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Letters from Hell,

‘Son of Sam' stalked the streets of New York City

By David Cocksedge

‘HELLO FROM the gutters of New York City which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood. Hello from the sewers of New York City which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks. Hello from the cracks in the sidewalks of New York City and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed on the dried blood of the dead that has seeped into these cracks.'

Thus began a letter sent to columnist Jimmy Breslin of the New York Daily News dated 30 May 1977 . The letter concluded, ‘Mr Breslin, sir, don't think that because you haven't heard from me for a while that I went to sleep. No, rather, I am still here, like a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest.' It was signed, ‘Son of Sam' and came from a serial killer New York Police had named ‘The .44 killer' because he used a .44 caliber handgun to shoot his victims in the areas of the Bronx and Queens in this vast, teeming city. Breslin called it a letter from hell.

Post Office worker David Berkowitz was a man of letters. He even may have personally overseen, through the city's mail system, the chilling notes he wrote and sent to police and media giving tantalizing clues to one of the USA 's most wanted serial killers during the 1970's.

Berkowitz was a stalker of young women who prowled the streets of NYC at night searching out his prey. No one who worked alongside him by day could ever have guessed at the deadly double-life that this loner was leading. The plump, angel-faced bachelor brought terror throughout his year-long reign, and as he got bolder, he could not resist taunting the police with a series of letters bragging about his deeds.

Between 29 July 1976 and 1 August 1977 , Berkowitz killed six women and badly wounded another seven. Pressure grew on the New York City Police Department crime division to capture the gun-toting killer. It was a pressure that Berkowitz noted with glee. So he took to his tiny suburban apartment to pen letters bragging about his murders. One of his ‘epics' read: ‘And huge drops of lead poured down upon her head until she was dead. Yet, the cats still come out at night to mate, and the sparrows still sing in the morning.'

David Richard Berkowitz was born in Brooklyn , New York City on 1 June 1953 . His given name was Richard David Falco and Berkowitz was the name of his adoptive parents. His birth parents were Betty Broder, who grew up into a poor Jewish family and Joseph Kleinman, with whom Broder whilst had an affair whilst still married to her husband, Tony Falco. The ‘Son of Sam' nickname came from his neighbor Sam Carr. According to Berkowitz, Carr was a ‘high demon' who sent his evil Labrador retriever named Harvey to command Berkowitz to go out and kill. He later shot the dog following one of his murders, but it survived. Berkowitz now asserts that he made up the whole crazy story to reinforce a defense that he was legally mad.

Criminal psychologists are divided on just what drove Berkowitz to become a murderer, but his case file perfectly fits the classic profile of a serial killer: a loner with no friends, seemingly harmless to all that know him, but a man harboring a hidden obsessive streak. Berkowitz enlisted in the army at the age of 18 in 1971 and before he left three years later, he converted from Judaism to fundamentalist Christianity.

He became a fanatic, often trying to convert fellow troopers and local residents of Louisville, Kentucky , where he was stationed. He would preach to them from a street-corner pulpit, warning of “the burning fires of Hell” that lay in wait for all sinners. “Repent before it is too late!” he would shout.

In the spring of 1974 Berkowitz returned to New York City and rented an apartment in the Bronx. After a spell as a security guard, he joined the postal service where he sorted mail. By now he kept largely to himself, nursing perverted fantasies which he put into practice two years later.

Berkowitz struck first near his home in the early hours of 29 July 1976 . Donna Lauria, a pretty dark-haired 18-year-old was just getting out of a car belonging to her friend Jody Valente outside an apartment belonging to Donna's parents. Suddenly a man ran from the shadows, stood on the footpath and pulled a handgun from a brown paper bag. From a crouching position, he fired five rounds. Donna was hit by three bullets and died instantly; Jody caught the other two and fell badly wounded. In a city over-run with murder, it was just another senseless shooting as far as the New York City Police Homicide Division was concerned. Donna's parents were left to grieve as their daughter's death became yesterday's news.

The killer opened fire again on 23 October 1976 . This time the target was a courting couple in a parked car at Flushing in Queens . Carl Denaro (20) had his plans to enlist in the US Air Force shattered as he was struck in the head by a .44 caliber round. His girlfriend, Rosemary Keenan (18) remarkably was not hit as Berkowitz fired three shots at the parked vehicle. Again, the crime had no special significance for New York 's finest who in fairness were dealing with an average of thirty murders a week.

Even when two other young women were shot and seriously wounded just over a month later in the Bronx, detectives still did not realize that the city was in the grip of a serial killer, shooting citizens at random. It was not until Christine Wheeler (18) was shot to death in Queens in February 1977 that police became alerted to the possibility that a maniac with a .44 handgun and a grudge against pretty girls was on the loose.

The ‘0.44 killer Task Force' (‘Operation Omega') was organized in March 1977, following the death of Virginia Voskerichian, a Bulgarian resident in NYC. Hundreds of leads were followed up by a special squad of over 300 men, but no motive could be found. The only common links were that young women were being targeted and ballistics tests confirmed that the same weapon was used on all the victims.

NYPD murder squad detectives were called to a bloody scene in Queens on 17 April 1977 where Valentina Suriana (19) and her boyfriend Alexander Esau (21) had both been shot dead. This time the killer had left more than bodies and .44 caliber cartridges in his wake. Under the woman's body was a letter from ‘Son of Sam'. He wrote that he was ‘deeply hurt' that newspapers were calling him a women-hater. ‘I am not', wrote Berkowitz, ‘but I am a monster. I am the Son of Sam. I am a little brat. Sam loves to drink blood. Go out and kill! Commands father Sam. I am on a different wavelength to everybody else – I am programmed to kill. To stop me, you must kill me. Attention all police: shoot me first. Shoot to kill or else! Keep out of my way or you will die! I am the monster – Beelzebub, the chubby behemoth. I love to hunt; prowling the streets looking for fair game – tasty meat. I live for the hunt; this is my life. I don't belong on this earth. I'll be back! I'll be back. Yours in murder, Mr Monster, Son of Sam.'

Police felt sure that Son of Sam would strike again on 29 July 1977 , the anniversary of his first attack. Berkowitz instead used his gun the very next night, killing Stacy Moskowitz and injuring her boyfriend, Robert Violante as they sat in the latter's car parked in a Brooklyn street.

By now the Son of Sam murders were getting maximum publicity worldwide, and citizens of New York City walked the nights in terror. Berkowitz was writing his twisted letters to Breslin, who published them, along with his replies, urging the maniac to give himself up. Circulation of the New York Daily News soared. But by August 1977 the reign of terror inflicted by Son of Sam was about to end.

Ten days after the Moskowitz murder Yonkers police received a call from Detective James Justus at the 10 th Precinct in Brooklyn . Justus had been calling the owners of several cars which had been given parking tickets around the vicinity of the murder scene, hoping that one of them might have seen something of relevance to the investigation. It was boring, routine police work, and no-one seriously expected anything to come of it. But Justus was an experienced cop, and he knew that such mundane tasks had to be done.

Justus noted that his repeated calls to the owner of a 1970 Ford Galaxie were never answered. The vehicle had been ticketed for parking too close to a fire hydrant just thirty minutes before the murder of Ms Moskowitz. He recommended to Yonkers police that the driver be tracked down and interviewed. On 10 August, two detectives, (Ed Zigo and John Longo) duly went up to Yonkers to meet this latest suspect: a certain Mr David Berkowitz.

After locating his apartment building on Pine Street , the detectives spotted his vehicle, license plate 561XLB, parked thirty yards away and strolled over to investigate it. Through the windows, they noticed a rifle butt protruding from a duffel bag and decided to probe further. They radioed for a search warrant, citing ‘probable cause' and broke into the car. In the glove box was an envelope addressed to Timothy Dowd, the deputy inspector who led the Operation Omega Task Force. Zigo carefully opened it and read the enclosed letter in shocked amazement. Berkowitz had intended to leave the letter by his next victim, writing it in advance. Son of Sam promised more attacks, including a bloody massacre at a night club on the eastern tip of Long Island . This was to be his chance to ‘go out in a blaze of glory.' He planned to execute as many people as possible and then die by his own hands.

The Task Force at last had their ‘smoking gun' in the Son of Sam case. In answer to further calls, more police swiftly arrived at the scene and put a ‘trigger' on the car. Whilst Zigo and Longo waited for a search warrant for Berkowitz's apartment, the night stalker himself walked out of the building and headed for his car just before 10pm. He was dressed in a white shirt, jeans and brown boots, and carried a brown paper bag in his right hand which contained a .44 caliber handgun.

Berkowitz sauntered casually to his car, opened the driver's door, got in and switched on the ignition. But he never got to drive his car again. Suddenly, he was looking at the business ends of handguns and shotguns being leveled through the car windows. Son of Sam looked amazingly relaxed as he smiled at the police officers pointing weapons at him. “Okay, you got me,” he said. “What took you guys so long?”

Berkowitz was handcuffed, read his Miranda rights and then ferried to Manhattan police headquarters. Senior police alerted Mayor Abe Beame with the blockbuster news: we finally got ‘Son of Sam'! Waiting newsmen at Manhattan Police HQ expected to see a chained, wild-eyed monster snarling at them. Instead they stared at a meek, smiling postal worker, looking about as dangerous as a cherub.

Berkowitz was grilled for almost two hours, confessed to all the murders, and the news was spread over the front pages of newspapers the next morning. New Yorkers in general felt relief mixed with anger towards this cowardly killer who had stalked their streets. When Berkowitz was arraigned at the Brooklyn Courthouse, a mob of several hundred angry citizens tried to rush the police cordon and summarily lynch the prisoner. Numerous death threats were phoned in to the switchboard at the King's County Hospital, where he was subsequently taken for psychiatric evaluation. Berkowitz was still blurting out obscure threats. “I am one of the devils of Satan; a force beyond the wildest imaginations of people,” he declared. “Sam is not human. When I killed, I really saved many lives. You will understand this later. People want my blood but they don't want to listen to what I have to say. There are other Sons out there. God help the world!”

After a brief trial where he pleaded guilty to all charges, he was sentenced on 12 June 1978 to six life terms in prison. Effectively these concurrent terms meant that he would serve at least thirty years in jail.

In 1997, Berkowitz said that he did not act alone in the killings. He claimed to have met people who convinced him to join an occult group which routinely sacrificed animals to Satan. He said that he was not the ‘Son of Sam' shooter, but merely one of the many ‘lookout men'. His neighbor John Carr owned a black Labrador named Harvey that Berkowitz said was a ‘high demon' which spoke to him and ordered him to go out and kill young women.

The oddball Berkowitz became a born-again Christian and now works as a prison chaplain. In March 2002, he wrote to New York governor George Pataki asking that his parole hearing be cancelled, stating, “I can give you no good reason as to why I should even be considered.” In June 2004, he was denied a second parole hearing after stating that he did not want one. The parole board noted that Berkowitz had a good record in the prison program, but decided that the brutality of his crimes called for him to stay behind bars.

As in England 's ‘Yorkshire Ripper' case, checkbook journalism surfaced soon after Berkowitz was sent to prison. This led to ‘Son of Sam laws' enacted by the state of New York after editors offered Berkowitz large sums of money for his story. Publishers surmised that Berkowitz's bizarre literary bent combined with his notoriety virtually ensured that he was capable of writing a chilling, offbeat best seller. The new law authorized the state to seize all money earned from such a deal for five years, and use the seized funds to compensate victims (and victims' families) of the crimes. (The US Supreme Court however overturned the ‘Son of Sam laws' in 1991, declaring them to be ‘unconstitutional.')

Berkowitz is currently writing his memoirs, which he plans to publish despite outrage from the families of his victims and victims' rights advocates. When he finally goes to print, we can expect further litigation on this issue.

Psychiatrist Dr David Abrahamsen, who examined Berkowitz in 1978 and judged him sane, said, “He found sexual gratification in killing women. He could not approach a woman as any man would do and date her and perhaps have sex with her later. That was not for him. He developed a great deal of contempt for women that he kept well hidden.”

It seems that in spite of all his Christian preaching, David Berkowitz remains a very dangerous man.

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