Virginia Voskerichian, 20, a woman of Armenian descent, was living in Queens while excelling as an honor student at Barnard College. On the evening of March 8, 1977, she made the familiar trip home from Manhattan, stepping off the subway in Forest Hills and heading down the quiet streets toward her family’s address nearby.
As she walked along Dartmouth Street in the Forest Hills Gardens area, a man came toward her from the opposite direction and closed the distance like an ordinary passerby. In a moment that felt almost unreal, he drew a. 44-caliber revolver and aimed straight at her. She lifted her books in instinctive defense, but the single shot tore through her guard and struck her in the face, killing her almost immediately. A witness later described the killer running off, even greeting a man he passed as if nothing had happened, while a patrol car that noticed the runner rushed on after hearing a radio call that a woman had been shot on Dartmouth Street.
By the next day, investigators had a grim, clarifying break: ballistics matched the bullet to the same gun used in an earlier killing, confirming that the city’s scattered shootings were not isolated tragedies but chapters of one hunt. Police leadership publicly acknowledged the link and the search tightened around a basic description of the unknown gunman, while a larger task force was organized to chase leads that seemed to multiply as quickly as they collapsed. The case fed fear across New York—because if a lone pedestrian could be chosen at random on a short walk home, no routine felt safe anymore.
Months later, that hunt ended with the arrest of David Berkowitz on August 10, 1977, after investigators connected him to the shootings and took him into custody. Authorities alleged that he was the gunman behind the “Son of Sam” attacks, and the case that had sprawled across the city’s boroughs narrowed to a single suspect in handcuffs—one who would become synonymous with the panic that had gripped New Yorkers through 1976 and 1977.
In court, Berkowitz was found competent to stand trial, pleaded guilty to the shootings, and on June 12, 1978, received 25-years-to-life for each of six murders, to be served consecutively, along with additional time tied to the attempted murders and assaults connected to the spree. Virginia’s killing was treated as one of the murders in that series, and the legal outcome closed the official account of who was responsible, even as the human story—of a student who never made it the last few minutes home—remained open in the memory of the neighborhood where it happened.
Over the years, Berkowitz has periodically suggested versions of the story that point beyond himself, but no additional suspects were convicted in connection with the shootings, and the official record remains anchored to his arrest, guilty plea, and sentences.
