Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “Son of Sal” Salvatore Perrone

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

Salvator Perrone’s early life in the 1950s is a murky mystery, but by the time he was in his 60s, the failed fashion entrepreneur had a grudge against the world — and he was ready to exact his revenge.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. On a balmy Friday evening in New York City, 65-year-old Mohamed Jabali was getting ready to close up his clothing store for the weekend. It had been a quiet few days in his Brooklyn neighborhood. The city had emptied out for the Independence Day holiday, as families took the opportunity for a large, weekend away. Muhammad looked up with surprise as he heard the bell above the door jangle.

It was five minutes before closing time, and the store had been empty for hours. Who was coming in at this hour on a holiday Friday? But when Muhammad saw the mustached man carrying a duffel bag, it all made sense. Salvatore Perone wasn't the kind of man who celebrated holidays. Muhammad wouldn't exactly say that he liked Salvatore, but he had known him for almost two decades. since Salvatore had owned a rival clothing store just a few doors down. He felt bad for him, especially since he knew Salvatore had fallen on hard times. He forced to smile and greeted Salvatore, but the other man didn't respond. He kept walking towards Muhammad a strange, blank expression on his face,

and then, without breaking stride, he reached into his bag and pulled out a rifle. Hi, I'm Greg Polson. This is Serial Killers, a Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we're delving into the crimes of the son of Sal Killer, Salvatore Peron. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. In the first part of this episode, we'll look explore Peron's mysterious early life and his promising beginnings as a young apparel worker in New York City. Later, we'll examine how Peron's life darkened as he reached retirement age, his slow decline into madness, and how his vicious crimes drew comparisons to one of the most famous serial killers of all time. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter, whether you're hiring for a role or searching for a killer. the hunt can be exhausting.

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Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Ambition is a good thing to have. A healthy drive for success and perhaps even a competitive edge helps to motivate and inspire us to achieve our potential. the wrong circumstances or in the wrong brain, ambition can curdle into something sour. Some people have ambition, but lack the persistence or the talent to follow through on their dreams. Some people want to take shortcuts rather than put in the work, and some people become so obsessed by their

ambition that it blinds them to everything else. Salvatore Perone was desperate to be a success. He dreamed of being a fashion mogul, supplying fabrics to designers and retailers, across New York City, and when it became clear that success was out of his reach, he lashed out. If he couldn't have his dream, nobody could. But where did that dream come from? It's hard to pinpoint exactly. Salvatore Peron's story is an unusual one. Most serial killers we discuss can be understood in part because of what we know about their

upbringing, their families, and the environments that shape them. But Peron is a man without a past. at least not one that's accessible to us. Here's the sum total of what we know about Perron's early life. He was born on November 22nd, 1948. He spent at least some of his childhood in Bensonhurst, a peaceful neighborhood in the far reaches of Brooklyn, New York, and didn't stray far from there for the rest of his life.

Because we have such limited information about Peron's early life, and none at all about where or why his family immigrated to New York, We have to speculate a little here. Many Italian families immigrated to America in the early 20th century. Between the years 1900 and 1910 alone, two million Italians crossed the pond, many of them fleeing rural poverty and lack of economic opportunity. Most of these immigrants arrived in the country via New York's famous Ellis Island port,

so it's no surprise that many Italian families settled in the city. Assuming the perones were one such family, Heading to the U.S. in the early 20th century to seek a better future, this may have shaped the young Salvatore's approach to money. Perhaps his parents drilled into him the importance of hard work, ambition, and of self-sufficiency, or perhaps he was born with an inherent sense of competition. Surrounded by the wealth, culture, and iconic architecture of New York City, he saw boundless opportunities to seize his own slice of the American dream. Vanessa is going to take over in the psychology here.

here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or a psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. In a 1999 paper on psychological well-being and educational achievement among immigrant youth, Yale University sociologist Grace Cowell explored the challenges and pressures faced by immigrant children

at school. Cow notes that immigrant parents promote the educational success of their children and are, quote, especially optimistic about their children's odds of upward mobility. She also notes that immigrant minority children do extremely well in school and show signs of strong resilience. But Cow goes on to point out that the children of immigrant families encounter unique difficulties at school,

including rejection from both native-born whites and native-born members of their same ethnic groups, which makes them feel more alienated at school than their native-born counterparts. Moreover, immigrant minority status lowers perceptions of control over the direction of one's life. So, despite our limited knowledge of Peron's early life, we can assume that the pressures on him were significant. He may have grown up with a sense that he had to be successful in order to truly belong. By the time he left school, he had settled on a career path. He wanted to work in apparel. New York's garment industry is one of the most renowned in the world.

At one time, it was the city's largest business. employing about a third of the population. When you hear New York and apparel, you might immediately think of fashion. Designer clothes displayed within glossy storefronts along Fifth Avenue. But according to the Gotham Center for New York history, garment manufacturers played a major and largely unsung role in shaping the industry. This is significant because from the little we know about Perron's career, garment manufacturing was a major part of his work along with sales.

This suggests that at least early on, he wasn't craving fame or even necessarily wealth. This makes sense, in light of our speculation, about the pressure Peron may have felt to be successful. He wanted a stable trade, not a path to glory. And so he wasn't setting his sights on Manhattan. Instead, he planned to open a store close to the Brooklyn neighborhoods where he spent his early life. This is another area where details are thin on the ground, so we'll walk you through the little we know about Peron's career as a young, man. At various times, he worked as an apparel salesman and as an entrepreneur, and by all accounts,

he was a success. At some point in the 1970s or 80s, Peron opened his own clothing store in Bay Ridge, a tucked-away waterfront neighborhood in the southwest corner of Brooklyn. As his career took off, Perron's personal life was also flourishing. In the early 1980s, he met Maria Salerno, a young woman who had recently immigrated to the U.S. from Palermo, Italy. The couple had plenty in common beyond their shared Italian heritage. In Palermo, Maria had worked as a seamstress, so she had a deep understanding of the craft that went into making garments. It wasn't every day that Peron met a woman who shared his passion. Meanwhile, as a new immigrant in a city as vast and overwhelming as New York, Maria was surely

drawn to a man who seemed to be going places. She and Peron soon became an item. In 1985, the couple settled in Staten Island. They found their dream home on a pretty narrow street, full of cozy two-story homes, footsteps away from a large park and multiple lakes. It was an idyllic setting to start their lives together. The house itself had long been a neighborhood eyesore. It was significantly bigger than any other on the block,

with a steep roof and pointy angular architecture that struck many neighbors as spooky. Not long after the newlyweds moved in, Peron began extensive renovations to the building, reportedly planning to build an extension. The project soon raised eyebrows among his neighbors. Terry Colano, a newly widowed woman living next door to the couple, took an immediate dislike to Peron. To her, it seemed like he was trying to build a kind of Fort Knox, barricading himself in from a community that prided itself on being neighborly. Terry felt bad for Maria, who was now pregnant with the couple's first child.

The first summer after the Peron's moved to the neighborhood, Terry spent a lot of time at their house, keeping Maria company. According to Terry, the Peron's marriage was a troubled one. Peron struck her as self-absorbed, quick to anchor, and prone to going on sudden tirades against his long-suffering wife. One night, Terry recalled, Peron came home late from work and loudly told Maria how much he hated the dinner she had prepared for him. Terry was astonished by Maria's lack of a reaction. But at least for the moment, Maria was willing to put up with Perron's foul temper and lack of affection. Her husband was under a lot of pressure, she reasoned, trying to build his business in a competitive industry. She devoted herself to raising their daughter, Maria Carla. Around this time, reports indicate that Peron's store was making very good money, but he wasn't satisfied with the level of success he'd already achieved,

opening his own store was just the beginning. Peron dreamed of creating his own clothing line, becoming a recognizable name in the fashion industry. And just like with the ambitious renovations to his home, Peron's reach exceeded his grasp. It's not clear exactly when, but eventually his business took a downturn, and he started borrowing large sums of money. Throughout the 80s, he sank deeper and deeper into debt. It's likely he took out loans to cover his businesses, no-balling losses, living in vain hope that someday he'd be able to turn things around. That day never came. At some point, Peron lost his store in Bay Ridge. It's not clear whether

he closed or sold it voluntarily or was forced to surrender it to his creditors. Either way, Peron ended up becoming a door-to-door salesman to make ends meet. The life of a traveling salesman is not an easy one. In fact, it became emblematic of American economic despair, thanks to Arthur Miller's 1949 play, Death of a Salesman. The play's protagonist, Willie Lohman, is an aging salesman whose disillusionment with his failed career seems to be driving him into madness. Throughout the play, he becomes increasingly detached from reality, in a tragic arc that symbolizes what can happen when the American dream goes sour. Keep Willie Lohman in mind as we explore Peron's downfall.

As Peron's career hit the skids during the 80s, the cracks in his memory, Marriage also widened. Maria had put up with a lot from Perron and had raised their daughter largely alone. But once she realized how much debt her husband was racking up, Maria saw the writing on the wall. It's possible that there were other factors. Based on Terry Colano's account,

Peron was an emotionally neglectful husband at best, and it's possible his treatment of Maria worsened as his professional frustrations grew. It's not clear exactly when the split happened, but likely sometime during the 1990s, Peron and Maria divorced. Maria moved out of the Staten Island House with the couple's daughter, Maria Carla. The split was not amicable. Peron became estranged from both his wife and his young daughter,

and his mental state soon took a disturbing turn for the worse. One chapter of his life was ending, and another much darker one was about to begin. Coming up, Peron's bizarre behavior. raises alarm bells among his neighbors. Hi, it's Carter from Parcast Network. The Vatican is one of the most recognizable religious sites in the world, but it's also a powerful institution.

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In the mid-1990s, Salvatore Peron was barreling headfirst into a midlife crisis. Now in his 40s, he was newly divorced and estranged from his daughter, saddled with crippling debt and a failed business. The state of Peron's Staten Island home was a clear indicator of his declining mental state, neighbors whispered among themselves about the house, which had always been an eyesore on the street because of its large size and strange architecture. But over the 10 or so years that Peron had owned the place, it had fallen further into disrepair. Children walking home through the neighborhood would speed up as they passed Peron's house, which had taken on a creepy, almost haunted appearance. The exterior was painted black, while the trimmings were a sickly green color, like a cartoon drawing of a witch's home.

Even worse than the color scheme was the state of the building itself. Peron had embarked on an ambitious renovation project when he first bought the home, planning to add extensions and completely overhaul the architecture. But as his finances crumbled, the renovations stalled, leaving the house in an eerie state of half completion. Cinder blocks and concrete slabs littered the lawn. A neighbor recalled, the place had no windows where windows should be, entrances that didn't seem visible.

Not exactly what you want to be raising your kids next to. For years, Peron's neighbors battled in vain to get him to address the upkeep of the property, and his refusal to listen made him universally loathed. In 1998, Peron was cited for his home's multiple building code violations, but he paid the city no more attention than his upset neighbors. Perhaps that was because Peron's mental state was declining as rapidly as his house, His neighbors became accustomed to strange sights. Some nights, Peron would wander out into the middle of the street and sing opera with a glass of wine in one hand and a cigar in the other.

On other nights, he'd sit on a plastic chair in the middle of the street, working his way through a six-pack. It's hard to say, based on this description, exactly what was going on for Peron psychologically at this point. But the fact that he was watching his house from the outside could indicate that he was paranoid, either about intruders or about. about something inside the house. To our knowledge, Perone wasn't diagnosed with any mental disorder, so all we can do is speculate. With that in mind, paranoia is a symptom of several mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and paranoid personality disorder. The DSM-5 defines several characteristics of paranoid personality disorder, the overarching one being,

persistent distrust and suspiciousness of others, which manifests in unjustified suspicion that other people are exploiting or lying to them, a reluctance to confide in others, and a tendency to hold grudges. Perron certainly ticks many of these boxes. It surely came as a relief to Peron's neighbors when he left town for weeks at a time, traveling to other states to peddle his wares. We don't have many details on exactly where Peron worked, but we do know he spent significant time in Pennsylvania. We know this because in 2001, He was charged with a number of crimes in the state, including stalking, harassment, burglary, and trespassing. He pleaded guilty only to the latter, and the details of his sentence aren't available.

He was also charged with drunk driving in New Jersey and back home in Staten Island. It's not clear who Peron was stalking and harassing in Pennsylvania, but it does tally with what we know about his behavior back home. He was known to be combative, the kind of man who would threaten to call the police over a disagreement and report his neighbors to the city for minor transgressions. In other words, Peron was petty. He held grudges. Perhaps the stalking and harassment charges arose from him pursuing someone he felt had wronged him, maybe a business rival or a prospective client who had backed out on a deal. His grudges only grew over the next few years as Peron struggled

to keep his head above water financially. But in 2007, as he neared his 60th birthday, Things seemed to be looking up, or at the very least, he became more determined to turn his life around before it was too late. That year, Peron trademarked his own name, taking the first step toward his long-held dream of launching a clothing line. He was still working in the textile business, selling fabric and clothing direct to stores, and he hoped to use his connections to help him get the line off the ground. Around this time, Peron also met Natasha Chera Ava, a 54-year-old Russian immigrant, The couple became an item, and Perron started spending most of his time at Natasha's apartment in Midwood, Brooklyn. Meanwhile, Peron's behavior was getting stranger and stranger.

Whenever he was home, he sneaked into his house as though afraid of being watched and slept in the basement, leaving the rest of the place abandoned. Neighbors saw him skirting the perimeter of his property, looking furtively around before creeping in. This behavior suggests that Peron's paranoia was worsening, but it's not paranoia, if they really are out to get you. And by this point, Perron had good reason to look over his shoulder between the creditors pursuing him and the neighbors who hated him.

Peron was also starting to get a sketchy reputation among the shopkeepers of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, where he'd once owned a store and still regularly went to sell clothing and fabric. According to one shopkeeper, Chris Cargis, Peron no longer cared at all about quality. One day Perone came into Cargis's store to try and sell him some spools of throw

He claimed that he was shutting down a clothing factory he owned and needed to offload some inventory. Cargis noticed that the spools were poor quality and seemed to have been used already. Still, he bought some, feeling bad for the down-out-as-lucked salesman. But after Peron left, Cargis' wife beckoned him into the back of the store. Cargis's wife looked spooked. She said, I don't like him. I don't want you doing business with him anymore. Cargis wasn't sure why his wife was so adamant.

But the next time Peron came into his store, trying to sell, Carcass told him no. And in all likelihood, that wasn't the only no Peron heard that week. Word of his strange behavior and poor quality products spread fast among the community of shopkeepers. It was getting harder and harder for Peron to find buyers, and his financial situation had never been more dire. In 2008, he stopped making mortgage payments on his house, which went into foreclosure two years. later. Adding insult to injury, Peron was spending his days in the very same streets where he had once owned his own store. Years ago, Bay Ridge had represented prosperity, success, and a bright future. Now he hauled his black duffel bag of threads and fabric around his old stomping ground,

forced to go into the stores of former competitors who were doing so much better than him. A lot of people in Peron's situation might choose to avoid Bay Ridge altogether. There are plenty of other neighborhoods he could have tried. Perhaps he simply had to choose Bay Ridge because that was where he had contacts, or perhaps he was deliberately picking at the scab, letting his resentment fester and simmer as he went into store after store after store. On a personal level, things weren't much better. Peron's relationship with Natasha was also on the rocks, in part because he was broke and often couldn't even afford to buy them a bottle of wine. But his erratic moods were the real problem. Years later, Natasha recalled, it was up and down, up and down. He's upset. He's

upset. By 2012, Peron was in freefall. Now 63, his working years should have been drawing to a close, but he couldn't afford to retire. He couldn't even afford to hold on to his shabby monstrosity of a house in Staten Island. The dreams he had once seemed so close to achieving were now distant memories. and all that was left in their place was a blinding, senseless rage. In July of that year, as the sticky heat of another New York summer rolled in, that rage boiled over. Peron needed money. He wanted revenge, and he soon set his sights on the perfect target.

65-year-old Mohamed Jabelli owned a store named Valentino Fashion in Bay Ridge, just a block away from where Peron's own former store had been. For more than 15 years, Mohamed was a regular client of Peron's, who supplied clothes to a store. Peron made a habit of coming into Valentino in the evening when it was almost closing time, but Muhammad always made time for him, keeping the store open late if necessary. So on the night of July 6th, Mohammed didn't think anything was amiss when Peron showed up at closing time. The store was quiet that night. It was the Friday after July 4th, and many residents were still out of town celebrating. Peron and Mohammed were alone.

As he approached, Peron lifted up the black duffel bag he always used to carry his wares. Muhammad sighed inwardly, bracing himself for an awkward conversation. Lately, Peron had been trying to pawn off increasingly poor quality fabric, and Muhammad was running out of polite ways to turn him down. But instead of clothing, Peron pulled out a 22-caliber rifle with a sought-off stock. He shot Mohammed one. in the neck, rendering him unconscious. Believing him dead, Perone covered up Muhammad's body with clothing from the store.

Then he took all of the money from the cash register and left. When Muhammad didn't return home that night, his friends went looking for him at the store. They found him underneath the pile of clothes, unconscious and bleeding, and called the police. Unfortunately, they were too late. Muhammad died of his injuries. At the time, the murder was likely assumed to be a straightforward, robbery, but it would soon become clear that this was the beginning of something much darker. Up next, Peron's escalating spree spreads panic through Brooklyn.

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Kayak, got that right. Now back to the story. In the summer of 2012, 63-year-old Salvatore Peron murdered Mohamed Jabelle, a Brooklyn shopkeeper he had known for 15 years. The two men had once owned clothing stores steps away from each other, and more recently, Peron had supplied Muhammad with clothing, as a salesman. It seemed that Peron's fury over his own failed career

had propelled him into a senseless act of violence, and he was only just getting started. A month after killing Muhammad, Peron struck again. On August 2nd, he visited a 99-cent store in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the neighborhood where he'd grown up. 59-year-old Isaac Kadare, the owner, was alone in the store when Peron arrived. It's not clear whether Isaac and Peron knew each other,

but given their close-eastern, It's possible they grew up together in the neighborhood. But whatever their history may have been, Perone was on a mission. He pulled out his sought-off rifle and shot Isaac in the head, then stabbed him in the neck. After killing Isaac, he stole money from him. And then, just as he had done with Mohammed, Peron covered up his victim's body before leaving the crime scene. But this time, his method was more sloppy and a lot more strange. Peron poured bleach around Kadare's body and then placed an aluminum tray over his face.

The fact that Peron took the time to cover up his victims is striking. A 2018 study out of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York examined a handful of murders where the killer, quote, engaged in crime scene behavior that has been considered an attempt to symbolically reverse the murder. The most common type of reversal behavior they observed was using blank to cover the victim's body. The study also noted that in a majority of the cases, the killer knew their victim, which lent more credence to the idea that undoing behavior is a way that killers try to compensate for their feelings of remorse after the murder. Putting clothing over

Muhammad, a man who Peron had known for years, could plausibly be seen as an undoing behavior, but haphazardly throwing bleach around Isaac's body and then covering up his face within a Tray is something very different and much harder to understand. It seems closer to a sloppy attempt to cover his tracks, and there's certainly no indication that Perone ever felt any remorse for any of his crimes. When Isaac's body was found, it's not clear whether the authorities immediately drew a link between this murder and that of Mohammed. But as word got around, fear began to spread among the shopkeepers of Brooklyn. Both Muhammad and Isaac were Egyptian immigrants. which stoked suspicion that the killings could be hate crimes.

But with little evidence left behind at the scenes, the investigation seemed to move slowly. Still, it's possible there was some publicity around the case, because Peron's spree stopped for several months. Maybe he got spooked, but in the fall he had a run-in with the neighbor that speaks volumes about his mental state. Days after Hurricane Sandy ravaged New York City, the residents of Perron's sleepy Staten Island neighborhood were trying to get back to normal life. One neighbor noticed that a tree from Perron's overgrown yard had fallen into the street. The neighbor cleared the tree away with a chainsaw, which seems like a thoughtful and neighborly act. Peron didn't take it that way.

He knocked on the neighbor's door and began screaming at him for clearing away the tree. The neighbor recalled, he was irrational. I never thought when I talked to him that I was talking to a normal human being. But nobody could have imagined just how irrational and monstrous Peron's impulses had become. Soon after that confrontation with his neighbor, his rage simmered over once again, and Peron set back out to Brooklyn to find his next victim. On November 16th, Peron landed in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, a neighborhood just to the east of Prospect Park. He headed for Shishi Boutique, a clothing store on the main drag.

The owner, 78-year-old Ramatoumato. Ramosah Vahedipur was alone in the store when Peron entered. As Ramatola stood behind the counter, Peron pulled out his rifle and shot him three times in the head and torso. Once satisfied that Ramatola was dead, Peron dragged his body into the back of the store and covered him up with clothing. When police later found Ramatola's body, they discovered $171 in his pockets. This suggests that money was no longer the forefront of Peron's mind. For a man in such deep debt, this is surprising. Perhaps Peron had simply given up on the notion of ever being solvent again.

Given his age and his lack of prospects, maybe he felt he had nothing to lose. Or perhaps he was becoming detached from reality and therefore less tethered to worries about money and security. Either way, Peron seemed utterly unmoved by the three murders he'd committed. After leaving the Shishi boutique, he went straight to meet Natasha at a nightclub in Bensonhurst. Natasha didn't notice anything unusual about Peron that night. He was animated, dancing and talking to people like he always did on nights out. Whatever impulse had made Peron want to cover up his victim's bodies. It was clearly not a lingering sense of remorse.

Meanwhile, store owners in Brooklyn were once again on edge. The police commissioner advised shopkeepers not to work alone, since all three of the shootings happened when the men were alone in their stores. Like his first two victims, Ramatola was Middle Eastern. He was from Iran, which bolstered the theory that the murders were motivated by racism. Given the clear similarities between the three crimes, the NYPD began a linked murder investigation. And thanks to surveillance footage, it didn't take long for them to find a lead. Police noticed the same man appear in video footage taken close to two.

of the crime scenes. There was nothing particularly unusual about the man who had dark hair and a mustache, except for one thing. He was carrying a distinctive black duffel bag. Ramatola Vahedipur was murdered on a Friday. By the following Monday, investigators had narrowed their focus down to this man in the video footage, who they dubbed John Doe Duffelbag. The police released the security footage to the media, along with a plea for anyone with information to come forward. forward. And soon enough, someone did. A man who worked at a Bay Ridge pharmacy, just two blocks from the scene of the last murder, recognized John Doe Duffelbag as one of his regular customers, Salvatore Perone.

After the pharmacist alerted the police, Peron voluntarily went to the police station for questioning. Details about this interview aren't available, so we're not sure why he went so willingly. But it's possible Peron was getting cocky and felt sure he could, outsmart the cops. But the very next day, November 21st, he was arrested at Natasha's apartment. Inside, police found his black duffel bag. Inside the bag was the sawed-off rifle, which was soon matched to the shell casings at the crime scene.

Along with the gun, police found two knives, one of which had blood on it, black gloves, women's stockings, and a laser scope. Once in police custody, Peron's behavior was as erratic as ever, but, he was initially eager to talk, even confident. A police officer recalled, he thought he'd outsmart us, but he wasn't arrogant, just very level, no emotion. At one point, he actually said, I'll be out of here in the morning. But once the interrogation began, Perone clammed up and refused to talk about the murders. By way of an explanation, he told the police that he couldn't discuss it because he was working

as a secret agent for the Italian CIA. So the NYPD used an unusual tactic to coax a confession out of Perone. They recruited two Italian-speaking detectives to take over the interrogation and pose as special agents sent in from Rome. The so-called Italian special agents feigned admiration and respect for Peron and expressed interest in his crimes. After years of professional failure, the flattery worked like a charm, and Peron opened up. During that interrogation, Peron confessed to all three murders, though he maintained that he was acting on orders from the Italian CIA.

He also said he expected to be paid handsomely for his work. Did Peron really believe this? Or was he trying to feign insanity because he believed it might help him at an eventual trial? We can't know for sure. But based on his long history of erratic behavior, it's certainly possible Peron was experiencing psychosis. The DSM-5 lists delusions as one of the key hallmarks of psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia. One of the most common subtypes of delusion is a delusion of grandeur, a false or unusual belief about one's greatness. These delusions often involve a belief that you have magical powers or that you've been chosen for a special mission.

Perhaps this Italian CIA story was Peron's delusion of grandeur. Delusional or not? Peron was clearly dangerous. In a news conference shortly after the confession, the police commissioner stated that he believed Peron would have kept killing if he hadn't been caught. In fact, police believed that he already had his next target picked out. Back on Staten Island,

Peron's long-suffering neighbors were astonished and disturbed to realize what evil had been lurking in their midst. They gave Peron the moniker, Son of Sal, an homage to the infamous son of Sam killer David Berkowitz. whose killing spree terrorized New York City beginning in the summer of 1976. Berkowitz memorably claimed that a dog possessed by the devil had ordered him to commit his murders.

Peron lived up to his namesake when it came to telling bizarre and delusional stories, and, just like Berkowitz, Peron was found competent to stand trial nonetheless. After doctors examined Peron, they concluded that his thought process, while strange, quote, reflects a grandiosity on his part that is more consistent with a personality disorder rather than a mental disease or defect.

This distinction is an ambiguous and somewhat controversial one. The DSM-5 treats personality disorders as a subset of mental illnesses, not a separate category. Examples of personality disorders include borderline personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder. They're often seen as distinct from mental illness because their symptoms are more persistent throughout adult life, whereas mental illness typically has a more recognizable onset and timeline. In 2018, a paper published in the British Journal of Psychiatry highlighted the unresolved issue of whether personality disorders should be regarded as fundamentally different from

mental illness, noting that clinical and genetic evidence suggested that they should not. Either way, when Peron's trial began on January 21st, 2016, his behavior was certainly grandiose. He was charged with three counts of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree murder. Throughout the trial, he was repeatedly chastised by the judge for interrupting the proceedings with long, rambling statements. He seemingly dropped the story about the Italian CIA entirely, and instead claimed he'd been framed by a business associate. But the evidence against Peron was overwhelming. from his links to the three victims to his fingerprints on the murder weapons. After less than two hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Peron.

At the age of 67, Peron was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison, ensuring he will die behind bars. His fate is certain, but his motivations remain unclear to this day. Peron's statements on this subject are so convoluted and self-contradictory that will never know exactly why he did. did what he did. But looking at the facts we do have, we can make some guesses. Salvatore Peron was a deeply bitter and resentful man who believed that the world owed him something. He felt he was entitled to a particular kind of life, a beautiful suburban home designed exactly as he wanted it, a devoted family, and a flourishing career that brought him wealth and fame within his field. When that life slipped through his fingers, Peron took it personally. He sought

revenge against those who he saw as his rivals, men of his own age, in his own city, in his own industry, who had beaten him. He couldn't take their success, but he took their lives without remorse. And now, Peron will spend what remains of his life behind bars with nothing but time to stew on his own failures. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back soon with a new episode. For more information on Salvatore Perone, amongst the many sources we used, we found John M. Anise's coverage in the Staten Island Advance, extremely helpful to our research. You can find all episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify.

We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound designed by Nick Johnson, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, and Bruce Kitovich. This episode of serial killers was written by Emma Dibden, with writing assistance by Joanna Philbin and Joel Callan, fact-checking by Haley Milliken,

and research by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood. Serial killers stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up, getting ready for bed, is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

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