The Summer Of The Reaper-

New York City in the summer of 1976 was almost the polar opposite of San Francisco in 1967, when the city celebrated the Summer of Love with a festival of love, peace, and music. The murder rate skyrocketed, "dark clouds" covered the streets, and a song about death by a local band became a top hit across the country.

In May of 1976, Blue Oyster Cult released their fifth studio album, titled Agents of Fortune. It features the rock standard "(Don't Fear) the Reaper," as well as the forebodingly titled "This Ain't the Summer of Love," which laments that "things ain't like they used to be," and the sombre "Morning Final," which laments "motiveless murder."

Two months later, a young woman and her friend were shot and killed in a Bronx parking lot as they talked. In the same week that "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the Son of Sam serial killings began, terrorising New York City from July 1976 to August 1977.

Five of the eight shootings by Son of Sam victims were young couples. While "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" focuses on suicide rather than murder, it does make reference to a tragic young love story involving a tragic young couple (Romeo and Juliet). When one looks at BOC's biggest hit alongside other songs from the same era, some of the band's associates, a real snuff film, and a drawing of dead German Shepherds, the eerie parallels and links between BOC and the infamous murders stand out like a full moon against a black sky.

The Sam shootings resulted in the deaths of six people and injuries to seven others. David Berkowitz, a postal worker, was arrested ten days after the last attack and identified as the murderer who had paralysed the city and would later be the subject of books and films.

Police and prosecutors concluded that Berkowitz acted alone, and he was found guilty and given six life sentences for his crimes. The evidence suggests the existence of a large conspiracy, the kind that BOC excelled at singing about in the 1970s.

Because, as Berkowitz admitted in prison, there was more than one killer, there was a wide discrepancy between eyewitness accounts and police composite sketches of the perpetrator. He claimed to be part of a Satanic cult that organised the massacre. Although the New York Police Department has maintained its official stance, the district solicitor for Queens at the time of the murders and other law enforcement officials have gone on record admitting that Berkowitz had accomplices.

Meltzer told author Martin Popoff in his book Blue Oyster Cult Secrets Revealed that he and Sandy Pearlman had travelled to northern California during the Summer of Love, nine years before the murders started. They hung out in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco and went to the Monterey Pop Festival to see bands like the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Jimi Hendrix. Charles Manson and representatives from the Process Church of Final Judgment were also in Haight-Ashbury at the time.

The Process is a branch of Scientology that originated in the 1960s in London, England. Christians and Satan would unite at the end of the world to judge humanity, according to this view. The Church landed in America during the height of the counterculture movement known as the Summer of Love. Robert and Mary Ann DeGrimston, the church's founders, lived within a mile of the crossroads of Haight and Ashbury. Manson, who was neighbours with the DeGrimstons, decided to become a member of the Process.

Once back in New York, Pearlman formed the band that would become Blue Oyster Cult. Early albums were produced by him and he also managed the band. In the 1970s, Meltzer was credited as a co-writer on six songs by the band BOC.

BOC's 14 studio albums cover a wide variety of subject matter, from the paranormal and occult to biker gangs, violence, and vampires. The word "conspiracy" is mentioned several times as well.

The first album by BOC was released in 1972, and it featured the song "Transmaniacon MC," which was about a violent biker gang and a conspiracy. The song's lyrics reflect on the murder of a concertgoer by Hell's Angels at a show in 1969 at California's Altamont Speedway. The official explanation is that it was random violence committed by idiots. The listener is encouraged to imagine a conspiracy in which a shadowy group is behind the mayhem, seeking to sow discord in order to hasten the end of days.

In addition to "Before the Kiss" from their debut album and "Dominance and Submission" from their third album, Secret Treaties, both from 1974, are conspiracy songs from the period 1972-1974 by BOC. In fact, the entire album Secret Treaties is based on the idea of a sinister plot. This fictional book's cover implies that war and other evils will result from agreements and for reasons that will be kept secret from the public.

At the same time, as the 1970s progressed, the Process fragmented into subgroups that worshipped either Jehovah, Lucifer, or Satan. The Church also allied itself with biker gangs, viewing them as useful for transporting illegal drugs (one of the Church's main sources of revenue) and acting as warriors for the Process as the end of the world draws near.

Berkowitz claims that the Son of Sam murders were plotted and executed by a branch of this organisation.

In Greenwich Village, where BOC keyboardist Allen Lanier lived with his girlfriend Patti Smith for much of the 1970s, the DeGrimstons allegedly "recruited among the artists, poets, and hordes of counterculture youth," as Maury Terry writes in The Ultimate Evil. In 2007, Smith, the self-proclaimed "punk poet laureate," was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the '70s, she released four albums in the studio and contributed to the writing of five songs on the first six BOC albums. She also displayed Processian disdain for the Gospel by penning the line "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine" in a song.

According to Patricia Morrisroe's book Mapplethorpe: A Biography, by the end of 1971, Lanier had moved into the New York City loft that Smith was sharing with Robert Mapplethorpe. After the death of the controversial photographer from AIDS in 1989, Smith wrote a book about their close relationship. The photographer was known for pushing the boundaries of obscene photography. The name Mapplethorpe was eventually brought up in interviews regarding the Sam murders.

Two inmates who shared a cell with Berkowitz shared some of the information they gleaned from the convicted killer with Terry. The murders of Sam were plotted by twelve members of Berkowitz's cult at the home of a powerful Process leader in Westchester County, just north of New York City. Pound Ridge was home to the cult's headquarters, a deserted church on Salem Road. It is in a rural area about 45 miles outside of New York City, so it is not the sort of place that city dwellers would find by chance.

Another church, this one made to look sinister by using distortion photography, was only three miles from the Salem Road exit. The cover art for BOC's 1975 live album, On Your Feet Or On Your Knees, features St. Paul's Chapel, located at 313 Smith Ridge Road in South Salem. The album's back cover features a black book that appears to be the Book of Deeds, in which members of the Process cult recorded their criminal acts so that the cult's leaders could keep members in line through a combination of monitoring and blackmail.

Leaders of the Process, who sometimes wore capes, were also rumoured to bring along their own German Shepherds. In the mid-1970s, members of the Sam cult were caught sacrificing German Shepherds to Satan. According to news accounts, the first canine deaths occurred north of New York City in 1976. During the holiday season of 1976, three canine bodies were discovered in Yonkers, New York, and between October 1976 and January 1977, 85 canine bodies, including many German Shepherds, were discovered in Walden, New York.

On the cover of BOC's Secret Treaties, which came out two years before, the band's lead singer, Eric Bloom, is depicted in a cape, and the other members of the band are shown standing at his feet with German Shepherds at his feet. The band has disbanded and their German Shepherds are dead on the back cover.

There are other noteworthy tracks on Agents of Fortune besides the much-discussed "(Don't Fear) the Reaper," which was released two months before the first Sam shooting. With its opening line of "no angels above," "This Ain't the Summer of Love" serves as the ideal introduction to Sam's season. The ode to "motiveless murder," "Morning Final," is set in a bustling metropolis and features a chase that ends on the subway stairs. Lyrics like "I'm possessed" and "looking for a pistol" can be found in "Sinful Love." The conspiracy theme is revisited in "E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)," which features two references to three men in black saying, "don't report this."

Berkowitz claimed that out of the eight attacks on Sam, he was the one who actually pulled the trigger twice. According to Terry, John and Michael Carr, two of his neighbours whose father was also named Sam, each died a violent death in the 1970s. According to Terry's reporting, a second shooting was committed by an enigmatic figure known only as "Manson II," who was a resident of Southern California in the late 1960s and was familiar with both the original Manson and the local Process church.

The cars targeted in Sam's final attack were chosen specifically because they were parked in front of a bright streetlight. Terry reported that three people in a van nearby recorded video of the assault, a so-called "snuff film," which they then distributed on the black market.

Jesse Turner, a bank robber who used to live with Smith and Mapplethorpe, told Terry that Mapplethorpe was aware of the existence of the tape. According to Turner, Mapplethorpe asked him to murder Ronald Sisman, the man in possession of the Process-commissioned tape. After Sisman's 1981 murder, two assassins searched his apartment and found five snuff films, one of which was the Son of Sam tape.

Turner claimed to be close friends with Michael Carr, the alleged shooter in the eighth Son of Sam murders. About an hour and a half into the slaughter, Turner revealed to Terry what he had "What made Son of Sam possible was the Process. One of their so-called "Apocalyptic Trials" involved a very public and bloody show of force."

Lanier and Smith were still living together in Greenwich Village halfway through the killings, which was halfway between Agents of Fortune and BOC's sixth album, Spectres, but their time together was coming to an end. In 1978, Lanier and Smith's relationship ended.

"They knew a lot of other rock stars. They have a lot of stories of people, all kinds of people, artsy people from New York, pretenders, a lot of people who are not with us now," BOC bassist Joe Bouchard told Popoff. Patti and Allen had ties to the downtown art scene, which included people like Robert Mapplethorpe.

The release of Spectres came in November of 1977, roughly three months after the Sam killings had stopped. This album is constantly cloudy. All of the focus is on nocturnal ghosts. In the opening track, "Godzilla," a monstrous threat to a major city is chronicled. The "Golden Age of Leather" is an operatic 6-minute epic about a resurgence of violent biker gangs and their violent end. In "Death Valley Nights," Manson goes back to his old hideout. Meltzer explained to Popoff that he wrote the song while dating "a Manson girl" who wanted to show him around the cult leader's favourite spots in Death Valley after he relocated from New York to California.

There are fireworks "shooting up in her head" and "fireworks pouring down on her head" when the man finally convinces his hesitant lover to consummate their love in "Fireworks." Lyrics like "And huge drops of lead poured down upon her head" echo those of a note discovered at Berkowitz's flat after his arrest. Both "I Love the Night" and "Nosferatu" explore the darkness of the night through the lens of vampirism.

When you consider that the song's lyricist, Lanier, was the band member who knew alleged snuff film conspirator Mapplethorpe best, you get a pretty scary picture of what this song is about. When Bloom sings "Love is like a gun" on "Searchin' for Celine," he then uses imagery about how it is in the hands of another person and how it is "oh, what a thrill."

Three months before Spectres came out, after Berkowitz was captured, the original British Process faction left New York. According to Terry's reporting, the cult resurfaced in Atlanta in 1978. Killings of children in Atlanta became infamous in 1979, within a year.