Son of Sam        David Berkowitz

   By Kailee Barnes

                  Crime+ Killed 6 people, injured several others+ Series of eight shootings that terrorized NYC 1976-1977+ Also known as the .44 Caliber Killer

     Why?+ Berkowitz claimed that he was commanded to kill by a demon who had possessed his neighbor's dog.+ From a young age, Berkowitz had an infatuation with petty larceny and pyromania.+ Was adopted- his biological mother had died giving birth to him. He was afraid his biological father would come into his room at night and kill him for revenge. Sources claim his violent thoughts were inspired by horror films.

    Location+ New Jersey+ Queens, New York+ Bronx, New York

    Victims+ Donna Lauria- July 29, 1976 + Christine Freund- Jan. 30th, 1977+ Virginia Voskerichian- March 8, 1977+ Valentina Suriani- April 16, 1977 + Alexander Esau- April 17, 1977+ Stacy Moskowitz- Aug. 1, 1977

    + Targets were mainly adolescent females with           long dark hair or young couples parked         on "lover's lane".

     How He Was Caught+ Operation Omega-  Group comprised of over 200 detectives in persute of Berkowitz. + Arrested August 10th, 1977- Put on a macabre grin and said "You finally got me".

    Mental Illness?+ Berkowitz had left letters to the police. After an analysis of the letters psychiatrists suspected that he may have had paranoid schizophrenia.

     Sentence+ Originally at Attica Prison     + Six life sentenes at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, N.Y.

    Article+David Berkowitz is the serial killer known as the Son of Sam. Arrested in the summer of 1977, Mr. Berkowitz terrorized New Yorkers during a yearlong string of shootings in which he killed six people and wounded seven others in New York City. Part of what separated Son of Sam from many other serial killers was the way he communicated with the public through apocalyptic, taunting letters sent to detectives and reporters. He created his own pseudonym and prowled the streets at night, targeting young, brown-haired women.Mr. Berkowitz, then a 24-year-old postal worker living in Yonkers, was arrested after detectives traced a parking ticket left near the scene of his last attack. From his subsequent confession emerged the portrait of a deeply disturbed loner, a man with a .44-caliber handgun who said he took orders from a demonic black Labrador retriever owned by a neighbor.Mr. Berkowitz is serving a 300-odd year sentence — he pled guilty at his 1978 trial — at the maximum-security Sullivan Correctional Facility in upstate New York. He was denied parole in 2002.In the years Mr. Berkowitz has been serving his sentence, he has attracted an array of individuals from outside prison who, though they deplore his murderous past, have become friends and acquaintances. Made up primarily of evangelical Christians, who have been moved by Mr. Berkowitz's story of becoming a born-again Christian 23 years ago, many of them have sought to publicize his account of redemption.But some of those connected to the Son of Sam case express deep doubt about whether Mr. Berkowitz is truly a born-again Christian or whether he is just using religion to present himself as a changed man.     +http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/b/david_berkowitz/index.html

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