Son of Sam. The Writer

¶ … Son of Sam. The writer details the events of his life up to and including the crimes that made him famous. There were four sources used to complete this paper.

Many states have laws that prevent a violent offender from making a profit in any way from the crimes he or she committed. It means that one who commits murder or multiple murders cannot profit from a book or movie deal that they may make with someone. This law is called the Son of Sam Law and it was written and adopted by many states following the murder of six innocent people in New York during the 1970's as well as the severe injury of multiple more by a man who called himself the Son of Sam.

The Son of Sam's real name is David Berkowitz. He was born on June 1, 1953 in the heart of New York City nine months after a sexual affair between a woman named Betty Falco and a man named Joseph Kleinman. He was given up for adoption within hours of his birth and adopted by a young married couple named Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz.

Berkowitz was raised in the Bronx and by his own admission was provided a warm loving home and family life for his childhood backdrop (David Berkowitz (http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=58).

Even as a small child Berkowitz was not a social person. He preferred to stay to himself and as he grew older he was physically much larger than other children his age, which he later reported made him significantly uncomfortable. He became a bully and spent much of his childhood picking on other children and taking their money from them.

He was called hyperactive, which was the term used for ADHD in those days and he was also prone to have violent outbursts with little or no warning.

The one stability and love that he believed in during his childhood was that of his mother. He was very close to her and when she died of breast cancer in 1967 it almost destroyed him. Later reports indicate that he became very angry with God and believed he had taken his mother as a way to punish him.

He believed it was a conspiracy by higher powers to make him miserable and he turned his back on any idea that the higher powers were a positive element of life.

His father remarried in 1971 and the family moved to Florida but David hated his stepmother and decided to stay in New York by himself.

He joined the army but was discharged in 1974. he then spent several years as a pyromaniac recording the fires he set into a diary that was later recovered. By the time he was arrested for the Son of Sam killings he had started almost 1,500 fires by his own accounts.

At the same time, David was depressed and began hearing voices in his head. He managed to get a job as a security guard for IBI Security. At the time, David was living in a home owned by Jack and Nann Cassera. They owned a German shepherd that often howled with the other dogs. David thought that this dog and others he heard howling were demons ordering him to kill (David Berkowitz (http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=58)."

He managed to ignore those directives until the day before Christmas 1974 at which time he stabbed a woman in the back. He later said the voices told him to do so. He ran when she began to scream but within minutes saw a 15-year-old girl named Michelle Foreman. He stabbed her six times before he went home to bed.

He moved into another residence and met a neighbor named Sam Carr, who owned a Labrador dog. Berkowitz came to believe that the dog possessed evil powers as a "Master Demon" and he shot the dog, however, the owners rushed it to a hospital where he was saved. This only served to further convince Berkowitz of its demonic powers. He believed the dogs owner, Sam was also serving a demon named General Jack Cosmo and he began to call himself the Son of Sam believing that his duties were to murder in the name of the devil.

He also changed his weapon of choice from a knife to a.44 Charter Arms Bulldog pistol (David Berkowitz (http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=58)."

On July 29, 1976, two women named Jody Valenti and Donna Lauria were sitting in their car when David ran up and stuck his head in the window. He then shot Jody in the thigh and Donna in the neck, killing Donna.

Next he shot a man named Carl Denaro which set the city of New York on edge. The killer was not showing a preference for gender, age or area of the city in which he chose his victims. Carl survived, and it was not long before Son of Sam struck again, this time shooting Donna DeMasi and Joanne Lomino, paralyzing Lomino for life from the waist down.

Berkowitz continued his rampage shooting and killing or maiming innocent victims all over the city creating a fear in the hearts of NC residents.

Looking for more publicity Berkowitz changed his MO and left a letter signed "Son of Sam" at one of this next crime scenes.

His victims at that scene were two innocent young men who would die from their wounds. His next targets were shot in the arm and the neck as they left a dance club but they survived.

On this latest murder, David had finally slipped up. A witness saw the crime and watched David leave the scene with a parking ticket on his car. The police looked up the ticket and came up with David's name. He was arrested on August 10, 1977 outside his apartment and immediately confessed to all of the crimes (David Berkowitz (http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=58)."

Berkowitz tried hard to convince prosecutors that the voices in his head that were there because of the dog convinced him to commit the crimes that he committed but the jury was undeterred and sentenced him to 365 years in prison where he remains to this day.

In trying to piece together the life of Berkotwitz it was found that he only had one romantic relationship in his life and it was mostly something he fantasized about.

After high school he did attend several classes at a nearby community college but it was mainly to appease his father and quickly dropped out. He did find his biological mother and she and her adult daughter worked hard to make him feel that he was part of the family but he soon stopped visiting them and drifted off on his own again (The Letter (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/berkowitz/letter_1.html).

Sexual anger may have been part of what drove him to become the Son of Sam. "Anger and frustration with women, coupled by a bizarre fantasy life, started him down the road to violence when he got out of the Army in 1974. The only consummated sexual experience with a woman that he ever had was with a prostitute in Korea. He contracted a venereal disease as a souvenir (The Letter (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/berkowitz/letter_1.html)."

At one point just before the killings started he wrote a letter to his father in Florida in which he claimed people were kicking him in the street, beating him up and laughing at him. He also wrote that he knew these people wanted to murder him.

His claim in defense of the murders was that the demons needed blood and it was his job to provide the blood. In a letter he wrote to one of the detectives in charge of hunting him down he insisted that there were blood emptied bodies hidden in his backyard.

He had been working as a security guard but the night before the first murderers he quit that job and took a position as a taxi driver, which provided him with the freedom to drive around seeking out victims.