David Berkowitz

Name	David Berkowitz
Caption	2003 New York State Department of Corrections mugshot
Birthname	Richard David Falco
Alias	The Son of Sam The 44 Caliber Killer
Birth date	June 01, 1953
Birth place	Brooklyn, New York
Victims	6 killed, 7 wounded
Country	U.S.
States	New York
Beginyear	29 July 1976
Endyear	31 July 1977
Apprehended
Conviction	6 life sentences (365 years in prison)

David Richard Berkowitz (born Richard David Falco; June 1, 1953), also known as Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer and arsonist whose crimes terrorized New York City from July 1976 until his arrest in August 1977.

Shortly after his arrest in August 1977, Berkowitz confessed to killing six people and wounding several others in the course of eight shootings in New York between 1976 and 1977; he has been imprisoned for these crimes since 1977. Berkowitz subsequently claimed that he was commanded to kill by a demon who possessed his neighbor's dog.

Berkowitz later amended his confession to claim he was the shooter in only two incidents, personally killing three people and wounding a fourth. The other victims were killed, Berkowitz claimed, by members of a violent satanic cult of which he was a member. Though he remains the only person charged with or convicted of the shootings, some law enforcement authorities argue that Berkowitz's claims are credible: according to John Hockenberry formerly of MSNBC and NPR, many officials involved in the original "Son of Sam" case suspected that more than one person was committing the murders. Hockenberry also reported that the Son of Sam case was reopened in 1996 and, , it was still considered open.

Early life

Berkowitz was born Richard David Falco in Brooklyn, New York to a Jewish father. His mother, Betty Broder, was married to Anthony Falco, with whom she had a daughter before the couple separated without legally divorcing. After this, she had an affair with the married Joseph Kleinman, who fathered a son. Kleinman suggested she have an abortion, but she gave birth to a boy and listed Falco as the father.

Before he was a week old, the baby was adopted by hardware store owners Pearl and Nathan Jay Berkowitz, who reversed the order of his first and middle names in addition to giving him their own surname.

John Vincent Sanders wrote that Berkowitz's childhood was "somewhat troubled. Although of above-average intelligence, he lost interest in learning at an early age and began an infatuation with petty larceny and pyromania." Berkowitz's adoptive mother died of breast cancer when he was thirteen, and his home life became strained in later years, particularly because he disliked his adoptive father's second wife. He later claimed his new step-sister was interested in witchcraft, sparking an interest in the occult he would later pursue more actively.

In 1969, the 16-year-old Berkowitz attended the Woodstock Festival. He joined the United States Army in 1971, and served on active duty until his honorable discharge in 1974. He served in both the United States and South Korea.

In 1974 Berkowitz located his birth mother, Betty Falco. After a few visits, she disclosed the details of his illegitimate conception and birth, which greatly disturbed him. They fell out of contact, but Berkowitz did stay in touch with his half-sister, Roslyn. After leaving the army, Berkowitz held several blue collar jobs. At the time of his arrest, he was employed by the U.S. Postal Service.

Cult claims

Berkowitz claims that he joined a cult in the spring of 1975. Initially, he said, the group was involved in supposedly harmless activities, such as séances and fortune telling. Gradually, however, Berkowitz claimed that the group introduced him to drug use, sadistic pornography, and violent crime.

Crimes begin

First attacks

Berkowitz claimed that his first attacks occurred in late 1975, when he attacked two women with a knife on Christmas Eve. One alleged victim was never identified, but the other victim, Michelle Forman, was injured seriously enough to put her in the hospital. Not long afterward, Berkowitz moved to an apartment in Yonkers.

Donna Lauria and Jody Valenti shooting

At about 1:10 a.m. on July 29, 1976, Mike and Rose Lauria returned to their apartment in Pelham Bay after dining out. Their daughter Donna, 18, and her friend Jody Valenti, 19, were sitting in Valenti's Oldsmobile, parked outside the apartment, discussing their evening at the Peachtree, a New Rochelle discotheque. As Valenti was about to leave, Mike Lauria agreed to his daughter's suggestion that they walk the family's dog together. Before he went inside to retrieve the poodle, Lauria noticed a man sleeping in a yellow compact car parked across the street and about sixty feet behind his own car. Neighbors would report to police that an unfamiliar yellow compact car had been cruising the area for hours before the shooting.

After her parents were inside, Donna Lauria opened the car door to depart, noticing a man quickly approaching them. Startled and angered by the man's sudden appearance, Lauria said, "Now what is this…"

Carl Denaro and Rosemary Keenan shooting

In the early morning of the October 23, 1976, another shooting occurred, this time in Queens. Carl Denaro, 25, and Rosemary Keenan, 38, were parked in a secluded residential area in Forest Hills Gardens, Queens. Keenan was driving her own Volkswagen Beetle, and Denaro was in the passenger seat. At about 1:30 a.m., the car's windows seemed to explode, and the duo dropped low in their seats as several bullets struck the car. Denaro and Keenan did not realize someone was shooting at them, even as Denaro was bleeding from a bullet wound to his head. They panicked and Keenan drove to Peck's, a bar about half a mile away. Keenan had only superficial injuries from the broken glass, but Denaro eventually needed a metal plate to replace a portion of his skull. Neither victim had seen whoever had made the attack.

Police determined that the bullets embedded in Keenan's car were .44 caliber, but they were so damaged and deformed that they thought it was unlikely that they could ever be linked to a particular weapon. Denaro had shoulder-length hair, and police would later speculate that the shooter had mistaken him for a girl. Keenan's father was a 20-year veteran police detective of the NYPD, spurring an in-depth investigation. As with the Lauria-Valenti shooting, however, there seemed to be no motive for the shooting, and police made little progress in the case. Though many details of the Denaro-Keenan shooting were very similar to the Lauria-Valenti case, police did not initially suspect a connection, partly because the shootings occurred in different boroughs of New York City and were investigated by different local police agencies.

Berkowitz later claimed that, while he observed and helped plan the crime, an unnamed female cult member actually shot Denaro. The victims survived primarily, claimed Berkowitz, because the shooter was unfamiliar with the powerful recoil of a .44 Bulldog. Composite sketches of the black-haired Lauria-Valenti shooter and the blond Lomino-DeMasi shooter were released, and Conlon noted that police were looking for multiple "suspects", not just one. In the following days, the media repeated police claims that this "chubby teenager" was the suspect in the shooting. Additionally, Berkowitz claimed the Voskerichian shooting was partly designed to confuse police by seeming to change the modus operandi established in earlier cult shootings.

Press and publicity

Press conference of March 10th, 1977

In a March 10, 1977 press conference, NYPD officials and New York City Mayor Abraham Beame declared that the same .44 Bulldog revolver had fired the shots that killed Lauria and Voskerichian. Official documents would later surface, however, saying that while police strongly suspected the same .44 Bulldog had been used in the shootings, the evidence was actually inconclusive.

Another shooting

Alexander Esau and Valentina Suriani shooting

In the early morning of April 17, 1977, Alexander Esau, 20, and Valentina Suriani, 18, were in the Bronx, only a few blocks from the scene of the Lauria-Valenti shooting. At about 3:00 a.m., they were each shot twice and killed. Suriani died at the scene, and Esau died in the hospital several hours later without being able to describe his attacker(s).

In the days afterwards, police repeated their theory that only one man was responsible for the .44 murders: the chubby teenager in the Voskerichian case was still regarded as a witness, while the dark-haired man who shot Lauria and Valenti was considered the suspect.

Berkowitz later claimed that he was responsible for the Esau-Suriani shootings.

In full, with misspellings intact, it read:

Though discovery of the letter was an open secret, the contents were not made public. Only a few hints were leaked: police speculated that the letter-writer might be familiar with Scottish English. The phrase "me hoot, it urts sonny boy" was bizarrely taken as a Scots-accented version of "my heart, it hurts, sonny boy"; and the police also hypothesized that the shooter blamed a dark-haired nurse for his father's death, due to the "too many heart attacks" phrase, and the facts that Lauria was a medical technician and Valenti was studying to be a nurse. On July 28, New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin alluded to the "wemon" quirk and referred to the shooter watching the world from "his attic window."

Psychological profile and other police investigations

After consulting with several psychiatrists, police released a psychological profile of their suspect on May 26, 1977. He was described as neurotic and probably suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and believed himself to be a victim of demonic possession.

Based on the "Wicked King Wicker" reference, police arranged a private screening of The Wicker Man, a 1973 horror film.

A week later, after consulting with police and agreeing to withhold portions of the text, the Daily News published the letter, and Breslin urged the killer to turn himself over to authorities. Reportedly, over 1.1 million copies of that day's paper were sold.

The letter caused a panic in New York, and based on references in the publicized portions of the letter, police received thousands of tips, all of which proved baseless. Despite being one of the hottest summers on record, people stayed indoors at night, ignoring the longstanding tradition of spending sultry evenings outdoors.

Shootings resume

Sal Lupo and Judy Placido shooting

On June 26, 1977, there was another shooting. Sal Lupo, 20, and Judy Placido, 17, had left the Elephas discotheque in the Bayside section of Queens. The young couple was sitting in their car at about 3:00 a.m. when three gunshots blasted through the car.

Both were struck by bullets, but their injuries were relatively minor, and both survived. Neither Lupo or Placido had seen their attacker(s), but witnesses reported a tall, stocky, dark-haired man sprinting from the area, and a blond man with a mustache who drove from the neighborhood in a Chevy Nova without turning on its headlights. Police speculated the dark-haired man was the shooter, and that the blond man had observed the crime. Additionally, Berkowitz claimed that cult members had long wanted to shoot someone at the Elephas disco, thinking the site significant in light of their interest in the work of noted 19th century occultist Eliphas Levi.

About a minute after the shooting, a woman seated next to her boyfriend in his car on the other side of the city park saw a "white male [who was wearing] a light-colored, cheap nylon wig" sprint from the park and enter a "small, light-colored" auto, which drove away quickly. A neighborhood resident given the pseudonym Mary Lyons heard the gunshots and Violante's calls for help, and glancing from her apartment window, she saw a man she later positively identified as Berkowitz, who was walking casually away from the crime scene as many others were rushing towards the scene to render aid.

Shortly after 2:35 a.m., a man given the pseudonym Alan Masters was passing through an intersection a few blocks from the park. Masters was nearly struck by what he described as a yellow Volkswagen Beetle that sped through the intersection, against the red light and without headlights, with the driver holding his door shut with his arm as he drove. Angered and alarmed, Masters followed the Volkswagen at high speed for several minutes before losing sight of the vehicle. Masters described the driver as a white male in his late 20s or early 30s, with a narrow face; dark, long, stringy hair; several days growth of dark whiskers on his face; and wearing a blue jacket. Upset, Masters neglected to note the Volkswagen's license plate number, but he thought it might have been a New Jersey rather than a New York plate. Violante encountered a very similar man as he and Moskowitz were in the park shortly before the shooting, describing him as a "grubby-looking hippy" with whiskers, wiry hair over his forehead, dark eyes, and wearing a denim jacket.

Berkowitz would later claim that the shooter in the Moskowitz-Violante case was a friend of John Carr, who had arrived from North Dakota for the occasion. Additionally, Berkowitz would claim that after his Ford Galaxie, license plate 561 XLB, received a parking ticket at 2:05 a.m. for being parked too close to a fire hydrant near the city park, he tried to persuade two other cult members at the scene to postpone or relocate the crime. Berkowitz claimed his suggestion was overruled, and he was ordered to remain in the area to make sure no police were nearby.

Police activities after the Moskowitz-Violante shooting

Police didn't learn of the Moskowitz-Violante shooting until about 2:50 a.m., and Dowd didn't think it was another Son of Sam shooting until an officer at the scene reported that large-caliber shells had been used.

About an hour after the shooting, police set up a series of roadblocks, stopping hundreds of cars to question drivers and inspect vehicles. Based on extended interviews of Masters and others who described a Volkswagen speeding from the crime scene, police now suspected that the shooter owned or drove such a vehicle. In subsequent days, police determined there were over 900 Volkswagens in New York or New Jersey, and they made plans to track down each of these cars and their owners.

Justice system

Suspicion and capture

The evening of the Moskowitz and Violante shooting, Cacilia Davis, who lived near the crime scene, saw Berkowitz loitering in the neighborhood and glaring menacingly at passersby for several hours before removing a parking ticket from his yellow Ford Galaxie, which had been parked too close to a fire hydrant. Two days after the shooting, she contacted police.

Despite their claims to the contrary, police initially thought Berkowitz a possible witness, rather than a suspect. Not until August 9, 1977, seven days after Cacilia Davis informed police about the man with the parking ticket, did NYPD Detective James Justis telephone Yonkers police to ask them to schedule an interview with Berkowitz. The Yonkers police dispatcher who first took Justis' call was Wheat Carr, the daughter of Sam Carr and sister of Berkowitz's alleged cult confederates John and Michael Carr. Justis asked "the Yonkers police for some help tracking [Berkowitz] down. Mike Novotny was a sergeant at the Yonkers Police Department. According to Novotny, the Yonkers police had their own suspicions about Berkowitz, in connection with other strange crimes in Yonkers, crimes they saw referenced in one of the Son of Sam letters. To the shock of the NYPD, they told the New York City detective that Berkowitz might just be the Son of Sam."

Police searched his apartment, and found it in disarray, with Satanic graffiti on the walls. They also found a diary wherein Berkowitz took credit for dozens of arsons throughout the New York area (some sources allege that this number might be as high as 1,411).

After police had brought Berkowitz into custody, Mayor Beame came out to the public and said, "The people of the City of New York can rest easy because of the fact that the police have captured a man whom they believe to be the Son of Sam."

Questioning

Police were worried that, if challenged in court, their initial search of Berkowitz's vehicle might be ruled unconstitutional. Police had no search warrant, and their justification for the search of Berkowitz's car might seem flimsy. They had searched initially based on the rifle visible in the back seat, though possession of such a rifle was legal in New York State, and required no special permit.

Berkowitz quickly confessed to the shootings, however, and expressed an interest in pleading guilty in exchange for receiving life imprisonment rather than facing the death penalty. Berkowitz was questioned for about 30 minutes in the early morning of August 11, 1977, and he quickly confessed to the "Son of Sam" killings.

During questioning, Berkowitz said that the "Sam" mentioned in the first letter was Sam Carr, his former neighbor. Berkowitz claimed that Carr's black labrador retriever, Harvey, was possessed by an ancient demon, and that it issued irresistible commands that Berkowitz must kill people. Berkowitz said he once tried to kill the dog, but was unsuccessful due to supernatural interference.

Sentencing

During his sentencing, Berkowitz repeatedly chanted "Stacy was a whore" at a low yet audible volume. He was referring, presumably, to Stacy Moskowitz, who died in the final .44 caliber shooting. His behavior caused an uproar, and the courtroom was adjourned. Berkowitz later claimed that his statement was a response to Moskowitz's mother, who frequently opined that Berkowitz should be executed.

On June 12, 1978, he was sentenced to 25 years-to-life in prison for the murders, making his maximum term 365 years. He was first imprisoned at the Attica Correctional Facility.

Berkowitz's life in prison

In 1979, there was an attempt on Berkowitz's life. He refused to identify the person(s) who had attacked him with a knife, but suggested that the act was directed by the cult he once belonged to. He bears a permanent scar from the wound that took 52 stitches to close.

In 1987, Berkowitz became a born again Christian in prison. According to his personal testimony, his moment of conversion occurred after reading Psalm 34:6 from a Gideon's Pocket Testament Bible given to him by a fellow inmate. In the same testimony, he stated that his obsession with and heavy involvement in the occult played a major role in the Son of Sam murders.

In March 2002, Berkowitz sent a letter to New York Governor George Pataki asking that his parole hearing be canceled, stating: "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." In June 2004, he was denied a second parole hearing after he stated that he did not want one. The parole board saw that he had a good record in the prison programs, but decided that the brutality of his crimes called for him to stay imprisoned. In July 2006, the board once again denied parole on similar grounds, with Berkowitz not in attendance at the hearing. He is very involved in prison ministry and regularly counsels troubled inmates.

In June 2005, Berkowitz sued his former attorney, Hugo Harmatz, claiming Harmatz had taken possession of Berkowitz's letters and other personal belongings in order to publish a book of his own. Berkowitz stated that he would only drop the lawsuit if the attorney signed over all money he makes to the victims' families. On October 25, 2006, Berkowitz and Harmatz settled out of court, with Harmatz agreeing to return the disputed items to Berkowitz's present attorney Mark Jay Heller, and to donate part of his book profits to the New York State Crime Victims Board.

Shortly before her death in 2006, Stacy Moskowitz's mother wrote Berkowitz a letter saying she had forgiven him for his crimes. Moskowitz lived her final days in a Miami co-op, surrounded by pictures of her daughters, whom she talked about constantly. "...she said she did forgive everyone," said her close friend and neighbor, Sharon Denaro. "She needed to relieve herself of anger to be able to move forward with her life. She would say things like, 'This kind of anger can make you sick. Don't let anger eat you up'."

Berkowitz is housed in Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, New York. His "official" website is maintained on his behalf by a church group as he is not allowed access to a computer. In March 2010 Berkowitz had told Investigative Reporter Mike Mason that he would not seek parole in 2010.

Berkowitz plans to write a memoir, entitled Son of Hope: The Prison Journals of David Berkowitz, which will be published through Morning Star Communications. Berkowitz himself will receive no money from publication, and a portion of the proceeds will go to the New York state crime victims board for distribution to the victims of his crimes.

Laws

One major side effect of Berkowitz's murder spree were the "Son of Sam laws" enacted in several states in the 1980s.

The first of these laws was enacted in New York state after rampant speculation about publishers offering Berkowitz large sums of money for his story. The new law, named for Berkowitz, authorized the state to seize all money earned from such a deal from a criminal for five years, with intentions to use the seized money to compensate victims.

Later claims

Satanic cult claims

Within a few weeks of his arrest, Berkowitz was hinting that others were involved in the .44 murders. In a letter to the New York Post dated September 19, 1977, Berkowitz repeated the possessed dog story, but closed out his missive with the warning, "There are other Sons out there, God help the world."

In later years, he has discussed the cult claims in greater detail, but alleges that he cannot divulge all he knows without putting his family at risk. The cult had roughly two dozen core members in New York, the "twenty-two disciples of hell" mentioned in the Breslin letter. The cult had ties across the U.S., claimed Berkowitz, and was deeply involved in drug smuggling and other illegal activities. Berkowitz reportedly invited the former priest and exorcist Malachi Martin to visit him to discuss his past Satanic cult involvement.

Hockenberry asserts that, even aside from the Satanic cult claims, many officials doubted the single-shooter theory, writing, "[w]hat most don't know about the Son of Sam case is that from the beginning, not everyone bought the idea that Berkowitz acted alone. The list of skeptics includes both the police who worked the case and the prosecutor from Queens where five of the shootings took place."

After consulting with police and agreeing to withhold some names and other details, Terry published his conclusions in a series of newspaper articles distributed by the Gannett syndicate in 1979, and later in his book, The Ultimate Evil, which has been expanded several times since its initial 1987 publication.

Arlis Perry claims

In October 1978 Berkowitz mailed a book about witchcraft and other occult subjects to police in North Dakota. He had underlined several passages, offering some marginal notes, including the phrase: "Arliss [sic] Perry, Hunted, Stalked and Slain. Followed to Calif. Stanford University."

Arlis Perry, a newlywed 19-year-old North Dakota native, had been killed in a chapel on the grounds of Stanford University on October 12, 1974. Her murder remains unsolved. Berkowitz mentioned the Perry murder in a few letters, suggesting that he heard details of the crime from "Manson II", the culprit and a member of the violent Satanic cult. In the San Jose Mercury News, Jessie Seyfer noted that "investigators interviewed him in prison and now believe he has nothing of value to offer" regarding the Perry case.

Satanic Cult Skeptics

Columnist and Son of Sam pen-pal Jimmy Breslin denied Berkowitz's claims of Satanic cult involvement, stating “When they talked to David Berkowitz that night, he recalled everything step by step by step, the guy has 1000 percent recall and that's it. He's the guy and there's nothing else to look at.” A former FBI profiler who spent hours interviewing Berkowitz stated he was convinced Berkowitz acted alone, was an "introverted loner, not capable of being involved in group activity." Dr. Harvey Schlossberg, a NYPD Psychiatrist, states in the Against The Law documentary on the Son of Sam case that he believes that Berkowitz's Satanic Cult claims are nothing but a fantasy concocted by Berkowitz to absolve himself of the crimes.

The case in Yonkers has never been brought before a grand jury, nor has Berkowitz ever testified his satanic cult claims under oath or been cross-examined about his version of events in a trial. The New York City police have never wavered from their belief that a lone gunman was the Son of Sam.

Depictions

The 1985 CBS film Out of the Darkness, the first to deal with the Son of Sam killings, was told from the point of view of Ed Zigo, one of the detectives responsible for capturing Berkowitz by poring over parking tickets given to an illegally parked car in Brooklyn near where Stacy Moskowitz was murdered. The 1999 film Summer of Sam, directed by Spike Lee, depicts the tensions that develop in a Bronx neighborhood during the shootings. The 2007 ESPN mini-series The Bronx is Burning features the murders as a backdrop. Son of Sam is a 2008 Lionsgate film by Ulli Lommel focusing on Berkowitz's satanic cult connection.

References

Further reading

Breslin, Jimmy and Dick Schaap (1978). .44: a Novel. Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-32432-9.

Klausner, Lawrence D. (1980). Son of Sam: Based on the Authorized Transcription of the Tapes, Official Documents and Diaries of David Berkowitz. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-035027-2.

Newfield, Jack and Paul DuBrul (1977). The abuse of power: the permanent Government and the fall of New York. Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-10204-0.

Rowlett, Curt (2006). Labyrinth13: True Tales of the Occult, Crime & Conspiracy. Chapter 10, "Son of Sam and the Process Church of the Final Judgment: Exploring the Alleged Connections". Lulu Press. ISBN 1-4116-6083-8.

Terry, Maury (1987). The Ultimate Evil: An Investigation into America's Most Dangerous Satanic Cult. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-23452-X.

Douglas, John an Olshaker, Mark (1995). Mindhunter. Arrow Books ISBN 0-7493-2214-4.

External links

Arise and Shine Official Website

Against The Law - Son of Sam

Tru TV

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