While homicide detectives in New York were stalking the elusive "Son of Sam," their counterparts in Georgia were attempting to identify a killer with a similar M.0., who preyed on couples parked on darkened lanes, attacking from the shadows, interrupting passion with the searing blasts of point-blank gunfire. In Manhattan, officers eventually bagged a suspect; in Atlanta, there was no such luck. As this is written, Georgia's phantom gunman still remains at large.

The stalker's one-man war began on January 16, 1977, when police were summoned to the scene of a peculiar auto accident. A single vehicle had veered across an intersection, terminating its erratic course when it collided with a traffic sign. Inside, a naked man lay slumped behind the steering wheel, his face and body streaked with blood. A woman - also nude and bloody - lay behind him, in the back seat, covered by a coat.

The victims were identified as LaBrian Lovett, 26, and Veronica Hill, age 20. Lovett had been shot four times - in the head, stomach, right leg, and left arm; his companion had suffered two wounds, in the left leg and abdomen. Both died at the hospital, but investigators determined they were shot while making love in nearby Adams Park.

Police were playing the percentages, investigating jealous friends and lovers, when the killer struck a second time, attacking in the pre-dawn hours of February 12. This time, his targets were a teenage couple necking in West Manor Park, three miles northwest of Adams Park. Approaching their car at 2:45a.m., the assailant - described as a large black man -- fired six shots into the car before trying to open the locked doors. Frustrated, he fled on foot, leaving both victims with non-fatal chest wounds.

Jealousy went out the window as a motive when ballistics tests revealed that the same .38-caliber weapon had been used in both recent shootings. Likewise, the gunman seemed to have no interest in robbing his victims, nor in raping the women. Detectives were still puzzling over the motiveless crimes when their adversary made his third appearance in Atlanta.

On the night of March 12, Diane Collins, 20, was cuddling with her fiancee in Adams Park. They had announced their engagement a few days earlier, taking in a movie that evening before stopping in the park. Distracted, neither saw the gunman as he approached their vehicle, pumping six rounds through the window on the passenger's side. Diane was killed instantly, her fiancee wounded in the head. Despite the spurting blood that nearly blinded him, he put the car in motion, driving home on instinct, there to telephone an ambulance.

Police were baffled, but at least they had the bare suggestion of a pattern now. Twenty-seven days had elapsed between the first two attacks, Twenty-eight between the second and third shootings. If their man was hunting on a four-week cycle, homicide investigators theorized, they stood a decent chance of catching him by staking out the local parks on April 6-8.

The plan was logical enough, but it was wasted as the gunman vanished, calling off his lethal feud as suddenly and inexplicably as it began. Weeks lengthened into months without a new attack, and by the time a local newsman wrote a two-year retrospective article about the shootings, in March 1979, police were frank in their admission that they had no leads, no suspects in the case. Atlanta's phantom gunman - like the ripper who preceded him in 1912 -- is one of those who got away.