The parking ticket that cracked the Son of Sam case

The ticket sat under the windshield wiper of a parked car, a scrap of city paper in the dark.

A witness near the final shooting scene on the night of July 31, 1977, saw the man beside that car.

The witness saw the ticket too, or noticed the man, or noticed the car — the record keeps the exact sequence plain.

What the record does show: the ticket was traced to a 1975 Ford Galaxy registered to David Berkowitz in Yonkers.

That trace is documented in the case file.

It was the break that led police to the suspect, per the investigation summary.

A mundane object, a parking violation, suddenly the hinge of a citywide manhunt.

Not a fingerprint. Not a confession. A piece of paper left by a meter maid.

The exact time the witness saw the man is not in the record.

The witness's name is in the case file, but not in the news coverage of the case, so the record stays silent on who exactly it was.

Theories circulate online about the case — cults, conspiracies, hidden handlers.

None of that is established by the record.

The record shows the ticket was the key lead.

It was a real, traceable piece of evidence.

It is that simple. It is also that strange.

A year of shootings, six dead, seven wounded, and the city's most wanted man was caught because someone left a ticket on his windshield.

THE SHOOTINGS THAT SEEMED RANDOM

It began as a string of nights that did not connect.

Between July 1976 and July 1977, a series of shootings in New York City killed six people and wounded seven others, per the case summary.

Young couples in parked cars. Lone women, often at night.

The targets were documented in the investigation, but the pattern was not a pattern.

Each attack looked like its own piece of random violence.

Police had bodies, they had witnesses, they had very little else.

Ballistics later linked the shootings to a single .44-caliber revolver.

That link came from the evidence, not from a confession.

The shooter had a name before the police had a suspect.

He became known as "Son of Sam" after a letter left at a crime scene and notes sent to columnist Jimmy Breslin.

The name was from the record. The motive was not.

The motive for the shootings is not established in the record.

Why these victims, why these nights, why this weapon — that remains unanswered.

The frustration for investigators was the randomness.

A city of eight million, and the only clue was a gun that fired the same bullets.

The final attack occurred on July 31, 1977, in Brooklyn.

A woman was killed, a man was wounded.

The shooter left the scene, and the case still had no face.

The record shows six dead, seven wounded, and a trail of .44-caliber shells.

It shows a note, a letter, a name.

It does not show a reason.