Dark Deeds in Westchester County
By M.P. Pellicer | Noir Notebook
In the early 1970s, seemingly unrelated acts of violence across America hid a sinister, unifying thread—one that investigative journalist John Godwin glimpsed in his 1972 book Occult America.
Godwin traveled to San Francisco and interviewed Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan. But a darker discovery awaited: the Asmodeus Society, a secretive satanic group named for the demon prince of lust, eternal foe of the Archangel Gabriel. Infused with Afro-Caribbean voodoo elements, members were forbidden from uttering Satan’s “sacred name.”
Godwin infiltrated a ritual at the luxurious Westchester County home of a dental surgeon. The high priestess that night: 21-year-old Judy, a commercial artist. Eleven participants descended into frenzy. A nude black woman stretched herself across a Brazilian flag on the floor. A naked, pot-bellied man entered wearing a horned goat mask. From a small coffin-like white box, he withdrew a live chicken and slit its throat with a razor as Haitian voodoo music—rattles clattering—blared from a tape recorder.
Blood sprayed across the prostrate woman. The other members—three of them black—advanced, smearing the warm crimson over her skin and their own. Eyes glazed, bodies swaying; Godwin suspected DMT or hashish fueled the trance, not alcohol. The ritual collapsed soon after the woman rose and departed.
Godwin later learned she performed in a current Broadway musical.
Fast-forward to 1976. Westchester County shuddered under a new terror: the Dartman. Over two frantic weeks, this phantom wounded 22 women with an air-powered weapon firing one-inch, pencil-thin, metal-tipped darts. He struck between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., targeting ground-floor or low-level apartments, victims visible near open windows.
The first: a pregnant woman in Hartsdale, washing dishes by her kitchen window. A dart sliced through the screen, pierced her collarbone, drew blood, and clattered into the sink. Her husband dashed outside—nothing. No motive. She spent months avoiding windows.
Police sketches painted a young voyeur, a peeping Tom escalating to sadistic pain-infliction, likely inexperienced with women, harboring fear or hatred toward them. A possible vehicle: a 1971 or 1972 Chevy Monte Carlo. Many attacks clustered in Yonkers, but parkway access suggested mobility.
Nineteen departments hunted him. The spree erupted in February 1976 and faded by July. In December, police learned of another attack via public radio—embarrassed, they launched a hotline and called their quarry a “phantom,” unsure if he prowled on foot or by car. The final known victim: a 23-year-old at 17 Beaumont Circle, Yonkers.
Then August 1977 brought David Berkowitz’s arrest as the Son of Sam. Dartman vanished from headlines. Yet questions lingered: Berkowitz relocated to Yonkers in April 1976, overlapping the Dartman timeline. No dart gun surfaced in his possession, and none of his victims died—but speculation festered.
Circumstantial links emerged. Behind Berkowitz’s apartment at 35 Pine Street, neighbor boys unearthed three bagged German shepherd carcasses in December 1976. Two wore chains around their necks; one bore a bullet hole in its skull. Berkowitz, who once worked with guard dogs and openly despised them, had shot neighbors’ pets. Police dismissed the find as irrelevant to the .44 killings.
A chilling encounter: Laura Pisaturo, sister of one discoverer, recalled May 1977. Waiting for her boyfriend after midnight, Berkowitz approached, staring blankly. She forced a smile in fear; he offered none. He walked a dog through the lot. She fled indoors, heart pounding. She never recognized him from police composites—supporting theories of multiple perpetrators.
Survivors like Carl Denaro (shot in the head during a Son of Sam attack) insisted the shooter wasn’t Berkowitz. Neighbor David O’Gorman believed every thread—Dartman, dogs, killings—intertwined.
Journalist Maury Terry, probing alleged satanic ties in the Son of Sam case, unearthed Dartman as a 15th-century European symbol of death. He linked it to Westchester cult activity: canine sacrifices, ritual gang rapes. Bosch’s Death and the Miser (1561) depicted Death creeping with a long, thin dart—not the traditional scythe. Similar imagery appeared in The Dance of Death.
Terry theorized Berkowitz served as a fall guy for a larger network, perhaps convinced he’d escape harsh prison for a sanitarium. Timelines showed Berkowitz absent or mismatched for some crimes.
The shadow stretched further. From June 1984, Long Island endured a year of teenage girls raped and murdered—evidence pointing to a gang of three or more. Theresa Fusco, 16, vanished after a skating rink, forced into a van near where friend Kelly Morrissey (15) had disappeared months earlier. Fusco’s body surfaced six months later: beaten, strangled, raped by at least three men.
John Kogut confessed, naming accomplices John Restivo and Dennis Halstead. He recanted later, but inmate testimony convicted them. Morrissey remains missing; her diary mentioned a date with Kogut.
Terry found “cult signs” near scenes, tying them to Queens and Yonkers satanists he suspected linked to Son of Sam.
Jacqueline Martarella, 19, vanished en route to work in March 1985; her strangled, naked body appeared on a Woodmere golf course green a month later. Nearby: an abandoned cellar etched with occult symbols, clothing matching her last outfit.
Police tied a gang of 12 men to three murders and four rapes. A witness described Kogut’s satanism and pornography ties. That witness, Bob Fletcher, “suicided” in 1987—gun missing.
DNA unraveled the convictions. Tests on Fusco’s semen excluded Kogut, Restivo, and Halstead (released 2003–2005). The true perpetrator walked free. Fusco’s killer remained unidentified for decades until recent developments identified a suspect via discarded DNA.
Decades later, these threads—blood rituals, dart symbolism, dog mutilations, overlapping geographies, recanted confessions, dismissed evidence—whisper of something far larger and darker than any lone killer. The official narratives closed cases, but the shadows refuse to fade.