By He carried out eight attacks, killing six people. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and is currently serving his sentence.
On Christmas Eve 1975 , David Berkowitz was determined to kill. He had targeted a 14-year-old girl who was skating on the ice rink with her friends. As the girl was walking home, he accosted her and stabbed her several times. However, thanks to the good fortune of wearing a strong, slippery coat, the victim managed to escape.
David had been holding back a rage inside him that was about to break through. That night, a new serial killer had been born.
Childhood and adolescence
David Berkowitz was born on June 1, 1953 in New York (United States). His real name was Richard David Falco. His mother gave him up for adoption to the couple formed by Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz, due to her second husband’s refusal to have more children.
Since he was little, he felt different from others. He was a shy child with a great capacity for lying . In addition, he was not a good student and had few social relationships. At only 14 years old, David would lose his adoptive mother, who died of cancer.
David Berkowitz’s personality became increasingly complex, accompanied by feelings of loneliness and social rejection . When his adoptive father decides to marry him four years after the death of his late wife, David will undergo an even more radical change in his way of being and behaving.
Enlistment in the army
David Berkowitz decides to join the army and is sent to Korea for three years, where he receives extensive military training and also becomes a professional shooter. He returns in 1974, but nothing will be the same; what was once his home will have become something distant and strange, for which he no longer feels any nostalgia.
Due to arguments and a bad relationship with her father, she decides to become independent and move to her own apartment in another area of the Bronx.
During this time, he decides to look for his biological parents , and manages to find his sister Rosalyn, and his mother. He will reunite with Rosalyn, but over time David will distance himself from her. During this time, he will commit the first attack.
The “Son of Sam”
When he first attacked a girl on her way home with a knife, but failed to kill her, he realized that the encounter had been too physical for his liking. Next time, he would do it more simply: he would use a very specific revolver, a .44-caliber Bulldog.
David Berkowitz’s indiscriminate attacks
On July 29, 1976, he approached two girls, Donna and Jody, ages 18 and 19 respectively, who were saying goodbye to each other on the street. He was carrying a brown paper bag with his revolver inside. He took it out and without saying a word shot them both. Neither survived.
Police considered the possibility that the mafia was behind the murder, since at that time the northern Bronx was dominated by Italian families and it was not unusual to encounter scores settling.
However, that initial hypothesis was discarded and a first robot portrait of David Berkowitz appeared in the media: white man, dark hair, normal build, between 25 and 32 years old and 1.80 m tall.
On October 23, he would strike again. Rosemary Keenan and Carl Denaro, ages 18 and 20 respectively, were sitting in their car when David Berkowitz approached them and shot them five times through the window . The recoil from the gun spoiled his aim, leaving Carl only slightly injured and Rosemary unscathed.
On November 27, he approached Donna DeMasi and Joanne Lomino, two teenagers aged 16 and 18 respectively, and the attack was similar. In this case, one of the shots went through Donna’s neck, but it was not serious. On the other hand, one of the shots to Joanne went through her spine and confined her to a wheelchair for life. A neighbour saw David flee and it was after this attack that he was linked to the first one he had committed .
The next one would occur two months later, ending the life of Christine Freund, 26. When the ballistics unit purchased the bullets, they confirmed the match: they all came from a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver .
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Attention seeking
Finally, following the same modus operandi, he would end the life of Virginia Voskerichian, and also that of the couple formed by Valentina Suriani and Alexander Esau. In this last shooting, he also left a letter addressed to the person in charge of the case , Joe Borelli. It was his first contact with the police.
In a feverish, incoherent rambling, the letter expressed his determination to continue killing and mocked the police for their fruitless efforts to capture him.
“I am a monster. I am the Son of Sam. Sam loves to drink blood. ‘Go out and kill,’ Father Sam commands me,” the letter read.
This was not the only time he contacted the police, he continued to do so on many more occasions. On some of these occasions he even expressed that he felt possessed by Satan.
A fine on your windshield
On July 31, 1977, he committed his last murder. He approached a car that was parked near a park, inside was a couple. The shooting ended the lives of the couple formed by Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante.
That night, witnesses gave a more precise description of the killer. Added to this was the description of Cecilia Davis, who recognized him due to his bad behavior after noticing that he had a ticket on his windshield .
The police began to put the pieces together and compare the data with the evidence they already had from previous cases, and also with the sanctions that had been imposed on the day of the murder.
It worked. An officer had written a ticket to the license plate 561-XLB. The car was registered to a David Berkowitz. They had a suspect.
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Conviction
On August 10, 1977, he was arrested, and he soon confessed to his crimes. He blamed his neighbor’s dog for ordering him to commit the acts he had committed. He also claimed to hear demonic voices inside him telling him not to stop and to continue killing.
In 1978, an expert report was produced detailing a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia . The prosecution disputed the study and claimed that he was fully aware of his actions. David Berkowitz was thus sentenced to life imprisonment.
This would not be the last news of David Berkowitz. On July 10, 1979, an inmate attacked him and stabbed him with a razor blade from his throat to the back of his neck . He needed 56 stitches.
After that, he tried to reform himself through the Christian religion. Finally, we “re-watched” him on television recently thanks to the series Mindhunter . He is currently still serving his sentence.
Main image of David Berkowitz played by Oliver Copper in the Mindhunter series
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