David Richard Berkowitz (born Richard David Falco; June 1, 1953), known also as the Son of Sam is a Yonkers, New York murderer who was convicted of eight separate shooting attacks that began in New York City during the summer of 1976.
The crimes were perpetrated with a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver. He killed six people and wounded seven others by July 1977.
As the number of victims increased, David Berkowitz eluded the biggest police manhunt in the history of New York City while leaving letters that mocked the police and promised further crimes, which were highly publicized by the press.
The killing spree terrorized New Yorkers and achieved worldwide notoriety.
On the evening of August 10, 1977, David Berkowitz was taken into custody by New York City police homicide detectives in front of his Yonkers apartment building, and he was subsequently indicted for eight shooting incidents.
He confessed to all of them, and claimed to have been obeying the orders of a demon, manifested in the form of a dog "Harvey" who belonged to his neighbor "Sam".
Despite his explanation, Berkowitz was found mentally competent to stand trial.
He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was incarcerated in state prison.
In the course of further police investigation, David Berkowitz was also implicated in many unsolved arsons in the city.
Intense coverage of the case by the media lent a kind of celebrity status to David Berkowitz, and some observers noted that he seemed to enjoy it.
In response, the New York State legislature enacted new legal statutes, known popularly as "Son of Sam laws", designed to keep criminals from profiting financially from the publicity created by their crimes
David Berkowitz has been imprisoned since his arrest and is serving six consecutive life sentences.
During the mid-1990s, he amended his confession to claim that he had been a member of a violent Satanic cult that orchestrated the incidents as ritual murder.
He remains the only person ever charged with the shootings, yet some law enforcement authorities have questioned whether David Berkowitz's claims are credible.
During 1979, there was an attempt on David Berkowitz's life in which the left side of his neck was slashed from front to back, a wound that required more than fifty stitches to close.
During 1987, David Berkowitz became an evangelical Christian in prison.
According to his personal testimony, his moment of conversion occurred after reading Psalm 34:6 from a Bible given to him by a fellow inmate. He says he is no longer to be referred to as the "Son of Sam" but the "Son of Hope"
David Berkowitz stays involved with prison ministry and regularly counsels troubled inmates.
David Berkowitz began to claim that he had joined a Satanic cult during the spring of 1975. He had met some of its members at a party, and initially thought the group was involved only in occult activities such as séances and fortune telling; the group, however, gradually introduced him to drug use, sadism, crime and murder. David Berkowitz states that he knew roughly two dozen core members in New York
David Berkowitz did name two of the cult members: John and Michael Carr.
The two men were sons of the dog-owner Sam Carr and lived on nearby Warburton Avenue.
Both of these other "sons of Sam" were long dead: John had been killed by a shooting judged a suicide in North Dakota during 1978, and Michael had been in a fatal car accident during 1979.
David Berkowitz claimed that the actual perpetrator of one shooting was John Carr, and added that a Yonkers police officer, also a cult member, was involved with this crime.
The Son of Sam case was reopened by Yonkers police during 1996, but no new charges were filed
Due to a lack of findings, the investigation was eventually suspended but remains unclosed.
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