Son of Sam David Berkowitz

¶ … summer of 1976 to the end of summer 1977, a reign of murderous terror gripped New York City - it was the year of the Son of Sam. David Berkowitz would eventually be arrested, tried, and convicted for the series of gun-attacks that left six people dead, seven wounded, and an entire city in fear. When caught, while there existed a potential for his being determined to be insane, Berkowitz pled guilty to the six murders and, under the sentencing rules of the time, was given twenty-five years to life. David Berkowitz comes up for parole next year.

The Son of Sam, while in jail, turned his crimes into profit by writing and authorizing books to be written about him.

Outrage against this led to the "Son of Sam Law" which now disallows criminals in jail from profiting from their crimes while behind bars.

Berkowitz has become an icon in the study of the psychology of murder, of serial killers, and of the sociology of fear. It is the purpose of this paper to first examine the life of David Berkowitz, the nature of his crimes, and to offer an analysis of the serial killer's mind.

On August 10, 1977, 24-year-old postal employee David Berkowitz was arrested and charged with being the "Son of Sam," the serial killer who terrorized New York City for more than a year, killing six young people and wounding seven others with a.44-caliber revolver. Because Berkowitz generally targeted attractive young women with long brown hair, hundreds of young women had their hair cut short and dyed blond during his protracted killing spree. Thousands more simply stayed home at night. After his arrest, Berkowitz claimed that demons and a black Labrador retriever owned by a neighbor named Sam had ordered him to commit the killings. There was some question about whether Berkowitz was mentally fit to stand trial, but in May 1978 he withdrew an insanity defense and pleaded guilty to the six.44-caliber murders. He was given six 25-years-to-life sentences for the crime, the maximum penalty allowed at the time. However, because the sentences are served simultaneously, he will be eligible for parole in 2003. Since 1987, he has been held at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in upstate New York, where he allegedly converted to Christianity (A&E., 2002).

David Berkowitz was adopted into what appeared to be a loving family with parents who dedicated themselves to him. His biological mother had grown up and lived in Brooklyn, New York, in a poor family that had struggled severely during the Great Depression. Betty Broder, his mother, had a daughter with her first husband. She later divorced after having a daughter, Roslyn, and started seeing a married man, Joseph Kleinman. When she became pregnant a second time, with Joseph's child, Betty arranged for David's adoption at the insistence of Kleinman. On the first of June, 1953, David was adopted into a Jewish family, Nat and Pearl Berkowitz. The Berkowitz' had been childless and were immediately attached to their son. David seemed to enjoy a very normal, uneventful childhood growing up in the Bronx. In hindsight, only the fact that David was something of a loner stands out as a possible indication of problems later on. But, as his parents were not very social themselves, David's behavior did not appear to be anything unusual to Nat and Pearl.

David became a neighborhood bully, demonstrated hyperactive behaviors, and proved to be quite difficult to manage for his parents. One of the first real tragedies David faced was the early loss of his adoptive mother to cancer when he was just 14 years old. Just a few years earlier, David's family had prepared to move into a mass of high-rise apartment buildings in a middle-class neighborhood - Pearl died just before the apartment was completed. On the heels of Pearl's death, David began a downward slide in his behavior and performance in school.

He lost his faith in God, his grades plummeted, and he disappeared into himself. David stayed like this, without improvement. In 1971, Nat and his new wife moved to Florida without David. At this point in his life, David Berkowitz had no purpose, no real meaning, no goals, and no direction - only fantasy.

David attempted to create a social life for himself, but he tended to make much more out of friendships with people, particularly women, than they actually were. In an attempt to please his father, David attended classes at a community college, took a few small jobs, but never really found anything he was good at. That is until he joined the Army. In the summer of 1971, David became an infantryman. Over the course of his three-year enlistment, David became an expert marksman. But, the army proved to not be the place where he would find a home either. David returned to New York in 1974.

One of the facts of David's life that would become known later was that he was a fire starter. David kept a journal, chronicling nearly fifteen-hundred fires that he had set in and around New York City. This acting out has been considered to be a method of controlling events, of establishing a sense of power over that which cannot be controlled. David wrote a letter in the winter of 1974 to his father in which he described his mood as being "gloomy" like the weather that surrounded him. He began to perceive that people around him hated him, that they wanted to kill him, and that it was the young people of the neighborhood that teased and taunted him the most. David became a prisoner in his apartment. Living in self-imposed exile from the world, he formed the idea that demons were directing him to find people to kill. So, he went out 'hunting' with a knife, found two people who the demons told him to kill, and stabbed them both. This was the winter of 1975.

David took a job as a night security guard, moved into the home of Jack Cassara. The Cassaras had a dog that would howl quite a lot and, in David's twisted mind, the howling was that of a demon which ordered him to hunt and kill young women. The demons would not let him rest and, after only three months of a two-year lease, David moved out. Then moved into another apartment where Sam Carr (who would become the "Sam" in "Son of Sam") and his dogs became a fixation of David's mind. He became convinced that Sam was Satan and that it was he who was ordering David to his first murder - that of Donna Lauria, who died on July 29th, 1976. Later, he described the voices as."..they acted human. But they weren't. They began to howl things. They wanted to get at children, to tear them up." (Chelser & Robb, 1996).

David, by that time, had graduated from the use of a knife to that of a.44 caliber pistol. David approached the car that Donna and a friend of hers, Jody Valenti, were sitting in. David casually fired five rounds into the front seat, killing Donna and seriously wounding Jody. In October of that year, twenty-year-old Carl Denaro and his girlfriend Rosemary Keenan were parked in a car and David approached, fired five bullets again, killing Rosemary and wounding Carl with a bullet in his head. At this point, the pattern began - the killing of women with long, brown, flowing hair. One month later, in November of 1976, David shot and wounded two teenage girls walking home from the bus - Donna DeMasi and Joanne Lomino (who was paralyzed by the attack).

In January of 1977, David found another couple in a car, fired two bullets, and killed Christine Freund and wounded John Diel (who would be able to give the police the first real description of the killer). In March, David killed Virginia Voskerichian. The bullet recovered from Virginia's body would provide the match police needed to link all of the killings together.

After the murder of Voskerichian, the police mounted Operation Omega, which would involve more than three-hundred police officers - the largest operation of its kind in New York's history. Within just a few days of the launch of Omega, David killed again. Again, targeting a couple in a car, David killed Valentina Suriani and Alexander Esau. David left his first note after this double murder - previously he had been called the."44 Caliber Killer," now, he was the "Son of Sam."

Dear Captain Joseph Borrelli,

I am deeply hurt by your calling me a wemon hater. I am not. But I am a monster. I am the 'Son of Sam.' I am a little brat. When father Sam gets drunk he gets mean. He beats his family. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. Sam loves to drink blood. 'Go out and kill,' commands father Sam. 'Behind our house some rest. Mostly young -- raped and slaughtered -- their blood drained -- just bones now. Papa Sam keeps me locked in the attic too. I can't get out but I look out the attic window and watch the world go by. I feel like an outsider. I am on a different wavelength then everybody else -- programmed too kill. However, 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! Papa Sam is old now. He needs some blood to preserve his youth. He has had too many heart attacks. 'Ugh, me hoot, it hurts, sonny boy.' I miss my pretty princess most of all. She's resting in our ladies house. But I'll see her soon I am the 'Monster' -- 'Beelzebub' -- the chubby behemouth. I love to hunt. Prowling the streets looking for fair game -- tasty meat. The wemon of Queens are prettyist of all. It must be the water they drink. I live for the hunt -- my life. Blood for papa. Mr. Borrelli, sir, I don't want to kill anymore. No sur, no more but I must, 'honour thy father.' I want to make love to the world. I love people. I don't belong on earth. Return me to yahoos. To the people of Queens, I love you. And I want to wish all of you a happy Easter. May God bless you in this life and in the next. And for now I say goodbye and goodnight.

POLICE: Let me haunt you with these words:

I'll be back! I'll be back! To be interrpreted as - bang, bang, bang, bang ugh!!

Yours in murder Mr. Monster. ().

A few weeks later, David sent another note that ran in the Daily News. It was during his campaign of letter writing that David gave himself away. He wrote a note to Jack Cassara (his old landlord) from Sam and Francis Carr (who had never met or known Jack), sympathizing about Jack's falling off of a roof (which never happened). Intrigued the Cassaras found the Carrs who contacted the police and the link was established (but not until after his last murder) - David Berkowitz was the Son of Sam. But, before he would be caught, David shot and wounded Salvatore Lupo and Judy Placido as they left a disco. His last killing, however, would come a month after the one-year anniversary of his rampage - David approached Stacy Moskowitz who was in a car with her boyfriend Bobby Violante, fired twice into the car, killing Stacy and blinding Bobby. This time, there was an eye witness to the murder. With all the pieces in place, the police finally determined that David Berkowitz was the killer. When caught, David immediately and without hesitation confessed to all of the murders.

People like David Berkowitz have been part of our human society since humanity began. Thomas Hobbes observed that communities form for the purpose of mutual protection and that they are a refuge from the Wild. For people like David Berkowitz, communities are, in essence, the wild and their psychopathology is the protection from that. The problem, however, is that the psychology of murder is one that cannot truly prevent such people from becoming murderers, it can only explain them once the horror has happened. David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, terrorized a community that he had perceived as rejecting him. He retreated into a world of delusion, of fantasy, and of fear of the supernatural. Once in that world, he rationalized the destruction of human life and carried out his murders with the calmness and purposefulness of a mail carrier delivering a package. "I wasn't going to rob her, or touch her, or rape her. I was just going to kill her" (Berkowitz quoted in Chelser & Robb, 1996). What psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists have determined about people like David Berkowitz, is that they almost universally suffer from significant psychological breaks, traumas often suffered in childhood, that have changed the very nature of their thought process and moral structure.

The first use of psychology in the solution and prosecution of a murder case was in 1924, in the Leopold and Loeb case. A strict Freudian analysis was used in the case, and caused a great level of concern as to its accuracy, applicability, and appropriateness in the case.

The Freudian testimony during the trial lasted over a month and created thousands of pages of transcripts. Some testimony bordered on the ridiculous, especially when great meaning was attached to a childhood picture of Loeb dressed as a cowboy. The laundry list of potential "root causes" for the murder put forth by the Freudians ranged from Leopold being taunted in childhood by other boys to Loeb's relationship with his governess. Darrow's autobiography clearly indicates he believed the Freudian opinion offered at the trial was valid scientific evidence. Interestingly, Darrow believed of all the speculations given for the murder, the primary cause was that Loeb read detective stories as a boy. Darrow appears not to have considered the parsimonious explanation that Leopold and Loeb were simply "two rich kids who tried to get away with murder." Cleary Darrow uncritically accepted information (i.e., Freudian theory) as long as it was consistent with his preexisting viewpoint (Rinolo, 2002).

What the lawyers in the Leopold and Loeb case discovered was that the psychological findings against and for defendants when taken without question as absolute fact could change the course of a case. The legacy of the Leopold and Loeb prosecution has been that psychology as a courtroom tool has proven its ability to both free and damn a defendant. Initially, some attempt was made by the defense in the Berkowitz trial to paint him as being mentally unfit for trial. But, after a court-appointed psychiatrist evaluated David, and found him fit, the psychological defense was dropped entirely.

But, even when psychological findings do not determine that a person was insane when committing murder, that finding does not mean that the person committing the murder is mentally healthy.

In fact, there is some healthy skepticism about the use of psychology / psychiatry as the basis of fact in a case regarding a person's relative sanity. There is the problem of the definition of "criminally insane." Most psychology employed in courtrooms is based in part if not wholly upon a Freudian model.

Freudian analysis deserves critical scrutiny because it (a) only offers a highly speculative after-the-fact explanation of behavior (e.g., why Leopold and Loeb killed), and (b) relies upon such non-scientific techniques as free association and dream analysis. What may strike some skeptics about a Freudian analysis is its resemblance to a psychic cold reading. Both search for after-the-fact explanations using scientifically invalid techniques, both typically provide a laundry list of possibilities, both typically provide unfalsifiable information, and both are often uncritically accepted by clients. Since both psychics and psychoanalysts merely speculate, should either be allowed to testify in the courtroom as an expert where opinion can be perceived as fact? (Riniolo, 2002).

Among those who commit serial murders, there is a commonality of psychology that is shared by David Berkowitz. "A review of the literature indicates that fantasy rehearsal of murderous and sadistic acts is commonly reported in this group [and] stresses the importance of examining environmental factors that could elicit and control violent behavior (Gresswell & Hollin, 1994)." According to research, David Berkowitz indeed does fall under the category of multiple murder known commonly as Serial Murder. Gresswell & Hollin (1994), offer this description of what characterizes a multiple murder:

1) there are at least two murders; (2) there is no relationship between perpetrator and victim; (3) the murders are committed at different times and have no direct connection to previous or subsequent murders; (4) the murders often occur at a different location; (5) the murders were not committed for material gain, but are usually either compulsive acts, or are aimed at gratification of needs which have been developed through fantasy; (6) subsequent victims have characteristics in common with earlier or later victims