The Cäcilia Davis Debacle

As I work on this post, I'm listening to the Manny Grossman Show titled "Billy the Artis-Wow..." published on March 10, 2024. 

Wow is right.

Typically I try to keep things succinct for a couple of reasons but primarily because I respect the reader's time. After all, who wants to go over line after line of the transcript to an hour plus long video? 

I'm not even sure I have the intestinal fortitude to produce a line-by-line analysis from start to finish but I can see going a little deeper to highlight the casual way in which the audience gets mislead throughout an entire show in a coming post or two. It's really quite extraordinary. 

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The video we will be discussing today, “On Location-Son of Sam Shoots Stacey and Robert. The Brooklyn Shooting Scene With John Catalano.” can be found here. 

On the morning that Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante were attacked, July 31, 1977, witness Cäcilia Davis spotted David Berkowitz removing a parking ticket from his car windshield. The ticket was issued because David parked in front of a fire hydrant. Later Mrs. Davis told Maury Terry that she watched Berkowitz toss the ticket inside his car.

In the video linked above, after walking from where Ms. Davis is said to have lived at the time to the sidewalk in front of her building, Manny pointed out the following:

(4:59) “That fire hydrant is a speck, it's a DOT all the way down the block. Cäcilia Davis was parked here, there's no way she could have seen details down there, there's just no way… she's able to discern all of this in the middle of the night…”

But what do the police reports say?

The following is from page 143 of the Moskowitz/Violante NYPD Victim report. It is widely believed to be a witness statement from Mrs. Davis.

 

Next we have pages 2 and 3 of the Parking Summons Investigation file, also believed to contain a witness statement from Mrs. Davis:

 

And then we have the words of David Berkowitz on the night of his arrest from page 11 of the D.A. questioning:

 

Not a pants pocket, not a jacket pocket, not in his wallet, but inside the car specifically. He got that part right, or at least it comports with what Mrs. Davis told Maury Terry.

Now let’s go back to David’s confession on the night of his arrest.

This is from the same page, 11, of the of the D.A. questioning:

 

In three separate reports, Robert Violante placed the previously discussed “grubby-looking hippie” standing in the park.

 

 

 

David had perfect recall about tossing the ticket in his car, a fairly insignificant action. Yet he can’t remember standing under a burned-out light and staring at Robert and Stacy before deciding to shoot them?

 

 By the swings? They were on the swings. The real killer watched. 

 

Details matter, especially when you’re keeping an eye on people like Manny and Berkowitz.

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Thanks again for your readership. We're correcting the record without resorting to name-calling, exaggeration, or dirty tricks. 

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