THE LOST SON OF SAM LETTERS

A Friendship Ends

According to Evans, the relationship between him and Sam ended when he called Sam "David Bezerk-o-witz" one day while they were lifting weights. "He got really pissed," Evans wrote to Horton, "and we never spoke again."

Evans came up with a rather bizarre theory regarding Sam's pedigree. He claimed a news article he'd read said Sam was "really adopted, and his name at birth was . . . are you ready? Richard Falco, son of [Michael Falco's parents]! I almost shit reading that! I haven't said anything to him because that's personal and I don't want him catching an attitude at me."

Gary Evans (r) with Falco

Michael Falco was Gary Evans's first victim. He shot Falco and buried his body in Florida. Investigators wouldn't find it for fifteen years.

Asked later about the connection between David Berkowitz and the Falcos, Investigator Horton said, "I do remember [Evans] telling me that. But I didn't take it any further. I really had no reason to at the time. It was meaningless to what I was doing with Gary. And, to be honest, it was one of those Gary statements that just seemed to be so far out there, I didn't put much credence into it."

The moment Evans and Sam stopped being friends shows how fragile the mind of Son of Sam actually is. He could take a lot of things and, one could argue, used Evans for food, friendship, reading materials, protection, and Lord knows what else. But when it came to insulting his intellect, thus perhaps holding up a mirror and forcing Sam to think about what he had done, it was too much. As a researcher, a guy who has studied murderers for many years, I can say that the insult was a strike to the character that Sam had built up over the years in prison. He had pushed the killer he was out of his mind and perhaps believed, like a lot of convicted murderers, that the person who committed those crimes was someone else. He was a new man by the time he met Evans—not the evil killer America had branded him.