A Tale of Two Serial Shooters and How their License Plates Did Them In

Kansas City, Missouri 
March 29, 2014  - April 17, 2014

No one could blame  Kansas City Missouri drivers for distracted driving last month. It's hard to keep your eyes trained on the road when  the driver in the car overtaking you just might have a .380 caliber gun trained on you. It began in March when a string of calls started coming in to the police, with drivers reporting they'd been shot at while negotiating the maze of freeway intersections south of the city.

When I heard of the Kansas City incidents  I instantly identified with the fear and paranoia. It took me back to July 1976 to August 1977, when an unknown gunman was using a .44 caliber handgun to randomly gun down  young women with long blond hair and their dates. You may have heard of him - Son of Sam  It didn't help matters that I fit the profile.  Luckily for me, I didn't know, until he was captured, that he lived just across town from me in Yonkers. NY.

The Kansas City shooter is now behind bars, as is Son of Sam. In both cases, it was a female witness who contacted police and supplied them with their first tangible lead, a license plate number which they were able to link to a car and the name of the man who would be apprehended in it.  In Kansas City it was  

Mohammed Pedro Whitaker in his green Dodge Neon,

 and in New York,

David Berkowitz in his Ford Galaxy

.

Son of Sam

New York City
July 29, 1976 -  August 10, 1977

Although Berkowitz had a penchant for writing anonymous rambling satanic letters to neighbors, a New York City police detective, and a newspaper columnist, no connection was made until a woman who'd encountered him while walking her dog put two-and-two together, connecting the man in the shadows with the shady smile, and the pop pop she'd heard when she was safely inside her apartment, to the shootings in the news the next day.  This led the NYPD to look into parking tickets issued on her street that night. They sorted through the files manually and set out to investigate all the drivers, but never got around to the last ticket, the one left on a Ford Galaxy whose owner David Berkowitz lived in Yonkers, just north of the city.

Meanwhile  in Yonkers, the Yonkers PD,  and  the recipients of his rambling satanic letters were connecting dots that led them to a strange young man who'd moved out of his apartment, leaving no forwarding address, and a whole different set of  crimes

• One  recipient happened to be his former landlord, a man named Sam whose dog had been shot after the now-departed tenant had complained about his barking. 

• Another recipient had recently come upon and put out an arson fire before reporting it to the police.The incident had prompted a letter from his new upstairs neighbor, whose handwriting was identical to that of the other letters.

 This last letter included the cryptic words, "yes I am the killer, but you command the killings." The sender's name was David Berkowitz.

Sam. A cryptic confession. The shooting of a dog

It took a bit of convincing before the YPD was able to persuade the NYPD, who, in their defense, were drowning in a sea of  false leads, to cross city limits and see what they had up in Yonkers.After all, didn't they already have a name,"Berkowitz" and a car, the Ford Galaxy.

A team of undercover New York City detectives arrived at the building.Sitting outside was the Galaxy. It took several hours of patient observation, but finally a man emerged from the building and got into the car. The detectives descended on him and when they asked him who he was, he smiled and said 'You know who I am. I'm Sam, David Berkowitz."

The Kansas City Shooter
This story is much shorter. After the first couple of shootings, the Kansas City Shooter was predictable. Dressed in a black hoodie and sunglasses, he'd fire .380 caliber bullets at cars, as they exited freeways or negotiated splits and merges. Twelve drivers reported being shot at, two being actually hit, and in another case. a bullet was found to have pierced the car's door, narrowly missing a young girl. As the city-wide fear mounted, a woman realized she may have been  targeted early on, before he'd made a name for himself.
 According to the Los Angeles Times, the  driver of a green Dodge Neon had stopped short in front of her in late March, and turned to stare, then drove alongside her towards the point where the two lanes merged. Rather than pull in front of him, she braked abruptly, and he had to go ahead. This gave her a chance to note his out-of-state Illinois license plate number.  That was all the police needed. The date was April 9. They took Whitaker into custody April 17.

License Plate Recognition to the Rescue
You may be wondering why it was that Berkowitz, who shot 13 victims, six of whom died, was able to continue his rampage for over a year while Whitaker was apprehended in less than three weeks.  It wasn't a matter of police efficiency or inefficiency. What made the difference was a technology that wasn't available in the 1970's. License Plate Recognition.

Since the Kansas City Police Department was using twelve cars equipped with automated license plate readers, they were able to find they had the information on the plates. With three digital or IP cameras mounted to the roof of each car, they had already come upon the Dodge in their everyday patrols so its  license plate was already in their database along with the relevant GPS positioning and date.

According to the Times, one images showed the car in front of a house in a suburb of Kansas City, but the Illinois license plate was attached to a different car. Another image showed the plate less Dodge, sitting in the driveway next to yet another car bearing the plates.

Having all the probable cause they needed, the police obtained a warrant to place a GPS tracking system on the car, and requested that Sprint allow them to "ping" Whitaker's cellphone. Thus they were able to place a 24 hour surveillance detail on him that, over the next few days,  observed him

• try and fail to purchase a gun from a man in a parking lot 
• enter a Walmart where he looked at ammunition .
• change lanes erratically on area freeways
• come to a sudden stop in front of one of the surveillance cars and turn to stare as the officer behind the wheel avoided him.
• Dash across lanes of traffic to follow closely on the tail of a Honda.

A day after this last incident, they arrested him.

Today the NYPD has several hundred license plate readers roaming the five boroughs. If David Berkowitz had struck today, the Son of Sam story would have been a whole lot shorter.

If you want a detailed account of the Son of Sam tragedy I recommend the website, Crime Library which I visited in order fill in the moth holes in my memory.

On the other hand, if you're looking for information on IP Cameras or license plate readers, call  Kintronics at 914-944-3425 to speak to a sales engineer, or fill out a handy information request form.