New York’s Night Without Mercy

The night the lights died in New York, the city met its reflection in the dark. We open on the brittle summer of 1977—rising prices, rising tempers—and follow the lightning strike that crippled the grid at 9:21 p.m. What unfolded wasn’t just a power failure; it was a stress test on trust. Phones went silent, subways froze, and some neighborhoods ignited as looters ripped away storefront grates with cars. Hospitals fought to keep lights on while emergency rooms absorbed waves of assault and accident victims. Fire alarms multiplied, entire blocks burned, and many people sat in motionless trains underground, wagering that stillness was safer than the tunnels ahead.

From that Night of Terror, we trace the city’s relationship with fear through three chilling case studies. Joel Rifkin hid cruelty behind routine, scattering remains to erase identities until a missing license plate exposed everything. David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, turned a handgun and a stack of taunting letters into a citywide siege of anxiety, before a parking ticket near a crime scene broke the spell. And the New York Zodiac, Humberto Ceda, copied a legend to borrow power, leaving notes and numerals that finally betrayed him. Each story shows how myth, media, and luck can shape a manhunt—and how thin the line is between order and unraveling.

Along the way, we look backward to the 1863 draft riots to show a pattern that keeps repeating: when institutions feel fragile or far away, rumor becomes fuel and violence spreads faster than reason. This is urban resilience told through outages, sirens, and the quiet choices of strangers at 3 a.m. If you’ve ever wondered what a city reveals when the grid fails—who protects, who preys, and how the morning rewires the story—this one pulls you into the heart of it. Listen now, subscribe for more deep dives into the dark and the human, and leave a review to help other curious minds find the show.

Transcript

Setting The Stage: 1977 Crisis

The Blackout Begins

Citywide Chaos And Lawlessness

Subways Become Traps

Hospitals And Fires Overwhelmed

Flashback: 1863 Draft Riots

Joel Rifkin’s Killing Spree

Son Of Sam Manhunt And Arrest

The New York Zodiac Unmasked

Moral Note And Closing CTA

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Creep Radio, where we dive deep into the dark, the bizarre and the unexplained. Dim the lights and lock your doors. Prepare to get creeped out. Because the unknown is calling and we're about to answer. I'm your host, the Master of Creepy. Well, hello little creepies. The story this week is problems in New York City. Well the year was nineteen seventy seven and the president of the United States was Jimmy Carter. America was experiencing hard economic times. Inflation was hovering around 6.6% and was moving higher by the month. People were having a hard time just making their rent and buying groceries. No one was buying new houses because the interest rate was at an all-time high of 37.8%. And of course, no one could afford that, so new homes were not being built. You see, a big storm was brewing in New York City. And as time went on, people became more and more anxious about the economy. It was a hot July night in New York City when a very large storm rolled in. At 9 21 PM, there were multiple lightning strikes that crippled the power grid. The lights flickered a few times and then went out completely. The storm moved in fast and moved out fast, leaving streets wet with the skyline dark. A few buildings had emergency generators, but most of the city was wrapped in total darkness. And by 940 PM the power company was overwhelmed and couldn't catch up with the demand. Many of their power lines had been hit by lightning and were down for the count. All five boroughs were in darkness. The phone system was down and 911 calls were going unanswered. Why, this was a green light to every criminal, thug and crook, and rapist in the city. Within just a few minutes, screams could be heard as people were being victimized and raped and murdered within the darkened apartment buildings. Crime peaked at an all-time high, leaving several areas of Harlem and Brooklyn and the South Bronx. No one could even call for help because of the blackout. This event was documented in the Times magazine and dubbed as the Night of Terror. And it was a night of terror, and the light stayed out all night long in many areas. And when you have more than ten million people living in such a small area with the power down, well there's bound to be trouble. In fact, there were tens of thousands of people who started looting and setting fires. Now keep in mind, this was before cell phones, so all communication was down. The police were not coming. If you were a law abiding citizen, well, good luck, 'cause you were on your own. There was no law in order. Criminals knew that they could get away with just about anything, and they did. The city was already terrorized by the son of Sam killer, who was still on the loose. Looting and vandalism were widespread in New York City, hitting thirty-fine different neighborhoods. Possibly the hardest hit was Crown Heights, where seventy-five stores in a five block stretch were looted and damaged, and Brunswick arson was rampant, with some twenty five fires still burning the next morning. And at one point two blocks of Broadway in Brooklyn, which separates Brunswick from Bedford Stuvet, were on fire. Thirty-five blocks of Broadway were destroyed. One hundred-four stores were looted, and forty five of them were set on fire. Thieves stole fifty new Pontiacs from a Bronx dealership. In Brooklyn, youths were seen backing up cars into stores and tying ropes around the stores' grates and then using their cars to pull the grates away and then looting the stores. There were five hundred and fifty police officers that were injured in the mayhem, and four thousand five hundred looters were arrested, which was a very small number percentage-wise when you look at the total number of people that were involved. The New York subway system became a prison of terror. Can you imagine what it must have been like to be riding deep underground in New York subways and having the electrical power grid go down? People had to walk down the train tracks in complete darkness and walk miles underground along the tracks to the next station. And once they found an opening to the street, they were greeted by screams of people being attacked and raped, multiple fires and blocks of looting. They must have thought they had died and gone to hell. It was reported that many people were too scared to get off the subway trains and simply sat in total darkness underground for the entire night. Hospitals were overwhelmed. Emergency rooms all over the city were receiving up to six times more patients because of accidents and muggings and the rape victims. They barely had enough electrical power from their generator to keep the lights on. Several cases required emergency surgery. Well, you'll just have to wait if you were hurt. Doctors who were off duty were returning to the hospitals after their shifts because they knew that there were going to be problems. The fire department was so busy that many of the calls went unanswered. There were more than 1,500 fire alarms going off. Hundreds of buildings were on fire. Complete blocks were burning. And I find it ironic that people who complain about their neighborhoods and that they're slums and run down. Why they seem to be the first ones to loot and burn whenever they're given a chance. Now, New York City is no stranger to riots. The New York Draft riots occurred in July of 1863 when citizens became angry over a new federal draft law during the Civil War, and it sparked five days of some of the bloodiest and most destructive rioting in the history of the America. Many people were thrown into the rivers to drown, and on the fourth day, Union troops returning from the Battle of Gettysburg came into the city and stopped the rioting. But it is estimated that about 400 people were killed during those few days. So why were the people so upset? Well, because the draft was considered an attack on individual liberty and freedom. It was so ironic that the people fighting to rid themselves of society of slavery wanted to draft people into the war by force. In other words, enslave the citizens to fight a war. So what was the outcome of the Civil War for New York? A total of four hundred thousand men were sent into the war, and twenty-two thousand of them died from combat wounds. Another thirty thousand died from disease or accidents, and thirty-six were executed. Let's move forward to more recent times. New York serial killers Joel David Rifkin. He was born on january twentieth, nineteen fifty nine. He was killing women from nineteen eighty nine through nineteen ninety-three. In all he killed seventeen women, and some of them were never found. He had a habit of cutting them up into little pieces and spreading them all over New York, including some in the river. Rifkin had problems in school and he was considered antisocial. Rifkin's first brush with the law happened in 1987 when he offered money for sex to an undercover female police officer, and then two years later he started his killing spree. His first victim was Heidi Balsch, who was twenty five years old at the time. After killing her, he severed her head and put it into a paint bucket and then left it on a golf course. He then cut her into several pieces and dropped off her arm in the East River. Rifkin was finally caught on June 28, 1993, when a state trooper noticed a truck without a license plate. The truck was pulled over and it was Rifkin, but he had the body of his latest victim under a tarp in the back of the truck. He was given 203 years in prison and is still alive today at the Clinton Correctional Facility. You can't talk about serial killers and leave out David Berkowitz, the son of Sam. David was born in 1953, and his real name is Richard David Falco. This is one of the most well-known serial killers in the world because of the terror that he caused. He would send letters to the police mocking them because they couldn't catch him. All in all, he ended up killing six people and wounding seven others. Most of them he shot using a 44 Special Caliber Bulldog revolver. In addition to the killings, David was suspected of several arson cases throughout the city. David claimed that he received messages from his neighbor's dog that he shot. The dog's owner was named Sam. So David took the name of Son of Sam. Son of Sam was finally caught when his car was parked illegally and received a parking ticket, and the car matched the description that had been given before. Plus the car was very close to the last murder attempt. He was finally arrested on august tenth, nineteen seventy seven. Police found and investigated Berkowitz's car which was parked outside of his apartment building at thirty five Pine Street in Yonkers. They saw a gun in the back seat and they searched the car and found a duffel bag full of ammunition and maps of the crime scenes and a threatening letter addressed to Inspector Timothy Dowd of the Sun of Sam Task Force. Police decided to wait for Berkowitz to leave the apartment rather than risk a violent confrontation in the building's narrow hallways. The police also waited to obtain a search warrant for the apartment. They were worried that their search might be challenged in the court, and the initial search of the vehicle was based on the handgun that was visible in the back seat. Although possession of such a gun was legal in New York State and required no special permits, by the time Berkowitz came out of his apartment, the police did not have a warrant to enter the apartment building, so they simply waited and followed Berkowitz. As soon as he got into his car, a New York detective confronted him by pointing a gun through the driver's side window. Berkowitz looked up and said, Well, you got me. If we're gonna talk about serial killers in New York City, we cannot possibly leave out the New York Zodiac. Humberto Ceda was born in 1967. He idolized Ted Mundy and the San Francisco Zodiac killer who was never caught. Humberto was a loner. He never dated and he never held a job. He would steal money from payphones and vending machines by plugging up the chain slots with paper, and then he would return later and pull out the paper and collect all the coins that were stuck inside. He would spend most of his time reading crime magazines and gun magazines. He studied the San Francisco Zodiac Killer and decided to copy his style of killing random people and leaving notes for the police. Since the original Zodiac Killer was never caught, Humberto got the idea of pretending to be the original Zodiac Killer and that he had moved from San Francisco to New York City. But the police analyzed Humberto's handwriting notes and determined that he was not the original Zodiac Killer. He was finally caught when he shot one of his own family members after a disagreement, and the police noticed how he signed his confession letter with three sevens and a symbol of zodiacs. They matched up the handwriting analysis with the letters they had received during the murder spree. He was convicted and sent to prison for life in 1998. Ironically, he spends his time in prison reading the Bible and reciting scriptures to other inmates. Well, it's too bad he didn't take his own advice. Thou shalt not kill. Subscribe and share with your friends and give it five stars. You know you want to.