In the summer of 1976, the city of New York was thrown into a state of terror.
A madman was on the loose, wandering the streets and killing people at random.
This was a killer who loved publicity, sending vicious, taunting letters to the police and
media.
Each one was signed with the moniker ‘Son of Sam’.
When fate finally caught up with the monster, he was revealed to be a chubby introvertby
the name of David Berkowitz.
In this week’s Biographics we discover his story.
The Early Years
The child who would become the Son of Sam was born Richard David Falco on June 1st,
1953.
His mother, Betty Broder, had previously been married to a man named Tony Falco, but when
he left her for another woman she began a relationship with a married man named Joseph
Kleinman.
Betty and Tony already had a child, Roslyn and when Kleinman found out that she was pregnant
again he pressured her give the baby up for adoption.
It appears that he also forbade Betty from giving the child his name, which is why she
gave the child her former husband’s last name.
A few days after birth, Richard was adopted by a middle aged couple named Nathan and Pearl
Berkowitz, who lived in New York’s Bronx.
The Berkowitz’s owned a hardware store, which occupied a large portion of Nathan’s
time.
He was never close to his adopted son, who was known by his middle name David, considering
the adoption to be a ‘mistake’.
As David was her only child, Pearl was extremely close to the boy..
She indulged David and let him get away with things he shouldn’t have.
David developed into a difficult child.
He was hyperactive, mischievous and ornery.
He was a bulky child and quickly learned that he could use his size to his advantage and
lord it over other children.
He showed little interest in schooling and, through a combination of truancy and feigned
illnesses, missed a lot of class time.
When he was seven years old, David was hit by a car and suffered head injuries.
It is unclear whether this resulted in long term effects.
Soon after he started to show signs of a fascination with fire.
He began burning bugs and advanced to starting fires around his neighborhood.
None of this activity brought him to the attention of the authorities, though his adoptive parents
did on one occasion take time to see a psychotherapist.
When he was fourteen, David’s life was turned upside down with the death of his adoptive
mother.
Pearl had been fighting breast cancer for two years.
Pearl was the only person with whom David had a close relationship and he was shocked
to watch her decline as she went through chemotherapy treatment.
Her death was a crushing blow for him.
In the year after his mother’s death, David became increasingly introverted.
His school work suffered drastically and he fell into a dark depression.
He had no relationship with his father and things worsened when Joseph remarried.
His new step-mother was even more distant than his father.
When the family relocated to Boynton Beach near Miami, Florida, David’s isolation became
complete.
With no friends and no family connection, he created a fantasy world in order to cope
with his loneliness.
In 1971, at the age of 18, David found a means to escape his dismal life with his father
and step-mother.
He joined the army and, after basic training, was sent to Korea.
Army life was transformative for the troubled young man.
He seemed to respond well to the discipline that it provided and generally equipped himself
well.
He trained as a marksman and became a good shot.
In 1974 he was honorably discharged.
After leaving the army, David returned to New York.
Here he was completely on his own.
He used money he had saved during his army years to rent an apartment in the Bronx and
took classes at Bronx Community College.
People remember him at this time as an angry and argumentative young man who shunned association
with others.
To support himself, he worked a number of odd jobs including mail sorter, security guard
and cab driver.
Though very private, Berkowitz quickly came to the attention of his neighbors and the
local police department.
He would instigate petty disputes and escalate them with personal threats.
A man who lived on the floor below, Deputy Police Sheriff Charles Glassman, received
four hand-written threats from Berkowitz.
Inhis early twenties, Berkowitz connected with his birth mother.
He began regular visits with Betty and his half-sister Rosalyn.
However, when he found out that Betty had given him up for adoption after succumbing
to pressure from his birth father, he did not react very well.
In fact, he cut the two women out of his life completely, never visiting again.
In 1974, Berkowitz’s fascination with fire resurfaced.
Over the next three years he set more than 1,500 fires around New York City.
David diligently recorded the details of each arson in his journal, referring to himself
as ‘The Phantom of the Bronx’.
Fire lighting gave him the sense of control over a situation that he could find nowhere
else in life.
In 1975, Berkowitz developed another fascination, this time with the occult.
After reading the Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, he became
convinced that he was being controlled by evil spirits.
First Attack
In late November, 1975, Berkowitz wrote a letter to his father.
In it he said . . .
“It's cold and gloomy here in New York, but that's okay because the weather fits my
mood — gloomy.
Dad, the world is getting dark now.”
A month later, on Christmas Eve, he took hold of a hunting knife and headed out to satisfy
his blood lust.
His first victim was a woman coming out of a grocery store.
Berkowitz stabbed her several times before she managed to run away.
He then came across a fifteen year-old by the name of Michelle Forman.
She was stabbed six times but fought off her attacker and made it to the safety of a nearby
apartment.
At the end of January, 1976, Berkowitz relocated from the Bronx to a rental house in Yonkers.
His landlords owned a German Shepherd dog which barked incessantly.
Berkowitz would later state that the dog was possessed by Satan and through its barking
had commanded him to kill young women.
At the time he was a working night shift job as a security guard.
He recalled that the constant barking almost caused him to take his own life.
After three months, the noise was too much for Berkowitz and he moved to an apartment
at 35 Pine Street at Yonkers.
As it turned out, he was unable to escape the barking of dogs, further convincing him
that this was the signal that Satan was using to drive him to murder.
He used a molotov cocktail to try to kill the dog belonging to his neigbor, a man named
Sam Carr.
When this didn’t work he shot the dog.
Berkowitz was convinced that Sam Carr was possessed by the Devil and it was from him
that he came up with the name ‘Son of Sam’.
His two botched knife attacks convinced Berkowitz that he needed a more effective means of killing.
By June of 1976 he had built up a formidable arsenal of firearms that included a .44 caliber
revolver, Commando Mark III rifle, a Glenfield rifle with telescopic sight, Charter Arms
AR-7 Explorer Shotgun and a 12-gauge Ithaca Deerslayer shotgun.
Towards the end of June, 1976, Berkowitz quit his job as a security guard and began driving
for the Co-Op City Taxi Company.
But that job didn’t last long.
By the end of July he was working a day-job as an installer of air conditioning ducts.
Berkowitz’ first kill occured on July 29th, 1976.
He had left his apartment via the fire escape shortly before 1am with his .44 caliber handgun
in a paper bag, hopping into his car and cruising for a victim.
He came across 18-year-old Donna Lauria and her 19-year-old friend Jody Valenti, talking
in a car outside Donna’s apartment.
Berkowitz approached Donna’s side window, squatted down into a firing position and,
holding the gun with both hands, emptied the chamber.
Donna was shot and killed..
Jody, wounded, reacted by screaming and desperately honking the car horn.
Jody survived.
With his gun empty, Berkowitz melted away into the night.
He was filled with a euphoria that he had never known before.
His addiction to murder was well under way.
A Litany of Murder
The next attack came three months later, on October 23rd.
Berkowitz was again cruising for a victim in the dead of night.
He was driving down a street in Flushing, Queens when he spotted two people in a red
Ford Galaxie.One of them had long black hair, which he found attractive.
He began following them and, when they came to a stop, he parked behind them.
Berkowitz had set his sights on twenty year old Carl Denaro and his eighteen year old
date Rosemary Keenan, who happened to be the daughter of a New York City Police Officer.
Following the same pattern of his first murder, Berkowitz approached the passenger window,
pulled out his handgun and fired five times.
One of the bullets smashed into Carl’s head, but an uninjured Rosemary managed to escape
the car and flee.
When Berkowitz left, she returned and drove Carl to the hospital.
Amazingly he survived, with doctors having to insert a metal plate into his skull.
A month later, Berkowitz struck again.
This time his victims were a couple of teenage girls, Joanne Lomino and Dona DeMasi, on their
way home from the movies.
Berkowitz walked behind them and, as they stood on the stoop of Joanne’s house talking,
he opened up with his handgun.
Then he disappeared.
Bullets tore through the bodies of both girls but neither was killed, although Joannewas
paralyzed from the waist down.
The attacks continued.
On January 30, 1977, Berkowitz shot and killed Christine Freund, who had just seen the movie
‘Rocky’ with her boyfriend.
As with most of the previous attacks, the couple were sitting in their car when Berkowitz
opened fire.
On March 8th, he killed an 20 Bulgarian immigrant by the name of Virginia Voskerichian.
Virginia was walking home from Columbia University when she came face to face with Berkowitz.
He shot her in the face at point blank range and then left her to die on the sidewalk.Then,
on April 17th, he attacked Valentina Suriani and Alexander Esau as they sat in their car
at 3am.
Suriana died at the scene while Esau died hours later.Police were quickly on the scene.
There they found a letter that had been left by the killer.
It read in part . . .
I am a monster.
I am the "son of Sam"…I feel like an outsider.
I am on a different wavelength then everybody else - programmed to kill.
However, to stop me you must kill me...
I am the "monster" - "Beelzebub" - the chubby behe- mouth.
I love to hunt.
Prowling the streets looking for fair game - tasty meat.
The wemon of Queens are prettiest of all...
Hunt for the Son of Sam
By now, the entire city of New York was in an uproar.
Fear over the next attack by the Son of Sam led to a rush on hand-gun sales and a dramatic
emptying of night time entertainment venues.
The information that the majority of victims had long dark hair led to an overnight hair
style change, as women rushed to get their hair-cut and dyed.
The media was all over the story, with coverage going global.
But still, the attacks continued with chilling regularity.
Berkowitz next struck on June 26, 1977.
Judy Placido, 17, and Sal Lupo, 20, were sitting in Lupo’s car around 3am when Berkowitz
attacked in his usual way.
Placido was shot three times, while Lupo was shot once.
Both survived.
A month later, he attacked Bobby Violante and Stacy Moskowitz, both aged twenty.
Again, Berkowitz fired through the passenger car window, striking both victims in the head.
Violante survived though he lost 90% of his vision but Stacy Moskowitz died two days later.
She was the last victim of the Son of Sam.
On March 30, 1977 media hysteria was ratcheted even further when New York’s most prominent
crime writer, New York Times columnist Jimmy Breslin received a handwritten letter from
a person claiming to be the Son of Sam.
It including the following . . . Mr. Breslin, sir, don't think that because
you haven't heard from me for a while that I went to sleep.
No, rather, I am still here.
Like a spirit roaming the night.
Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest; anxious to please Sam.
I love my work.
Now, the void has been filled.
Perhaps we shall meet face to face someday or perhaps I will be blown away by cops with
smoking .38's.
Breslin contacted the police, who noted that the letter contained details of some of the
crimes that had not been released to the public.
They allowed The Times to publish part of the letter as a companion to Breslin’s printed
response, which urged the killer to turn himself in.
That edition of The Times sold more than a million copies.
The NYPD formed Operation Omega, the most comprehensive investigation in its history
in order to bring the Son of Sam to justice.
Over 300 detectives worked around the clock at a daily cost of $90,000.
45 psychiatrists poured over the taunting letters that Berkowitz was writing with the
general consensus being that he was a paranoid loner who was unable to form relationships
and with possible connections to devil worship.
On the night of the Moskowitz, Violante shooting, a woman named Cecilia Davis was walking her
dog when she saw a police officer ticketing a young man in a car that was parked alongside
a fire hydrant.
Soon thereafter she saw what appeared to be that same young man walk past her and staring
at her menacingly.
It was enough to scare her into a speedy dash for home.
After the murders, Miss Davis gave the information to the police.
As a result, every driver that had been ticketed that night was brought in for questioning.
One of the people on that list was David Berkowitz.
Arrest
A detective tried to get hold of Berkowitz over the phone but there was no answer.
The detective then contacted the Yonkers Police Station to see if they could help him get
in touch with Berkowitz.
The dispatcher he spoke to just happened to be the daughter of Sam Carr, David’s former
landlord and the inspiration for the Son of Sam label that Berkowitz had anointed himself
with.
The detective interviewed Sam Carr, who informed him that Berkowitz had shot his dog and was
a pretty troubled individual.
The physical and psychological description that was given seemed to gel with the profile
of the Son of Sam.
From this point on, evidence against Berkowitz quickly mounted.
A suspected arson was reported close to his apartment.Police interviewed David’s former
neighbor, Charles Glassman, who showed them the nasty letters that Berkowitz had written
to him.On August 10, 1977, detectives found his Ford Galaxie parked outside his apartment..
Though they didn’t have a search warrant, they began searching the car.
On the back seat was a duffle bag containing a rifle.Inside the glove compartment was a
handwritten letter addressed to the Suffolk County Police Department that warned of a
coming attack on a disco.
One of the officers was sent to get a search warrant while the officers stayed by the car.
A member of the public was told to park his car so as to box in the Ford, making it hard
for Berkowitz to get away if he came out of his apartment.
A SWAT team was deployed around the area.
Finally, at around 10:30 pm, Berkowitz came out of his apartment and got into his car.
A detective approached and tapped on his window.
The Son of Sam rolled down the window and said, ‘Well,you got me.
How come it took you such a long time?’
Prison The arrest of the Son of Sam caused a worldwide
sensation.
It turned out of that the monster who had terrorized the world’s most famous city
was a rather pathetic looking loner.
Berkowitz admitted to all of the attacks, providing details that only the perpetrator
would know.
On August 11th he was charged with second-degree murder for the killing of Stacy Moskowitz.
The judge ordered a psychological evaluation to determine if he was fit to stand trial.
Meanwhile, the media was in a frenzy to cover every angle of the Son of Sam story.
This resulted in the state of New York enacting what became known as the Son of Sam laws,
permitting the state to confiscate the proceeds from any earnings made as proceeds of crime
for a period of five years after the act was committed.
The money would go to the victims of the crime.
As it turned out there was to be no trial.
Berkowitz pled guilty to six counts of murder and refused the urging of his attorney to
claim a defense of insanity.
He later stated . . . “I just wanted to end it, and I was just
so distraught.
I just confessed and pled guilty and got it over with, and -- just wanted to get out of
that environment.”
During his sentencing, the mother of Stacy Moskowitz stood up and said . . .
“I could kill him with my bare hands, and I am not a violent person.
I could probably kill him and go for a dinner and go to sleep that night truly peacefully.”
During Mrs Moskowitz's statement, Berkowitz repeated over and over, ‘Stacey is a whore’.
Then he burst from his seat and made for the courtroom window.
He was eventually restrained but not before knocking down several officers.
Sentencing was delayed until June 12th, 1978, on which date he was sentenced to six consecutive
life sentences.
Berkowitz proved to be a problem prisoner.
He reveled in tormenting other inmates.
Because of his rage, other inmates referred to him as ‘Berserkowitz’.
On July 10th, 1979 he was attacked by another inmate with a razor.
The resulting neck injury required 57 stitches.
After ten years of confinement, Berkowitz became a born-again Christian.
The angry mass killer was converted into an evangelical pacifist.
He absorbed himself in a letter writing campaign to spread the message of the Bible.
Over the years, a following developed around Berkowitz as the ultimate example of the changed
man, the modern day equivalent of the Apostle Paul.
Berkowitz first became eligible for parole in 2002.
However, he sent a letter to the parole board requesting that the hearing be cancelled.
In it, he stated . . . In all honesty, I believe that I deserve to
be in prison for the rest of my life.
I have, with God's help, long ago come to terms with my situation and I have accepted
my punishment.
He has been up for parole every two since 2002 but he has consistently refused the opportunity
to seek his freedom.
As a result he remains in prison to this day, where he is considered to be a model prisoner.