David Berkowitz

What the record shows

David Berkowitz, known as the "Son of Sam" and the ".44 Caliber Killer", shot thirteen people in eight attacks in New York City between July 1976 and July 1977, killing six and wounding seven. According to the Associated Press, he pleaded guilty in 1978 and was sentenced to the maximum term of 25 years to life for each of the six killings. He has been imprisoned ever since and has been denied parole at every board appearance, most recently in May 2024.

A CBS News timeline of the case lists the attacks in order. On July 29, 1976, Donna Lauria, 18, was killed and Jody Valenti wounded as they sat in a parked car in the Bronx. On October 23, 1976, Carl Denaro and Rosemary Keenan were wounded in a parked car in Queens, and on November 27, 1976, Donna DeMasi and Joanne Lomino were shot near Lomino's Queens home; Lomino was left paralyzed. Christine Freund, 26, was killed in a parked car in Queens on January 30, 1977, and Virginia Voskerichian was shot dead outside her Queens home on March 8, 1977. On April 17, 1977, Valentina Suriani, 18, and Alexander Esau, 20, were both killed in the Bronx. Judy Placido and Sal Lupo were wounded leaving a Queens discotheque on June 26, 1977. The final attack, on July 31, 1977, in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, killed Stacy Moskowitz and cost Robert Violante the sight of one eye. ABC reported that police linked the shootings to a single gun only after the Freund killing.

A note left at the Esau-Suriani scene in April 1977 called the writer a monster and used the name "Son of Sam", ABC reported, and CBS News recorded that a letter signed the same way was mailed to Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin on May 30, 1977 and published on June 6. The break came from the Brooklyn scene: according to the Associated Press and CBS News, a parking ticket found at the site of the last shooting led detectives to Berkowitz's car. According to Wikipedia, a Yonkers dispatcher had separately connected the "Sam" of the letters to the dog of his neighbors, the Carr family. CBS News reported that days after an August 6 incident in which a bucket of gunpowder and bullets was set alight outside the door of his neighbor Craig Glassman, detectives arrived at the building. Berkowitz was arrested at the wheel of his car outside his Yonkers apartment on August 10, 1977; police displayed the .44-caliber revolver the next day and found handwritten messages on the apartment walls.

After a court-ordered evaluation he was found competent to stand trial, CBS News reported. He pleaded guilty on May 8, 1978; according to Wikipedia the convictions were six counts of second-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder. On June 12, 1978, he received 25 years to life for each murder, the maximum term, as the Associated Press summarized it. ABC and CBS News both described the result as six consecutive life sentences. He became eligible for parole in 2002.

According to Wikipedia, his neck was slashed by another inmate at Attica in 1979, and he was later held at Sullivan Correctional Facility before being moved to Shawangunk, where he announced an evangelical Christian conversion and asked to be called the "Son of Hope". He has often declined to seek release. At his third hearing in July 2006, ABC reported, he did not attend; the board commended his prison conduct but cited his "cold disregard" for life and the premeditated, unprovoked nature of the crimes. The Associated Press reported that the board rejected him again after a May 14, 2024 interview, his twelfth appearance.

In a 1993 television interview, according to Wikipedia, Berkowitz said he had fired the fatal shots in only three of the killings and attributed the rest to a satanic cult that included the Carr brothers, John and Michael, both of whom died within two years of his arrest. Yonkers police reopened the matter in 1996 and suspended it without charges. The case also produced New York's "Son of Sam" law, which diverted a criminal's earnings from accounts of the crime to victims. The U.S. Supreme Court struck it down on First Amendment grounds in Simon & Schuster v. Members of the New York State Crime Victims Board on December 10, 1991, and the state passed a revised statute in 1992.

Berkowitz was born Richard David Falco in Brooklyn on June 1, 1953 and adopted as an infant by Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz of the Bronx, according to Wikipedia. He graduated from Christopher Columbus High School in 1971, served in the Army, including in South Korea, and was honorably discharged in June 1974. CBS News noted that he began work as a part-time mail sorter for the Postal Service in the Bronx in March 1976, four months before the first killing, while living in an apartment on Pine Street in Yonkers.