David Berkowitz, The Son Of Sam Killer Who Terrorized New York

From July 1976 to August 1977, David Berkowitz roamed the streets of New York, where he shot six people at random in what's known as the "Son of Sam" killings.

Between the summers of 1976 and 1977, a young man named David Berkowitz terrorized New York as he indiscriminately gunned down innocent young people in their cars. He went by the name “Son of Sam,” claiming that Satan had possessed his neighbor Sam’s dog and was sending him messages to kill.

Armed with a revolver, Berkowitz stalked Queens and the Bronx, searching for unsuspecting youths to shoot while hiding from a distance. He killed six people and wounded seven more, all while leaving cryptic messages with the police.

Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesDavid Berkowitz, a.k.a. “Son of Sam,” poses for a mugshot following his arrest on August 11, 1977.

David Berkowitz’s murder spree sent New York City in a panic and incited one of the largest manhunts in the state’s history.

A Penchant For Violence From A Young Age

Richard David Falco was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1953. His parents were unwed and after separating shortly after his birth, they put him up for adoption. He was taken in by the Berkowitz family and was renamed David Berkowitz.

Even as a child, it was obvious to those around Berkowitz that he had violent tendencies. He was caught thieving, destroying property, killing animals, and setting fires. As he grew older, Berkowitz lamented his lack of social life and his inability to get a girlfriend. “Sex, I believe, is the answer – the way to happiness,” he said once. And he felt he was being unfairly denied this key to happiness.

When he was 14, his adoptive mother died and his adoptive father remarried. Tensions in the family grew strained, especially as Berkowitz and his stepmother did not get along. The elder Berkowitz and his new wife eventually became exhausted with his son’s emotional problems and moved to Florida.

Deeply depressed, David Berkowitz enlisted in the U.S. Army at 18.

NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesA self-portrait David Berkowitz took using a coin-operated photo booth during his stint in the Army.

In 1974, two years before the Son of Sam killings began, David Berkowitz returned from a failed three-year military stint in South Korea. During that time, he had a sexual encounter with a prostitute and caught a venereal disease. This would be his first and last romantic tryst.

The 21-year-old then moved into a small apartment in Yonkers, New York. Alone and still dealing with those emotions relating to his adoption and the death of his adoptive mother, Berkowitz grew despondent, lonely — and, most of all, angry.

The following year, Berkowitz found out that his birth mother, who he’d believed had died in childbirth, was still alive. However, upon meeting her, she seemed somewhat distant and disinterested. This supplemented a growing belief in Berkowitz that he was unwanted not just by his own mother, but by all women. And so he lashed out.

The Son Of Sam Murders Send The City Into Chaos

Bettmann/Contributor/Getty ImagesNote found by police in the car belonging to David Berkowitz upon his arrest. August 10, 1977.

By Christmas Eve 1975, something inside David Berkowitz had snapped. According to his own account to police later, he followed two teenage girls on the street and stabbed them from behind with a hunting knife. Both survived, but neither could identify their attacker. Unfortunately, this violent outburst was only the beginning.

Berkowitz moved into a two-family home in Yonkers, a New York City suburb, but his new next door neighbor’s dog reportedly kept him up at all hours of the night with its howling. He would later claim that the dog was possessed and had driven him to madness.

On July 29, 1976, after acquiring a .44 caliber gun in Texas, Berkowitz approached a parked car from behind in a Bronx neighborhood. Inside, Jody Valenti and Donna Lauria were talking. Berkowitz fired several shots into the car, killing Lauria and wounding Valenti. He then left without looking inside the car, only finding out in the newspaper the next day that he just killed his first victim.

After getting away with his first murder, Berkowitz went on a killing spree that lasted for 12 months. By the time he completed his eighth and final attack in July 1977, he had killed six people and wounded seven, almost all of them young couples sitting in their cars at night.

NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesA photocopy of one of the many letters the Son of Sam sent to the police during his crime spree.

After his sixth attack in April 1977, Berkowitz began leaving taunting letters with the New York City Police Department, and then also to Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin. It was in these letters that his satanic alias “Son of Sam,” and the citywide fear of him, was born. Up to this point, Berkowitz had been dubbed “The .44 Caliber Killer.”

“To stop me you must kill me,” wrote Berkowitz in one of the letters. “Sam’s a thirsty lad and he won’t let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood,” he added.

By the end of the Son of Sam killing spree, New York had gone into a kind of panicked lockdown. For the most part, the killings appeared totally random, save for the fact that they all occurred at night and six of the eight attacks involved couples sitting in parked cars.

Several of the victims, including one man, had long, dark hair. Consequently, women across New York City began to dye their hair or buy wigs. The subsequent search for the so-called Son Of Sam was the largest manhunt in New York history at the time.

NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesThe scene of the Robert Violante shooting.

The end of the killings came on July 31, 1977, when Berkowitz killed Stacy Moskowitz and seriously blinded her companion, Robert Violante, in the Bath Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn.

The Son Of Sam Is Captured

After Moskowitz’s murder, police received a call from a witness who would break the Son of Sam case wide open. This witness had seen a suspicious-looking man near the scene holding a “dark object” and taking a $35 parking ticket from his car window.

Police searched the area’s ticket records for the day and pulled up the license plate number of 24-year-old postal worker David Berkowitz.

Thinking, at the very least, that they had found another witness to the crime, police arrived outside Berkowitz’s Yonkers apartment and saw his car. Inside was a rifle and a duffel bag filled with ammunition, maps of the crime scenes, and another letter meant for the authorities.

Bill Turnbull/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesStacy Moskowitz following two .44 caliber wounds to the head by David Berkowitz.

Upon Berkowitz’s exit from the apartment, arresting officer Detective Falotico held a gun to him and said, “Now that I’ve got you, who have I got?”

“You know,” Berkowitz said in what the detective remembered was a soft, almost sweet voice. “No, I don’t.” Falotico insisted, “You tell me.” The man turned his head and said, “I’m Sam.”

Berkowitz reportedly also taunted the arresting officers, asking them what took them so long to find him. Once in custody, Berkowitz informed the police that a man from 6,000 years ago named Sam spoke to him through his neighbor Sam Carr’s black Labrador Retriever, commanding him to kill.

When police search Berkowitz’s apartment they found Satanic graffiti scrawled on the walls and diaries with details of his cruel activities, including all the fires he had set since he was 21.

NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesSam Carr, neighbor of David Berkowitz, with his dog who Berkowitz said was a host for a 6,000-year-old demon.

After three separate mental aptitude tests, it was determined that the Son of Sam was certainly fit to stand trial. With copious evidence stacked against him and attempts to use an insanity defense thwarted by psychiatric testing, Berkowitz pled guilty to all charges.

He was given six 25-years-to-life sentences at Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Wallkill, New York.

His adoptive father, David Berkowitz Sr., sobbed for the victims of his son’s violence in a public press conference, offering his condolences and apologies. When asked what the younger Berkowitz was like as a child, Berkowitz Sr. could not reply.

David Berkowitz would admit about three years later that he never truly believed that he’d been possessed by his neighbor’s dog.

Where Is David Berkowitz Today?

NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesOfficers take David Berkowitz, a.k.a. Son of Sam, into police headquarters following his arrest on August 10, 1977.

The Son of Sam killings were explored in season two of Netflix’s Mindhunter crime series, in which Berkowitz was portrayed by the actor Oliver Cooper. Actor Holt McCallany played a fictionalized version of an FBI detective named Robert Ressler who actually tried to have an interview with the real-life David Berkowitz.

Ressler had approached Berkowitz while he was imprisoned in the Attica Correctional Facility in order to learn more about his childhood in the hopes of solving future cases like his. During the interview, which was later used as the basis for the script in Mindhunter season two, Ressler and his partner pressed Berkowitz on his Son of Sam defense in court.

“Hey David, knock off the bullsh-t,” his partner said. “The dog had nothing to do with it.”

Berkowitz reportedly laughed and nodded, saying it was true, the dog had nothing to do with his killing spree.

AriseandShine.orgDavid Berkowitz, who now goes by “Son of Hope,” has been denied parole every time he applied — though he doesn’t seem to mind.

Since he was first incarcerated, David Berkowitz has been up for parole 16 times — and each time he was denied it.

But Berkowitz apparently agrees with this decision. “In all honesty,” he wrote the parole board in 2002, “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.”

In 2011, Berkowitz stated that he had no interest in pursuing parole, and he reportedly said he will request that he remain in prison when his 2020 hearing is rescheduled. Nonetheless, Berkowitz, who is now 67, has been and will continue to be up for parole every two years until the end of his 25-year-sentence — or the end of his life.

Berkowitz reportedly had an awakening while in prison. After falling into a depression and contemplating suicide, Berkowitz reported that he eventually found new life when God forgave him one night. He is sometimes called “Brother Dave” by other inmates and now participates in an online ministry that is operated for him by evangelical Christians.

Today, David Berkowitz is a born-again Christian with an official website, run by his supporters, that claims that this “former Son of Sam” is now “the son of hope.”

After this look at David Berkowitz, the infamous “Son of Sam” serial killer, check out serial killer quotes that will chill you to the bone. Then, read about some of the most infamous serial killers in history and discover how they finally met their fate.