The Sons of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness tells the story of Maury Terry and his quest to uncover the truth behind the Son of Sam case — but what does the documentary leave out? The documentary series follows the path of Terry's theories as he falls further and further into obsession, but much of his life after the 1980s isn't covered; here's everything the Netflix documentary leaves out.
A shooter plagued New York City between 1976 and 1977, killing six and injuring several more. When police arrested David Berkowitz, who claimed to be the Son of Sam, in 1977, it created a wave of relief across NYC. But Maury Terry, then an editor with IBM, didn't believe Berkowitz's arrest was the end of it. Based on eye witness sketches and Berkowitz's own letters, Terry began to put together a theory that there was not just a single Son of Sam, but Sons of Sam. Terry rose to fame with The Ultimate Evil, a book that chronicled his theories on a satanic killer network. Terry began making the rounds on every talk show that would give him a platform, making him a household name as he fell down the rabbit hole of conspiracies.
Related: What Sons of Sam Leaves Out About David Berkowitz
As Sons of Sam shows, Maurice Terry was born in 1946 and was a graduate of Iona College. At the time of the Son of Sam killings, Terry was working as an in-house editor at IBM, but he had actually previously worked as a young reporter covering Martin Luther King Jr's assassination and the following protests. The Netflix documentary glosses over various aspects of Terry's early experiences on the case. As he developed his Son of Sam Satanism theories, Terry reached out to every tabloid he could and every connection he had — and it was Steve Dunleavy, the iconic reporter from The New York Post who introduced him to the NYPD's Chief of Detectives John Keenan, according to Dunleavy [via The New York Post]. Terry managed to get his theories published in more than 10 newspapers in different counties across New York.
Although the Netflix true-crime series explores Terry's experiences as a public figure in the '80s and early '90s, it doesn't cover much after Terry's televised sitdown with the Son of Sam killer. After interviewing Berkowitz in 1993, Terry continued to fight for the reopening of the Son of Sam case. He and other believers of the Sons of Sam theory continued to share their beliefs, and Terry's writings on the case played a large part in the Yonkers police reopening the case in 1996. No new charges were filed, however, and the lack of evidence caused the Yonkers police to suspend the case once again, though it still remains open. Terry published an updated version of his book in the late 1990s that included an epilogue on the recent re-opening of the case. After his rise to fame, Terry began to work in television production and appeared on series like Unsolved Mysteries and Biography discussing his theories surrounding David Berkowitz.
As the spotlight on the Son of Sam case faded, Terry never stopped fighting for the truth. He remained close friends with Carlos Denaro, one of Son of Sam's living victims, who believes that Berkowitz was not the one who shot him. Denaro has said in an interview that Terry was working on another update to his book in 2010, which was unfortunately never published due to his failing health and subsequent death in 2015 [via The New York Post]. Terry also became close friends with Josh Zeman, director of Sons of Sam, during his search for a filmmaker who would share his theories. When Terry passed away while Zeman was working on another project, Zeman was gifted the entirety of Terry's case files — which Zeman would later use those files to create The Sons of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness in hopes that his years of work could be properly honored.