David Berkowitz
David Richard Berkowitz, also known as the Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer and former U.S. Army soldier who committed a stabbing and a series of shootings between 1975 and 1977 in New York City, killing six people and wounding eleven others. Armed with a.44 Special caliber Bulldog revolver during most of his crimes, he terrorized New Yorkers with many letters mocking the police and promising further crimes, leading to possibly the biggest manhunt in the city's history.
With a parking ticket proving a vital clue to finding him, Berkowitz was arrested on August 10, 1977, and subsequently indicted for eight shootings. He confessed to all of them, and initially claimed to have been obeying the orders of a demon manifested in the form of a black dog "Sam" which belonged to his neighbor. After being found mentally competent to stand trial, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to six concurrent life sentences in state prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. He subsequently admitted the dog-and-devil story was a hoax. In police investigations, Berkowitz was also implicated in many unsolved arsons in the city.
Intense media coverage of the case lent a kind of celebrity status to Berkowitz, which many observers noted he seemed to enjoy. The New York State Legislature enacted new statutes – known popularly as "Son of Sam laws" – designed to keep criminals from financially profiting from the publicity created by their crimes. The statutes have remained in New York despite various legal challenges, and similar laws have been enacted in several other states. During the mid-1990s, Berkowitz, by then professing to be a converted evangelical Christian, amended his confession to claim he had been a member of a violent Satanic cult that orchestrated the incidents as ritual murder. A new investigation of the murders began in 1996 but was suspended indefinitely after inconclusive findings.
Early life
David Berkowitz was born Richard David Falco on June 1, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York City. Within a few days of his birth, his biological mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Broder, gave the child away. Broder had grown up as part of an impoverished family and was working as a waitress. In 1936, she had married Tony Falco, an Italian American. After a marriage of less than four years, Falco left her for another woman. Although Broder was married to Falco, Berkowitz's biological father was Joseph Kleinman, a married businessman who, like Berkowitz's mother, was Jewish.The infant Richard was adopted by Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz of the Bronx. The couple were Jewish hardware store retailers of modest means, and childless in middle age. They reversed the order of the boy's first and middle names and gave him their own surname, raising the young David Richard Berkowitz as their only child. Berkowitz had a bar mitzvah and was frequently bullied for being Jewish. He was also teased by his classmates for his "chubbiness".
Journalist John Vincent Sanders wrote that Berkowitz's childhood was "somewhat troubled". Although of above-average intelligence, he lost interest in his education at an early age and became infatuated with petty larceny and starting fires. He suffered head injuries as a child. Neighbors and relatives would recall Berkowitz as difficult, spoiled, and a bully. His adoptive parents consulted at least one psychotherapist due to his misconduct, but his misbehavior never resulted in a legal intervention or serious mention in his school records. He attended Public School #123 and Public School #77.
Berkowitz's adoptive mother died of breast cancer when he was 14, and his home life became strained in later years, particularly because he disliked his adoptive father's second wife. Berkowitz lived with his father while attending Christopher Columbus High School and college in a four-and-a-half-room apartment at 170 Dreiser Loop in Co-op City from 1967 to 1971. In 1971, at age 17, Berkowitz joined the United States Army and served at Fort Knox in the U.S. and with an infantry division in South Korea. After an honorable discharge in June 1974, he located his birth mother Betty. After a few visits, she disclosed the details of his birth. The news greatly disturbed Berkowitz, and he was particularly distraught by the array of reluctant father figures.
Forensic anthropologist Elliott Leyton described Berkowitz's discovery of his birth details as the "primary crisis" of his life, a revelation that shattered his sense of identity. His communication with his birth mother later lapsed, but for a time he remained in communication with his adoptive sister Roslyn. He attended Bronx Community College for one year, enrolling in the spring of 1975. In 1976, he went to work as a driver for the Co-Op City Taxi Company. He subsequently had several non-professional jobs, and at the time of his arrest was working as a letter sorter for the United States Postal Service.
Beginning of crimes (late 1975 to early 1977)
During the mid-1970s, Berkowitz began committing violent crimes. He bungled his first attempt at murder using a knife, then switched to a handgun and began a lengthy crime spree throughout the New York boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, seeking young female victims. All but one of the crime scenes involved two victims; he infamously committed some of his attacks while the women sat with boyfriends in parked cars. Berkowitz exhibited an enduring enjoyment of his activities, often returning to the scenes of his crimes.Forman stabbing (December 1975)
Berkowitz later claimed that when he was 22, he committed his first attack on Christmas Eve 1975, using a hunting knife to stab two women in Co-op City. The first alleged victim, a Hispanic woman, was never identified by police. The second was 15-year-old Michelle Forman, a sophomore at Truman High School, whom he stabbed six times on a bridge near Dreiser Loop and whose injuries were serious enough for her to be hospitalized for a week. The two stabbings occurred within several minutes of each other. Berkowitz was not suspected of these crimes, and soon afterward he relocated to an apartment in Yonkers.Lauria and Valenti shooting (July 1976)
The first shooting attributed to Berkowitz occurred in the Pelham Bay neighborhood of the Bronx. At about 1:10 a.m. on July 29, 1976, Donna Lauria, an emergency medical technician, and her friend Jody Valenti, a nurse, were sitting in Valenti's double-parked Oldsmobile discussing their evening at Peachtree's, a New Rochelle discotheque. According to Valenti, Lauria opened the car door to leave and noticed a man quickly approaching. Startled and angered by the man's sudden appearance, Lauria said, "Now what is this..." The man produced a gun from the paper bag he carried and crouched. Bracing one elbow on his knee, he aimed his weapon with both hands and fired. Lauria was struck by one bullet that killed her instantly. Valenti was shot in her thigh, and a third bullet missed both women. The shooter turned and walked away quickly.Valenti survived her injury and said she did not recognize the killer. She described him as a white male in his thirties with a fair complexion, about tall and weighing about. His hair was short, dark, and curly in a "mod style". This description was repeated by Lauria's father, who claimed to have seen a similar man sitting in a yellow compact car parked nearby. Neighbors gave corroborating reports to police that an unfamiliar yellow compact car had been cruising the area for hours before the shooting. Years later, in 1993, an imprisoned Berkowitz admitted in an interview with journalist Maury Terry that he had shot Lauria and Valenti.
Denaro and Keenan shooting (October 1976)
On October 23, 1976, a similar shooting occurred in a secluded residential area of Flushing, Queens, next to Bowne Park. Carl Denaro, a Citibank security guard, and Rosemary Keenan, a Queens College student, were sitting in Keenan's parked car when the windows suddenly shattered. "I felt the car exploded," Denaro said later. Keenan quickly started the car and sped away for help. The panicked couple did not realize someone had been shooting at them, even though Denaro was bleeding from a bullet wound to his head. 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 saw the attacker.Police determined the bullets embedded in Keenan's car were.44 caliber, but they were so deformed they thought it unlikely they could ever be linked to a particular weapon. Because Denaro had shoulder-length hair, police later speculated the shooter had mistaken him for a woman. Keenan's father was a 20-year veteran police detective of the New York City Police Department, which encouraged an intense investigation. As with the Lauria–Valenti shooting, however, there seemed not to be any tangible motive for the shooting; police made little progress with the case. Many details of the Denaro–Keenan shooting were very similar to the Lauria–Valenti case, but police did not initially associate them, partly because the shootings occurred in different boroughs and were being investigated by different police precincts.
DeMasi and Lomino shooting (November 1976)
High school students Donna DeMasi and Joanne Lomino had walked home from a movie shortly after midnight on November 27, 1976. They were chatting on the porch of Lomino's home in Floral Park when a young man dressed in military fatigues approached them and began to ask directions.In a high-pitched voice he said, "Can you tell me how to get...", but then quickly produced a revolver. He shot each of the victims once and, as they fell to the ground injured, he fired several more times, striking the house before running away. A neighbor heard the gunshots, rushed out of his house, and reported seeing a blond man run past gripping a pistol in his left hand. DeMasi had been shot in the neck, but the wound was not life-threatening. Lomino was hit in the back and hospitalized in serious condition; she was ultimately rendered paraplegic.