David Richard Berkowitz (born Richard David Falco; June 1, 1953), also known as the Son of Sam, the .44 Caliber Killer and the Phantom of the Bronx, is an American serial killer, serial arsonist, and former United States Army soldier who committed a stabbing and a series of shootings in New York City between 1975 and 1977, killing six people and wounding eleven others. Armed with a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver during most of his crimes, Berkowitz terrorized New York City with letters mocking police and promising further crimes, leading to possibly the biggest manhunt in the city's history.
With a parking ticket proving a vital clue to finding him, Berkowitz was arrested on August 10, 1977, and subsequently indicted for eight shootings. He confessed to all of them and initially claimed to have been obeying the orders of a demon manifested in the form of a black dog named "Sam", which belonged to his neighbor. After being found mentally competent to stand trial, Berkowitz pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to six concurrent life sentences with the possibility of parole after twenty-five years. He subsequently admitted the dog-and-devil story was a hoax. In police investigations, he was also implicated in many unsolved arsons in the city.
Intense media coverage of the case lent a kind of celebrity status to Berkowitz, which many observers noted he seemed to enjoy. The New York State Legislature enacted new statutes – known popularly as "Son of Sam laws" – designed to keep criminals from financially profiting from the publicity created by their crimes. The statutes have remained in New York despite various legal challenges, and similar laws have been enacted in several other states. During the mid-1990s, Berkowitz, by then professing to be a converted evangelical Christian, amended his confession to claim he had been a member of a violent Satanic cult that orchestrated the incidents as ritual murder. A new investigation of the murders began in 1996 but was suspended indefinitely after inconclusive findings.
David Berkowitz was born Richard David Falco on June 1, 1953, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Within a few days of his birth, his biological mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Broder, gave the child up for adoption. Broder had grown up as part of an impoverished family and was working as a waitress at the time of Berkowitz's birth. In 1936 she had married Tony Falco, an Italian American. After a marriage of less than four years, Falco left her for another woman. Although Broder was married to Falco, Berkowitz's biological father was Joseph Kleinman, a married businessman who, like Berkowitz's mother, was Jewish.
The infant Richard was adopted by Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz of the Bronx. The couple were Jewish hardware store retailers of modest means, and childless in middle age. They reversed the order of the boy's first and middle names and gave him their own surname, raising the young David Richard Berkowitz as their only child. As a child, Berkowitz was frequently bullied for being Jewish, as well as for his "chubbiness".
Journalist John Vincent Sanders wrote that Berkowitz's childhood was "somewhat troubled". Although of above-average intelligence, he lost interest in his education at an early age and became infatuated with petty larceny and starting fires. He also suffered head injuries as a child. Neighbors and relatives later recalled Berkowitz as difficult, spoiled and a bully. His adoptive parents consulted at least one psychotherapist due to his misbehavior, but his actions never resulted in a legal intervention or serious mention in school records. He attended Public School #123, Public School #77 and Christopher Columbus High School, the latter from which he graduated in 1971.
When Berkowitz was aged 14, his adoptive mother died of breast cancer, and his home life became strained due to conflict with his adoptive father's second wife. While attending high school and college, he lived with his father in a four-and-a-half-room apartment at 170 Dreiser Loop in Co-op City. Following his graduation from high school, Berkowitz joined the United States Army; he was subsequently stationed at Fort Knox in the United States and with an infantry division in South Korea.
After an honorable military discharge in June 1974, Berkowitz located his birth mother. After a few visits, she disclosed the details of his birth; these greatly disturbed Berkowitz, particularly with regard to the array of reluctant father figures in his life. Forensic anthropologist Elliott Leyton later described Berkowitz's discovery of his birth details as the "primary crisis" of his life, a revelation that shattered his sense of identity. His communication with his birth mother later lapsed, but for a time he remained in communication with his adoptive sister Roslyn.
Berkowitz attended Bronx Community College for one year, enrolling in the spring of 1975. In 1976, he went to work as a driver for the Co-Op City Taxi Company. He subsequently had several non-professional jobs, and at the time of his arrest was working as a letter sorter for the United States Postal Service.
Beginning of crimes (late 1975 to early 1977)
During the mid-1970s, Berkowitz began committing violent crimes. He bungled his first attempt at murder using a knife, then switched to a handgun and began a lengthy crime spree throughout the New York City boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, seeking young female victims. All but one of the crime scenes involved two victims; he infamously committed some of his attacks while the women sat with boyfriends in parked cars. Berkowitz exhibited an enduring enjoyment of his activities, often returning to the scenes of his crimes.
Forman stabbing (December 1975)
Berkowitz claimed to have committed his first attack on Christmas Eve 1975, when he was twenty-two years old, using a hunting knife to stab two women in Co-op City. The first alleged victim, a Hispanic woman, was never identified by police. The second was fifteen-year-old Michelle Forman, a sophomore at Truman High School, whom he stabbed six times on a bridge near Dreiser Loop and whose injuries were serious enough for her to be hospitalized for a week. The two stabbings occurred within several minutes of each other. Berkowitz was not suspected of these crimes, and soon afterward he relocated to an apartment in Yonkers.
Wendy Savino shooting (April 1976)
The first shooting attributed to Berkowitz occurred around 11:00 PM on April 9, 1976, in the parking lot of Nina's Restaurant at 3372 Boston Road in the Bronx. Wendy Savino, 38, was getting into her car when a man approached and fired five shots at point blank range, laughing as he did so. She pretended to be dead as the man fled the scene, and while severely wounded in her face, back, arm, chest and right eye, she managed to survive the shooting. She later described the man as "about 30 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall and wearing a black leather jacket".
Her shooting would not be officially linked to the later Son of Sam attacks until 2024. In the words of now retired NYPD homicide detective Robert Klein, "It is the opinion of the investigators of the Bronx homicide squad and the Bronx District Attorney's office that David Berkowitz is responsible for the shooting of Wendy Savino".
Lauria and Valenti shooting (July 1976)
The next shooting attributed to Berkowitz occurred in the Pelham Bay neighborhood of the Bronx. At about 1:10 a.m. on July 29, 1976, Donna Lauria (18), an emergency medical technician, and her friend Jody Valenti (19), a nurse, were sitting in Valenti's double-parked Oldsmobile discussing their evening at Peachtree's, a New Rochelle discotheque. According to Valenti, Lauria opened the car door to leave and noticed a man quickly approaching, carrying a paper bag. Startled and angered by his sudden appearance, Lauria said, "Now what is this..." The man produced a gun from the paper bag and crouched. Bracing one elbow on his knee, he aimed his weapon with both hands and fired. Lauria was struck by one bullet that killed her instantly. Valenti was shot in her thigh, and a third bullet missed both women. The shooter turned and quickly walked away.