on the dashboard and went through my right eye. The third bullet came in through my shoulder, traveled, and put a hole in my windpipe and settled in my spine. At that point, my head is in the passenger side. It was bucket seats in a 1976 silver Jaguar.
“I’m lying there. I’ve got eight pieces of glass in my left eye. I have a bullet in my right eye and my chest is like a balloon, running out of air. I said, ‘I can’t let him get to me before I can get out.’ So I laid there with my head in the bucket, pretending I was dead, and with my eyes closed, but peeking through the one eye I could still see from.”
Two more shots were fired, and hit Savino’s in the back.
“I now have five bullets in my back. And I’m saying, ‘He’s going to take my jewelry,’ but he didn’t try, and so I said to myself, ‘Of course, he wants you dead.’ Just lay here and hope he goes away before you pass out.”
When she heard his footsteps “receding from my car” she sat up, “opened the car door, and rolled out onto the parking lot. It was gravel. I crawled across the parking lot until I found a wall. I put my hands on the wall and followed it. When I got to where one would exit the parking lot, I was going to look and see if I could see him, and I decided that if I did, I would freeze in fear. ‘Go for it.’ So I continued around the door. I could not look back.”
She entered the restaurant’s kitchen. “All the waiters and everyone just threw their hands in the air and all their pots and pans, screaming. So I said ‘You’re not getting anywhere here, are you?’ And I walked directly into the dining room. There was quite a reaction when I walked in the dining room and they threw a white tablecloth over my head. I pulled it off and I said ‘Please don’t do that, I can’t breath.’”
A wooden chair was pushed across the floor to her, “and I grabbed the back of it, thinking that I know I can’t walk. If I walked I was going to fall down. So I tried to sit myself on the seat of the chair sideways. It didn’t work. I grabbed the back of the chair and I fell over to my right and I now I’m laying on the floor. I was laying there, taking off my jewelry, asking the waitress or bartender to please take my jewelry and give it to my husband, give it to Joe. She said, ‘I can’t believe you’re still saying please.’”
Through the front door came an NYPD officer. “He knelt down at my head and put his finger in my face. I said, ‘Can I go to sleep? Please? I’m so tired.’ And he put his finger in my face and just kept saying ‘You stay with me. The longer you stay with me, the longer you’ll be alive … do not fall asleep.’ And I give him great credit, because all I wanted to do was go to sleep.”
She was rushed to Jacobi Medical Center, where she eventually worked with police on the composite sketch. Once she was released from the hospital, her husband sent her to stay with family in England, out of fear for her safety, she said.
“I was absolutely terrified. I wouldn’t go out in the dark. My children would play on the cricket green during the day and I would say, ‘If you don’t come in by dark, I’m not coming out to get you.’ I wouldn’t answer the phone. I wouldn’t answer the front door. When I went shopping, if I got afraid, I’d leave my shopping basket in the parking lot after paying for it. I’d go through a red light if I hit one. I was terrified.”
She was living with her sister and brother-in-law, who was a British policeman. Her two sons were sent to live in hiding in Florida.
“I realized when he was arrested that that face [I’d seen] was ‘Son of Sam’ and he was my assailant.”
In time, a local inspector visited her, carrying a photo array from the NYPD.
“He laid the photos out on my table and #7 was David Berkowitz. ‘That’s the man that shot me.’”
Savino said she’s thankful the NYPD could validate what she’s been saying for years.
“Nobody believed me — even though I showed them the sketch of his face that I had,” she said.
Given the opportunity to address Berkowitz now, “I would say, ‘You’re a rotten bastard.’”
