World's Most Evil Killers - Season 4, Episode 4 - Son of Sam (David Berkowitz) - Full Episode | Forensic Files

- MALE NARRATOR: 29th of July, 1976. New York, USA. 18-year-old Donna Lauria and her 19-year-old friend, Jody Valenti
had returned home after a night out. As they sat talking outside Donna's apartment,
a man approached and fired five times into their car. - [gunshots] - DR. YARDLEY: They represented everything that he hated,
everything he resented. They were people with, uh, their lives ahead of them. They were out having fun.
- NARRATOR: Donna died instantly, and Jody was seriously wounded. The gunman was 23-year-old David Berkowitz,
a delusional loner who christened himself the Son of Sam. He took five more young lives in just a year.
- BRIAN: Some people called it the Summer of Sam. It captivated everyone. It created fear.
The frenzy of activity was like nothing I'd ever seen. - GEOFFREY: People genuinely were afraid to go out.
You cannot overestimate or exaggerate just how much that fear gripped the city. - NARRATOR: The killings prompted the largest
police manhunt that the city had ever seen. - What he did to those families that have been devastated
and never got over what happened to their children. Bad times. It was bad times.
- NARRATOR: Berkowitz was a serial killer who had an obsession with the occult. He murdered and maimed 13 young people in just over a year,
spreading panic across the city that never sleeps. That makes David Berkowitz one of the world's most evil killers.
- ♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: 17th of April, 1977, New York. When courting couple Valentina Suriani and Alexander Esau were
shot dead, a letter to the chief of police from their killer, Son of Sam, was left at the crime scene.
With five young people now murdered, detectives knew they had a serial killer on the loose.
A wave of fear descended on the city, as former reporter Brian Kates remembers. - These series of shootings really did grip the city.
People avoided going out late. This was a time of sex, drugs, and disco. And many of these shootings were involved
in lovers' lanes and around discos. So you began to sense this growing fear, particularly among young women.
People could talk about nothing else. - NARRATOR: The fear of Son of Sam was fueled
by a battling press hungry for the latest scoop on one of the biggest-ever stories to hit the city.
- I was in New York in the 1970s. And the crimes literally hypnotized the city. They were everyday tabloid headlines.
Uh, Son of Sam terrorizes, people afraid in Queens, Brooklyn, and in the Bronx. It was as though the city was afraid to take a breath.
It literally grabbed the imagination of New York. - NARRATOR: At the height of the killings,
New York City Police Department had 75 detectives and 225 patrolmen working to hunt down the killer.
A former detective on the case, Bill Gardella, remembers how the hysteria even led to women changing how they looked.
- Once it was determined that he was targeting young females and, like, maybe by coincidence, they had long, brown hair,
women were going to the beauty salons buying wigs, blonde wigs, or dyeing their hair.
No case can match the frenzy and the fear of the Son of Sam killings. - NARRATOR: At a time when New York
was the murder capital of the US, even Berkowitz's killings left an indelible mark
on the place known as Fear City. - DR. YARDLEY: If you think of the time that this happened,
women's liberation, rights for women. But all of that freedom, all of those liberties,
were suddenly curtailed because there was this monster on the loose. - NARRATOR: This killer's story begins
on the 1st of June, 1953, New York. David Berkowitz arrived into the world under the name of Richard David Falco.
He was born out of an affair between his biological mother, Betty, and a married Long Island businessman called Joseph.
- BRIAN: She became pregnant. He essentially said that he would not adopt the child.
He would have nothing to do with the child. And, uh, David was given up for adoption.
- NARRATOR: He was adopted by Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz. They renamed him David.
- DR. YARDLEY: They were a middle-aged couple, Jewish, working class, and they had no children.
So I think this was a family which was set up for happiness, really. You have this childless couple.
You have this baby that needs a home. - NARRATOR: At the age of seven, David learned the hidden truth
through a slip of the tongue. - DR. YARDLEY: He heard the word "adopted" from his adoptive father.
And they had to explain to him what that, uh, meant. - GEOFFREY: I think that probably made David
very, very uncomfortable. I don't think he could...grasp it. - NARRATOR: Soon, the happy-go-lucky child
became disruptive and difficult. - BRIAN: At one point, I understand they enlisted
the help of a therapist or a psychologist to deal with his disciplinary problems both at home and in school.
- DR. YARDLEY: Berkowitz never really gets along with his peers. He doesn't form particularly healthy relationships with them.
He's a kid who always flies off the handle. He has poor behavioral control. So he becomes increasingly isolated.
- NARRATOR: But at the age of 14, Berkowitz's world fell apart. - DR. YARDLEY: His adoptive mother dies from cancer.
And he's facing a loss here. But I think the culture at that time was still very much, "We don't talk about our feelings,"
so this would not have been a helpful thing for him. - A few years later, his father remarried.
David was not happy about that. It made him angry. And this is where we begin to see
the growth in real rage in his personality. - NARRATOR: On the 23rd of June, 1971, at the age of 18,
Berkowitz joined the Army to escape the strains of home. Here, he learned to use weapons, including the M16 rifle,
and trained as a sharpshooter. Whilst he was serving, he chillingly wrote in a letter home to a friend,
"All of these courses will come in handy one day." He cryptically ended his letter by writing,
"One day, there will be a better world." - GEOFFREY: Berkowitz wrote saying, "I've learned things in the Army, and I'm gonna use them."
Well, it may be a bit of bluster, but maybe also a horrifying first note in what would become a desperately criminal career.
- NARRATOR: After three years, Berkowitz decided the Army wasn't for him. So in June 1974, at the age of 21, he returned home.
But his father soon left New York when his hardware store was robbed, leaving his son alone in the city.
Berkowitz had dreams of becoming a firefighter, but instead had to settle for low-paid security work.
The night shifts provided endless hours for him to ruminate. - Berkowitz already sees himself as an outsider.
But he's not settled. He feels hurt. He knows he's a loner. He knows he can't relate very well to other people.
- So this is when he starts to become quite dangerous. - NARRATOR: Feeling increasingly isolated,
Berkowitz decided to track down his biological mother, Betty. He found her and sent her a poem on May the 11th, 1975,
Mother's Day. Betty was over the moon to hear from her long-lost son, and they arranged to meet.
- BRIAN: She's delighted to see him. And they have this wonderful reunion, apparently.
And they continue to meet. And they had this kind of loving relationship. - NARRATOR: But soon, the love for his newfound mother
would sour. - BRIAN: He meets his half-sister. This was the child that his mother didn't give away.
And he realizes that he was a throwaway child, and there's this other child that's been loved all this time by his mother.
And he becomes furious. - NARRATOR: It's believed this rejection by his mother as a child was the genesis of Berkowitz's hatred for women.
Once again, isolated and alone with his paranoid thoughts, he wrote to his father.
"Dad, the world is getting dark now," he said. "The people, they are developing a hatred for me."
- DR. YARDLEY: So what he's doing in this letter is presenting himself as the victim, saying, "Poor me,
I have this horrible life now." And he's essentially saying to his adoptive father,
"It's your fault because you left me." - GEOFFREY: I'm sure at that point, he is building yet more fantasies that he's been
rejected, not just by the world, but by women. - NARRATOR: That November in 1975,
Berkowitz spent a month in isolation in his apartment. He nailed blankets over the windows
and scrawled dark ramblings on the walls. "In this hole lives the wicked king," he wrote.
"Kill for my master" was another. - DR. YARDLEY: I think this was attention-seeking behavior.
And he gets very frustrated that nobody comes to check up on him. I think there's a kind of sense of entitlement there,
that, "Other people should be looking after me." - NARRATOR: On December the 24th, Christmas Eve,
a delusional David Berkowitz decided to make his scrawlings about killing a reality.
He'd left his self-imposed exile armed with a hunting knife. He wanted to seek out revenge for the rejection
by his birth mother. Now the ex-soldier was on a mission to kill. - BILL: He was in the area of Yonkers.
And he had a knife with him. And he walked up to a young lady, started stabbing her.
She screamed. Left, went a couple blocks away, and started stabbing another lady.
She screamed, and he left. Only one of those two ladies reported it. - DR. YARDLEY: I think the timing
is really significant here, because Christmas, it's a family time. And I think it's when Berkowitz is feeling the most resentful
towards people who have things that he doesn't. I think the thing that he would've come away with is,
I enjoyed that. I liked harming them. But I didn't achieve the outcome that I wanted,
and that was to kill them. - NARRATOR: That evening, Berkowitz reflected on his failure.
In the coming months, he would try a change of tack. - BRIAN: David Berkowitz, to the people who knew him,
was this kind of puzzle of many pieces. And many of the pieces didn't fit. So that there were some that saw this happy-go-lucky,
slightly shy, helpful young man, and others who saw this angry edge. - NARRATOR: Berkowitz developed an angst-ridden obsession
with one of his neighbors, retiree Sam Carr. - DR. YARDLEY: His neighbor's dog, Harvey,
barks during the night. And he finds this really annoying. And he will ruminate about this.
He dwells on it. - NARRATOR: On May the 13th, things came to a head when Berkowitz threw a petrol bomb into Sam's backyard.
Scared for his life, Sam reported it to the police. But they couldn't find the attacker.
Meanwhile, Berkowitz continued his reign of terror, setting fires in nearby apartment buildings.
- DR. YARDLEY: When we look at young people who engage in this kind of behavior,
fire-setting is a way of them maintaining control. It's an externalization. They have these feelings.
They want to do something with those feelings. And rather than turning it in on themselves,
they turn it outward, to start harming other people and other things. - NARRATOR: Soon the world would know of David Berkowitz.
After his knife attacks failed, Berkowitz decided on a different weapon of attack.
He illegally bought a gun that he could use with cold, calculating precision, a Bulldog .44-caliber revolver.
On Thursday, July the 29th, Berkowitz was stalking the streets of the Bronx. - BILL: David Berkowitz was driving in the street,
looking for his next victims. - NARRATOR: 18-year-old Donna Lauria and her 19-year-old friend, Jody,
had been out playing backgammon at a local bar. They'd returned home, and were sitting in their car
outside Donna's apartment. - GEOFFREY: They are chatting to one another when all of a sudden, out of the blue, out of nowhere,
the passenger-side window explodes. And what's happened is that Berkowitz has gone into
a firing position, extended the gun with both hands, and fired five times into the car.
- [gunshots] - NARRATOR: Donna was fatally wounded in the neck. Her friend, Jody, was shot in the thigh.
Berkowitz fled as Donna's father, having heard gunfire, rushed down from his apartment to the scene.
But nothing could be done to save his daughter. - BILL: It turned out that the bullet recovered was
a .44 bullet from a Bulldog revolver, which was a rare gun. David Berkowitz said that when he left that scene,
he sang a song on the way home, because the demons had told him to go out and kill, and he killed.
- DR. YARDLEY: I think he quite enjoyed that high, that kind of elevated sense of status
of taking someone else's life. He's targeting young people who are happy, people who have their whole lives ahead of them.
And he feels, "Actually, I'm entitled to take that away from them because they don't deserve it and I do."
- NARRATOR: The police were puzzled at the motive for the shooting and wrote it off as a botched mafia hit.
Berkowitz was disappointed that his first killing didn't create headlines in the press, as he later revealed to the police.
- BILL: After that first murder, in August of 1976, David Berkowitz was at the Westchester County Mall.
And he said nobody recognizes him, as if somebody should know who he is. And he says, "I wish I had a machine gun."
- NARRATOR: In an attempt to gain the recognition he so desperately craved, three months later, on the 23rd of October, 1976,
David Berkowitz struck again. This time he targeted a couple on a date in the nearby borough
of Queens, in a so-called lovers' lane. - An individual by the name of Carl Denaro is parked
with his girlfriend, sitting in a car at night. And he's sitting in the passenger's side.
And Carl Denaro has long hair. It's believed that Berkowitz thought Denaro was a girl.
- NARRATOR: Berkowitz shot into their car, hitting 20-year-old Carl in the head.
To Berkowitz's disappointment, Carl survived, and his date, Rosemary, was unscathed.
A month later, he stalked the streets of Queens looking for more victims. In the early hours of the 27th of November,
he found 16-year-old Donna DeMasi and 18-year-old Joanne Lomino sitting on a step.
- BILL: He then walks over, says a few words, and shoots, and flees the scene. Miss DeMasi survived.
Miss Lomino is confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Devastating injury.
- NARRATOR: Berkowitz had once more failed in his quest to kill again. But his time would come in the new year of 1977,
on January the 30th. 26-year-old Christine Freund was on a date with her fiancé,
30-year-old John Diel, when Berkowitz spotted them. - BILL: He parks not far from where that couple was.
And he observes a Christine Freund sitting in a car with her fiancé. Runs up to the car and shoots Christine Freund,
killing her. - [gunshot] - BILL: Instantly. - NARRATOR: Christine was shot in the temple and in the neck.
Her fiancé, John, ran to get help, but Christine was later pronounced dead in the hospital.
The young lovers were about to tell their parents about their engagement before Berkowitz took Christine's life
in his second fatal shooting. - None of the Berkowitz shootings were seen as particularly unusual until, uh, the murder of Christine Freund.
And here, for the first time, police said that they saw some connection between this shooting and previous shootings.
Now we begin to see that there might be something more than a series of isolated shootings.
- NARRATOR: Three days after Christine's killing, a 16-man homicide task force was established
by the New York City Police Department. A pattern was emerging of a killer who had a hatred for women.
Just like his stabbing victims, Berkowitz was targeting females with long, dark hair.
- BRIAN: They were in lovers' lanes, around discos. Berkowitz clearly had problems with women.
He said later that he saw his mother sitting in those cars when he shot the girls.
- NARRATOR: A pattern was also emerging of the killer's fascination for a particular location, lovers' lanes.
It is believed that Berkowitz was a virgin. - GEOFFREY: There could be a voyeuristic element--
"I've never had sex myself, "and I bet they're about to have sex, and I want to see what it's like."
I do believe that there may have been an element of trying to destroy his mother.
What is clear is he's completely off the wall. - NARRATOR: Berkowitz had now shot six people
and killed two women. Barely a month later, on March the 8th, he was back out on the streets of Forest Hills, Queens.
The brazen killer was now gaining in confidence. This time, he chose early evening and a lone victim.
- BILL: College student Virginia Voskerichian is walking down the street. The time of 7:30 is much earlier than the previous incidents.
She's walking down the street and the assailant is approaching her. She sees him pull out a gun,
and she puts her books in front of her head. And he shoots through the books and kills her instantly.
- NARRATOR: Once again, Berkowitz fled the scene, even saying hello to a passerby.
- DR. YARDLEY: So when we look at Virginia, his third murder victim, he's starting to increase
in confidence now. He feels quite invincible. He feels kind of elated. He attacks her in the middle of the street
because he feels untouchable. He feels like he can get away with it. - GEOFFREY: What was it that made him
change his modus operandi? I think he just felt like experimenting. He's been in this state of collapse, if you like,
this fugue of horror, this terror reign for 15 months. - NARRATOR: A single bullet from Berkowitz's
.44 Bulldog revolver had penetrated 20-year-old Virginia's skull. When pathologists removed it,
it confirmed the police's suspicions that they had a serial killer on their hands.
- They did a forensic comparison and found that the same gun used on the Freund shooting
was used in the Voskerichian shooting. - NARRATOR: Two days after Virginia's murder,
New York City police commissioner Michael Codd held a press conference. He told reporters that they were on the hunt
for a serial shooter. - BRIAN: He announced that the bullet was a .44-caliber bullet,
that it was fired from a Charter Arms Bulldog revolver, and that it was linked to at least three killings.
And for the first time now, we see officially that all these shootings are linked.
- NARRATOR: For serial killer David Berkowitz, his murders now made the headlines that he so craved.
- For the first time, we had a name for the killer, the .44-Caliber Killer. It was a perfect tabloid headline.
And any time there was a shooting with young people involved, reporters went scrambling to find the story.
Now the city is in Berkowitz's palm. He's got the city now where he wants it. He's accomplished what he wants to do,
which is to have the city in total fear of him. - NARRATOR: Even though he'd taken three innocent lives,
the killing wouldn't stop. Berkowitz enjoyed the drama that was unfolding. He watched the news and took clippings
about his killings as trophies. New York's number-one news story was now spreading fear in the city.
- BRIAN: People read the story. Girls begin to worry. Parents wouldn't let their kids out for late-night dates.
People began to see a pattern in these shootings that the victims were pretty young women with long, brown hair.
Girls began cutting their hair, dyeing it blonde. There was an overall growing sense of fear.
- NARRATOR: The NYPD's Omega task force now investigating the shootings was boosted from 16 to a 30-strong team.
But Berkowitz wanted to make an even bigger splash across the newspapers. Barely a month after being christened
the .44-Caliber Killer, he would strike again. But this time, his hunting ground was the Bronx.
- BILL: On April 17, 1977, Valentina Suriani and Alexander Esau, at 3:00 AM in the morning, were parked in a car,
when the assailant came up to the car, put his hand on the hood, and fired through the front windows.
- NARRATOR: 18-year-old aspiring actress Valentina died within a minute of the attack.
Her 20-year-old boyfriend, Alexander, died two hours later in the hospital. Berkowitz had successfully fled once again.
But this time, he had a surprise in store. - BRIAN: They found a letter that had been left by the killer
for Detective Joseph Borelli, the, uh, Omega task force leader. And the killer complained that
he had been referred to as a woman hater. And he was angry about that. - NARRATOR: Despite this, Berkowtiz stated in the letter,
"I love to hunt, prowling the streets, "looking for fair game, tasty meat. The women of Queens are prettiest of all."
For the police's psychological profilers, they were convinced this message revealed his motive was a hatred of women.
- BILL: What was interesting about the note, the spelling was good, but he always spelled the word "women" incorrectly.
He would spell it W-E-M-O-N. If you change the "w" to a "d," it would have "demon."
Now, whether in his mind women were demons or what have you-- but he was threatening to commit more murders
as a result of that note. - DR. YARDLEY: He's wanting recognition. He's wanting attention now for the things that he's done.
But he's also saying things like, "I don't belong on this earth." In other words, I am better than everybody else.
- NARRATOR: Chillingly, one of Berkowitz's last lines of his letter to Captain Borelli warned,
"I don't want to kill anymore. "No, sir, no more. But I must honor thy father." Most disturbing of all was the name he signed off as,
Son of Sam. - BRIAN: It was the first time we had any mention of this name, the Son of Sam.
And immediately his moniker changed from the .44-Caliber Killer to the Son of Sam.
And no one at that time really had any clue of exactly what that meant. - DR. YARDLEY: He wants that brand, that identity.
You can see that this is someone who thinks very highly of himself. And he's quite disappointed, I think, that he hasn't had that
recognition that he feels he deserves. - NARRATOR: What the press and public didn't know is that
the Sam Berkowitz was referring to was, in fact, his neighbor, Sam Carr. Berkowitz was also sending this same neighbor threatening
anonymous letters about his Labrador, Harvey. - GEOFFREY: He's disintegrating in front of his own eyes,
let alone anybody else's. He's living alone. He's obsessed by the fact that his neighbor's dog
is barking all night. - NARRATOR: Berkowitz's torment came to a head on the foggy morning of April the 27th,
when the ex-soldier shot Harvey the dog from his apartment block with a .22-caliber rifle.
- GEOFFREY: This is a man falling apart literally. He's convinced that he's hearing voices, that his neighbor, Sam,
is influencing him, and that the dog is sending him messages that he must commit demonic acts.
- NARRATOR: Luckily Harvey was not seriously injured. And with no clear view of the shooter,
the police had little to go on. A month later, at the end of May, Berkowitz crafted another taunting, cryptic letter,
this time to "Daily News" columnist Jimmy Breslin. - BRIAN: Jimmy Breslin was the top columnist in New York.
So, if Berkowitz wanted publicity and wanted to find someone who could take his story to the people
and whose story would then be read, Jimmy Breslin was the man to do it. - NARRATOR: In the letter, Berkowitz told Jimmy,
"Sam's a thirsty lad. "And he won't let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood."
- BRIAN: The city room was flooded with police officers. And then, for the first time,
the "Daily News" wasn't simply reporting the story. The "Daily News" was the story.
- NARRATOR: Son of Sam's letter confessed to the murder of his first victim, 18-year-old Donna Lauria.
And he asked Jimmy Breslin to celebrate the anniversary of her killing. - BRIAN: This prompted outrage among everyone.
So we had, in that story, not only the infuriating letter that, uh, Berkowtiz had written, saying that Donna Lauria
was a wonderful girl and she should be memorialized, but also her family's reaction to that.
Uh, their anger, their deep, deep sadness and grief, all came out in a single column by Breslin.
- DR. YARDLEY: A lot of people have interpreted this as some kind of affection, some kind of love.
But what it is, it's about ownership and possession and control. And for many serial killers,
the first victim is a very significant one, the first time that they start to feel like they're in control.
So that's why there's an importance attached to her. There was no feelings of affection whatsoever.
- NARRATOR: As newspapers battle for the latest scoops on Son of Sam, Jimmy Breslin's letter was published in the weekend edition
of the "Daily News" to achieve maximum impact. - The letter wasn't published until Sunday,
when the larger circulation would be available. The public release of Berkowitz's letter
to Jimmy Breslin did create a frenzy and a fear in the public and among journalists.
- NARRATOR: The media spotlight on the case resulted in 250 calls a day to the police hotline,
with people reporting suspicions about neighbors, boyfriends, even their husbands.
With the pressure of having to catch a serial shooter on the loose before he struck again,
the NYPD even planted decoy female mannequins in parked cars to try and entrap the killer.
- BILL: I think the biggest challenge was to get him as quickly as possible, because you knew
this wasn't gonna be the last time he was going to kill. That was the pressure that was put upon, I think,
all the investigators at the time, and the fact that you knew that it wasn't gonna end.
- NARRATOR: Sure enough, on June the 26th, Berkowitz struck again, shooting another man and woman in Queens.
Luckily, they escape with minor injuries. But his next attack, just over a month later in Brooklyn,
would whip up a wave of hysteria that New York City had never seen. On the 31st of July,
20-year-old Stacy Moskowitz went out on a date with 20-year-old Robert Violante.
- BILL: That was their first date. And both Robert Violante's parents and Stacy Moskowitz's parents were concerned.
And Stacy and Robert both said to their respective mothers, "He doesn't go after blondes.
He doesn't go after blondes." They felt that was gonna be the case that night. - NARRATOR: After dinner and a movie,
Stacy and Robert headed to a park in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Berkowitz was also cruising in the area,
looking for his next victim. He pulled up close by. - BILL: Berkowitz fired four times into the car
and fled back into the park. Stacy remained in the car, seriously injured. Robert Violante blasted the horn.
He got out, staggered, and was leaning against the light pole. - NARRATOR: Robert was shot twice in the face.
His left eye was shattered, and he was left permanently blind. Stacy was pronounced dead in the hospital 38 hours later.
- BILL: When he struck in Brooklyn, I mean, there was hysteria within the city. "The New York Post" had on the front page,
"No One Is Safe from the Son of Sam" The number of calls that came in to the hotline was overwhelming.
People now felt he could go any place. And he did. - [indistinct chatter] - BRIAN: So the people who thought
that they were safe before no longer had that assurance. Suddenly he was all over the city.
And his victims were changing. So clearly that created a whole new element of fear
that hadn't existed before. - It is the most... horrifying crime. People genuinely were afraid to go out.
You cannot overestimate or exaggerate just how much that fear gripped the city. - NARRATOR: He'd taken six young lives within a year.
And the serial killer was the talk of the town. Berkowitz was relishing in his rising notoriety.
The New York Police Department now had 225 patrolmen and 75 detectives working full time on the case.
Former detective sergeant Bill Gardella was brought in to investigate the latest killing
of 20-year-old Stacy Moskowitz next to a park in Bensonhurst. - BILL: I was awakened in the middle of the night.
They said, "Sarge, it looks like we got a shooting in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. May be the Son of Sam."
I jumped out of bed, got dressed, and drove over to the scene at Bay 17 Street, in the park.
We were then given other detective units in Brooklyn to assist in questioning as many people as we could.
No one was safe. He could strike anywhere. - NARRATOR: Whilst Detective Gardella and his colleagues were
hot on the trail for any leads, New York's rival newspapers were also on the hunt for a scoop on the latest killing.
Former news reporter Brian Kates was sent to the home of Son of Sam's sixth victim, Stacy,
where he met her mother, Neysa. - BRIAN: Neysa Moskowitz was stunned, really, by her daughter's death.
We'd talk about what a beautiful girl her daughter had been. "How could this have happened to us?"
And then she'd fall silent. She looked down at the floor, and then look at the pictures
she had of Stacy and start to cry. Sitting through this experience of grief was very difficult as a reporter.
You have this great sympathy for this family, for this horrible death. - NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Detective Bill Gardella and his team
were on the hunt for witnesses who may have seen her killer. Three days after her murder, on the 3rd of August,
they had a breakthrough. They found a 49-year-old woman who'd been out walking her dog
just minutes before Stacy's shooting. - She observes a male coming in her direction.
And he was carrying something in his hand. "I don't know what it is, but I was upset.
"I was afraid. "I pulled my dog, went back, made a U-turn, "went back into my apartment.
"And a few minutes later, I heard shots. I heard shots." - NARRATOR: This new witness had seen a car being booked by
a patrolling police officer for parking next to a fire hydrant. When detectives checked,
there was no record of any tickets being issued. - BILL: She insisted. "I saw a summons being given out."
We checked a second time. No summonses. We went back. She insisted so much, "We'll give it one more try."
- NARRATOR: Fellow NYPD detective James Justus was sent to meet the patrolling officer on duty that evening to see
if he knew anything about this elusive parking ticket. - JAMES: When I was able to speak to the uniformed officer,
he informed me what had happened, that he had left it in his locker. - BILL: And sure enough, there were four summonses given out,
one of them to a David Berkowitz that lived in Yonkers. That third attempt pick up that summons.
If we didn't make three efforts... we would've not got Berkowitz then. - NARRATOR: Finally, David Berkowitz
came onto the police radar. When Detective James Justus called Yonkers PD, another stroke of luck meant the dispatcher who picked up
the phone was the daughter of Berkowitz's nemesis and neighbor, Sam Carr. - Wheat Carr happened to live with her dad
in an apartment house right behind the apartment house that David Berkowitz lived in.
And she related to me various stories around about Berkowitz and their association with him,
and the problems that they had with him, and the fact that Berkowitz shot their black lab.
- NARRATOR: He was also told about another neighbor who'd been receiving strange letters,
and had recently found a fire burning outside his door. The neighbor suspected Berkowitz was to blame.
- JAMES: The strangeness of what this guy was doing and the fact that he wasn't related to Sam Carr,
but the name Sam was there. And I put this all in a report. My inspector asked me how everything went.
And I said to him, "I got a good feeling we have the guy." - NARRATOR: Two detectives from the Son of Sam investigation
were sent to Berkowitz's apartment on Pine Street, Yonkers. They found his Ford Galaxie parked outside
and cautiously peered in through the window to see if there was any incriminating evidence.
- BILL: They look into the car. And on the floor of the rear of the car, there was a Army duffle bag.
And protruding from the duffle bag-- we thought was a submachine gun, it was a semiautomatic rifle.
- NARRATOR: The detectives found that Berkowitz's car was unlocked. - BILL: They enter the vehicle, and they come up with a letter
addressed to the Suffolk County police chief. The letter stated, "You can't stop me.
I'm coming out." And this was the straw that broke the camel's back, just split the case wide open.
This was the Son of Sam. - NARRATOR: Detective Sergeant Bill Gardella was called
with news of this exciting find. With five of his NYPD team, they rushed over to stake out
Berkowitz's apartment block. Four hours later, at 10:00PM, their patience finally paid off
when the killer approached his car. - I took my gun out, ran down the sidewalk as fast as I could to confront Berkowitz
before he had an opportunity to go for his gun. And I screamed at him, "Police! Don't you go for a gun!"
And he slowly turns his head like this and smiles. Said, "Well," he says, "you got me.
What took you so long?" - DR. YARDLEY: I think he knew that this was coming. He knew he wouldn't be able to get away with it forever.
But this is someone who is very used to being in control. And he remains in control.
He smiles, which I think the police find quite unnerving. - NARRATOR: Once handcuffed and arrested,
on the journey in the police car from Yonkers back to New York City Police headquarters,
serial killer David Berkowitz was ready to indulge in his newfound fame. - BILL: Berkowitz says, "Hey, guys,
"I guess the press is waiting for me "at New York City Police headquarters with their cameras.
Can you do me a favor? Can you comb my hair?" He's gonna serve a life sentence in jail,
he's concerned about his hair. And then when we pulled up to police headquarters,
there were a few people on the street screaming. And I told the captain that was with me, "Cap," I says,
"I want to go in the garage." He said, "Bill, no, let's get our pictures taken."
The mayor was at police headquarters. And that was the end. That was it. - NARRATOR: "New York Daily News" reporter Brian Kates
was on a night shift when he got the news that Son of Sam had finally been arrested.
- BRIAN: Everybody was abuzz with this. There was jubilation in the city. Um, and in fact, there were parties at, uh, bars and clubs,
celebrating the fact that he'd been captured. There was a collective sigh of relief
that the police have got their man and that hopefully the killings were over. - GEOFFREY: There's no question
that Berkowitz would have gone on. He would have killed again and again and again
until he was eventually stopped. The classic serial killer--they don't stop until they're caught.
- NARRATOR: The police have captured Berkowitz just in the nick of time. Using the semiautomatic rifle found in his car that weekend,
the Son of Sam was planning a mass shooting. Detective Sergeant Bill Gardella was one of the first police officers
to search his apartment. - BILL: Any time I speak about his apartment, my body starts to chill,
because it's something that I had never seen before. He had photographs of all the girls he killed on the floor.
He had cut 'em out of the newspapers. And he had holes in the wall. Voices used to come out of those holes
to tell him to go out and kill. And he used to try to stop the voices by hitting the wall.
And then he would write a note next to each of the holes. One of the notes I pretty much committed to memory.
It said, "Hi, my name is Mr. Williams. "I live in this hole. "I'm raising little children to be killers.
I can't wait until they grow up." It just--it was a sight I never forgot. And it's the only thing in my lifetime that,
if I talk about it, I get the chills. - NARRATOR: Strange, satanic symbols were also scrawled
across Berkowitz's walls. During the police interviews that followed, he confessed to carrying out the shootings
and claimed that the devil was talking to him through neighbor Sam Carr's dog, instructing him to kill.
When it came to his trial, psychiatrists were split on whether he was mentally fit to stand.
- DR. YARDLEY: These claims that he was hearing voices, that his neighbor's dog, Harvey, was essentially talking to him,
and this was the voice of a demon, um, I think this is nonsense, to be honest. I think this is just part of his performance
of trying to appear to be insane, 'cause he's been caught now, and he wants to secure the best possible outcome for himself.
And that outcome would always be better if you claim you're not responsible for what you've done.
- NARRATOR: In the end, Berkowitz was deemed fit to stand trial, as it was ruled
he understood the charges against him. But after consulting a priest, Son of Sam had an unexpected surprise up his sleeve.
- BRIAN: His lawyers wanted him to mount an insanity defense and go to trial. Berkowitz determined that he would not do that,
that he would plead guilty, which he did, meaning that there would be no trial. - NARRATOR: On the 12th of June, 1978,
25-year-old David Berkowitz was finally sentenced to a total of 365 years in prison.
- DR. YARDLEY: This is someone who's never, ever going to be released from prison.
And I think he would've gone on to kill more people had he not been arrested. This man is incredibly dangerous.
- NARRATOR: But the name Son of Sam is indelibly marked on the city he terrorized.
- BRIAN: That fear was fueled, of course, by the media. At the time of his last murders, the entire world reported on
the capture of David Berkowitz. That's how far his reach, uh, extended. - He didn't do it for money.
He didn't do it for...sex. He did it because he felt like it, because he wanted to.
And that makes him a very evil man indeed. - NARRATOR: Berkowitz mercilessly gunned down
and killed six young people who were merely out enjoying themselves. He brutally wounded seven others,
leaving them with life-changing injuries. He terrorized a city that's still living
with trauma of his crimes. That's what makes David Berkowitz one of the world's most evil killers.
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David Berkowitz aka the Son of Sam is a serial killer who murdered six people and brutally wounded seven others in the late 60s. When he was arrested, he claimed that the devil made him do it.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

The episode details David Berkowitz's Son of Sam murders and their impact on New York City.

Key points

The Summer of Sam. The killings captivated New York, creating an atmosphere of fear and hysteria.
Berkowitz's First Murder. David Berkowitz's first murder left a city in shock and confusion.
Berkowitz's Growing Confidence. With each attack, Berkowitz grew bolder and more confident in his actions.
The .44-Caliber Killer. Berkowitz's murders gained media attention, instilling fear in the city.
Fear Grips New York. The city was paralyzed with fear as Berkowitz continued his attacks.
The Son of Sam's Letter. Berkowitz's letter reveals his motive and chilling thoughts on women.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You cannot overestimate or exaggerate just how much that fear gripped the city.

The overwhelming fear in New York during the Son of Sam's reign of terror.

1:06WatchAug 12, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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