The location where Alexander Esau and Valentina Suriani were murdered

This is the location where the Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, shot Alexander Esau and Valentina Suriani.

It is situated outside 1878 Hutchinson River Parkway in the Bronx, New York.

At around 3 a.m. on April 16th, 1977, Esau (20) and Suriani (18) were sitting in a Mercury Montego on this service road when Berkowitz walked up to the driver's side window and opened fire with his revolver.

Suriani was shot twice in the head and died almost instantly. Esau suffered a critical head injury and succumbed to his wounds two hours later at Jacobi Hospital.

The shots were heard by a neighbor, who immediately called the police.

The shooting took place just two blocks from where Donna Lauria had been killed eight months previously.

By this stage, the media was aware that someone was randomly targeting young couples in the Bronx and Queens. Some newspapers had started referring to him as a "sniper", while others nicknamed him "the .44 caliber killer".

In less than a year, Lauria, Christine Freund, and Virginia Voskerichain had all been shot dead by a .44 caliber revolver. Others, such as Joanne Lomino and Donna DeMasi, had been wounded in similar ambush attacks.

Now, yet another couple had been senselessly gunned down in cold blood with the exact same type of weapon.

The Esau-Suriani shooting was significant, as it was the first time that Berkowitz communicated with the police.

At the crime scene, detectives discovered a four-page letter that the killer had handwritten in block capitals. In the rambling, poorly-spelled letter, Berkowitz identified himself as the Son of Sam and promised to continue his "work" until he was killed.

Although the NYPD initially withheld the letter from the media, tabloid newspapers used their inside sources to glean information about some of its contents.

From that point on, the media began referring to the killer by his self-given moniker, the Son of Sam.