In the summer of 1976, New York City gripped with fear as a mysterious gunman began hunting couples and lone women in the darkness. Between July 1976 and July 1977, six people would die and seven to eleven others would be wounded in a spree of seemingly random violence. The man responsible was David Richard Berkowitz, a 24-year-old from Yonkers, who would become one of America's most infamous serial killers.
Berkowitz was born Richard David Falco on June 1, 1953, and given up for adoption at birth. He was adopted by Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz, Jewish hardware store owners in the Bronx, who renamed him and raised him as their only child. His childhood was marked by rejection and violence. He was bullied for being Jewish and overweight, and suffered multiple head injuries—struck by a car at age seven, running into a wall, and hit with a pipe. When his adoptive mother Pearl died in 1967, Berkowitz lost his primary emotional anchor. His adoptive father Nathan remarried in 1971 and relocated to Florida without him, abandoning the teenage boy.
Afte enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1971, Berkowitz became an excellent marksman before his discharge in 1974. But while building a military skill set, his psychological deterioration accelerated. Beginning in the mid-1970s, he became a prolific arsonist, setting between 1,488 and 1,500 fires across New York City—a compulsion he documented obsessively in his personal journal.
Timeline
29 July 1976
Første Son of Sam skyderi i Pelham Bay
Donna Lauria (18) dræbes og Jody Valenti (19) såres, da de sidder i en parkeret bil i Pelham Bay, The Bronx. Gerningsmanden affyrer fire skud fra en .44 kaliber Bulldog revolver.
8 March 1977
Virginia Voskerichian dræbt
Virginia Voskerichian skydes og dræbes med samme .44 kaliber våben, hvilket bekræfter et serielt mønster i mordene.
17 April 1977
Dobbeltdrab og 'Son of Sam' brevet
Valentina Suriani og Alexander Esau skydes og dræbes på Hutchinson River Parkway i The Bronx. Navnet 'Son of Sam' dukker op i forbindelse med denne hændelse.
31 July 1977
Sidste angreb i Bath Beach, Brooklyn
Stacy Moskowitz og Robert Violante bliver skudt i Bath Beach, Brooklyn, i det der skulle blive det sidste angreb i Son of Sam-serien.
The murder spree itself began on the streets of New York in 1975 with a stabbing attempt that the victim survived. On July 29, 1976, Berkowitz fired his first fatal shots. Over the following months, his attacks escalated. He targeted couples and women, sometimes shooting multiple times before fleeing. On April 17, 1977, he murdered Alexander Esau and Valentina Suriani, leaving a handwritten letter near their bodies. This was the first time he signed himself "Son of Sam"—a reference to demons he claimed were commanded by a neighbor's black Labrador retriever named Sam Carr.
Berkowitz continued sending letters to newspapers and police, claiming that voices and demonic forces compelled him to kill. These communications, combined with eyewitness accounts and forensic evidence, galvanized one of the largest manhunts the NYPD had ever launched.
On July 31, 1977, Berkowitz struck again. He shot Stacy Moskowitz, nineteen, and Robert Violante, twenty, in a brown 1968 Buick Skylark in Bath Beach, Brooklyn. Moskowitz died from her injuries. Violante was partially blinded. This attack would prove to be his last.
Eleven days later, on August 10, 1977, Detectives John Falotico and Edward Zigo arrested Berkowitz in front of his apartment in Yonkers as he sat in his car. He confessed to his crimes shortly after arrest.
In 1978, Berkowitz was sentenced to 365 years in prison—one year for each victim and victim of attempted murder. He remains incarcerated at Shawangunk Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in New York. Since becoming eligible for parole in 2002, he has been denied release every time. In later years, Berkowitz has admitted that his claims of demonic possession were fabricated, a psychological manipulation that only deepened the mystery surrounding one of America's most chilling serial killing sprees.
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