THE LOST SON OF SAM LETTERS

Lipstick and Candy

While in Clinton State, Evans wrote a letter to Investigator Horton describing the "most famous person" he had met while incarcerated. Evans told Horton he and Son of Sam had become friends, but Horton didn't believe Evans. When Evans wrote to Horton, he said, "I lifted weights with [Son of Sam] for about a year. I never used to go near him because that's f--ked up, killing innocent [people] . . ." Evans, who had killed two people himself by that point, had justified his killings, writing them off as people "who needed (and deserved) to die." So when he said he didn't understand Son of Sam choosing random people to murder, he meant it, in his own sick and twisted way of thinking.

Gary Evans

Yet as quick as Evans tagged Son of Sam a psychopath, in that same letter to Horton he changed his opinion and described him as "a likeable guy, really. . . . He never talked about the killings. I used to kid him that he should've shot ... rapists instead and he'd laugh. I had a brief look at that new book about him, The Ultimate Evil, by Maury Terry, and the author was claiming [Son of Sam] was with a satanic cult and he had proof. I asked Dave about it and he laughed it off."

By the end of the letter, Evans promised to send copies of his Son of Sam letters to Horton—who eagerly waited, but never saw them.

Instead, Evans tucked them away and placed them inside plastic sleeves and bound them together in a notebook. And there they were, about two dozen letters between Evans and the Son of Sam, showing a side of the famous serial killer no one, in some thirty years of studying him, had ever seen.

As soon as I got home from my trip to Bill's, I sat down at my desk and started to read.