"Son of Sam" Serial Killer Speaks

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Speaker 4 We ready?

Speaker 5 That's a question New Yorkers have been asking themselves a lot lately.

Speaker 7 Are we ready for another blackout?

Speaker 5 For a bus hijacking or a bombing?

Speaker 9 For another murder by the.44 caliber killer.

Speaker 4 I know that I'm

Speaker 11 not

Speaker 13 usually known for any public exhibitions of temper, but I want you to know I'm damned angry.

Speaker 16 The city is preoccupied with the killer who, in one note, signed himself the son of Sam.

Speaker 18 He is compelled to kill.

Speaker 12 I think people are really shook up.

Speaker 19 People wouldn't come out at night. They're even scared.

Speaker 21 The whole city was kind of like in lockdown. No one stayed out past 10 o'clock.

Speaker 22 People were terrified.

Speaker 24 Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
We've been shot. We've been shot.

Speaker 25 I should have been dead.

Speaker 21 I guess on one hand, I was happy to be alive. A lot of people died from the same gun.

Speaker 26 He struck again over the weekend, shooting a young couple in a Brooklyn lover's lane, and today the girl died. The killer's sixth victim.
He's wounded seven others.

Speaker 28 It's just scary. It's frightening.
When you're walking, people just look over their shoulder.

Speaker 5 That's all they do is talk about the killer.

Speaker 29 Walks up to strangers, usually couples in parked cars, and shoots them with a large poor revolver.

Speaker 30 Police say they are nowhere near solving the case.

Speaker 4 If you're asking whether we have any indication of who he is or where he might be, the answer is no.

Speaker 28 To do this to a young girl and a young boy, he's not human.

Speaker 31 He was writing about a dog that talked to him, gave him orders to kill.

Speaker 13 I mean, he just was going out 30 nights a month looking for someone to kill.

Speaker 32 He terrified the city. I mean, I've never seen people like that.

Speaker 33 Yeah, I see that

Speaker 33 people would never understand where I came from, no matter how much I try to explain explain it.

Speaker 33 They wouldn't understand

Speaker 33 what it was to walk in darkness.

Speaker 35 I remember we were an hour away from the city.

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 35 everybody was afraid after all that to find out that this was a sort of a,

Speaker 35 you know, what people describe him as this chubby, shy, lonely guy who had the whole city buckling at his knees, afraid.

Speaker 36 It's a strange sensation.

Speaker 20 Serial killer is about to walk in here and talk with us.

Speaker 38 I think there he goes right there.

Speaker 39 I look like him, right?

Speaker 12 Hello, God bless you.

Speaker 37 Maurice, Dubois.

Speaker 33 It's an honor to meet you, sir.

Speaker 25 God to meet you.

Speaker 20 Thank you for talking with us. Sure, okay.

Speaker 33 It's a big step.

Speaker 7 You know, I have my

Speaker 33 misgivings and nervousness and

Speaker 8 other things.

Speaker 8 Understood?

Speaker 20 Is this a special place for you?

Speaker 33 Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's a place of refuge.
You know, refuge from the storms of life. And, you know, if you know anything about prison, there's a lot of storms.

Speaker 33 You know, it's not exactly a happy place. In prison, men are walking around carrying a lot of pain.
I know I have a lot of pain inside me over, you know, things that happened.

Speaker 33 And

Speaker 33 this is a place where you can come and pour your heart out to God. My name is David Berkowitz, and I've been locked up since the time of my arrest.
Just under 40 years.

Speaker 30 You just turned 64?

Speaker 33 Yeah, I just turned 64.

Speaker 34 How do the guys look at you?

Speaker 40 How do they see you? How do they perceive you?

Speaker 33 Some guys, really, again, because of the passing of time, they're not even familiar with the case or anything. They may have heard about it, but it doesn't, just another face in the crowd.

Speaker 33 You know, no special attention, no special anything. That's the way I want it to be.

Speaker 31 In the summer of 1977,

Speaker 31 New York lost its mind.

Speaker 31 Well, this was a city that looked like Berlin after the war.

Speaker 31 It was devastated. There were abandoned buildings.
There were waves of arson in which people were afraid to go to bed at night. We had a blackout in which 3,000 people were arrested.

Speaker 42 It makes you really want to throw up when you look at what's happened. And we got to live here.
It's no place for us to go.

Speaker 31 We had the FALN, the Puerto Rican terrorist group, planting bombs in department stores. We had a record heat wave.

Speaker 31 George Willig, a mountain climber from Queens, climbing up the outside of the World Trade Center. You know, it was a very, very different time, and people were afraid to walk around.

Speaker 31 You know, 1977, among other things, was the year that Studio 54 opened.

Speaker 31 It was a time of sexual liberation, perhaps the last gasps of the anything goes sexual revolution.

Speaker 43 I like to disco, as a single woman, I feel safe here.

Speaker 31 This was the era of Saturday Night Fever,

Speaker 31 and it was that throbbing music that became the backdrop for all the wacky behavior that was going on in the city at the time, including a murder spree by a serial killer.

Speaker 9 In New York early this morning, a mystery deepened and a manhunt intensified.

Speaker 17 A young couple was shot and wounded while sitting in in a parked car.

Speaker 44 Most of the victims have been young women with shoulder-length dark brown hair who were gunned down as they sat in parked cars or walked the sidewalks of the Bronx and Queens.

Speaker 34 And you know, you're dealing with a crazy guy, you know.

Speaker 34 You know, you go up to two innocent girls sitting in a car and shoot them or a guy and a girl in a car and you shoot them for no reason.

Speaker 34 I wanted to know why he did what he did. That's the one thing about all of these girls in these cases and guys.

Speaker 34 They did nothing to contribute to their own demise and they were sitting talking to each other and this guy killed them

Speaker 33 i mean i i grew up in the bronx uh i had good good day good times and bad times i had some struggles over certain issues that happened and but i also had times of adventure when i ramp played ball with my friends really was uh in many ways a normal childhood but that also wrestled with self-destructive behavior Why?

Speaker 37 Well,

Speaker 33 when I was about four or five, I learned that I was adopted.

Speaker 33 And when I asked about, you know, who my parents were at birth, you know, my dad and mom, you know, well-meaning, told me that my mother died while giving birth to me.

Speaker 33 Later on, I found out that, of course, she was alive and well. We had a wonderful reunion.

Speaker 25 It wasn't even true what they told you.

Speaker 33 Yeah, they meant well, because they were told by the experts, that's what you tell an adopted child when they...

Speaker 33 naturally ask questions.

Speaker 33 Looking at your retrospect, that characterized much of my life. I struggled with a lot of depression as a child and obsessions with death because I thought I deserved to die.

Speaker 39 So take me to when you're 14, your mom dies.

Speaker 33 Yeah, that was a difficult time. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 33 Well, just when you lose someone that you love is this sense of mourning. You know, I try to put it out of my mind.
I was carrying around a lot of guilt.

Speaker 33 I was carrying around a lot of shame that I deserved to be punished.

Speaker 33 I can't explain those things.

Speaker 39 For your mom's death?

Speaker 33 Yeah, maybe I was angry at God and then, well, my birth mother and then of course my adoptive mother too. You know, I found it very difficult.

Speaker 15 The victim that's selected usually satisfies something on a fantasy level. A punishing mother

Speaker 15 could be a wife. And so every time he commits a crime against the person that has this thing, he's satisfying this basic need of getting back at the original individual that he had difficulty with.

Speaker 33 You know, it was just a challenge. It was a challenge.
But I mean, I ended up doing okay.

Speaker 33 It was my dad really kept on me to finish school. I graduated from Christopher Columbus High School

Speaker 33 in 1971, and I joined the Army.

Speaker 45 He went into the service, and a drastic change took place, and a different man came out that went in.

Speaker 46 What do you mean a different man went out?

Speaker 47 How did he change?

Speaker 33 I went to Korea, and I'll never forget that.

Speaker 33 You know, you see the advertisements on TV of the guys jumping out of planes and all these exciting things, and, you know, and you find out Army life is kind of mundane and routine.

Speaker 33 You just turned 18, I'm trying to find my way in life. I wanted to see the world.

Speaker 45 A man that went in relatively mellow, relatively peaceful,

Speaker 45 turned around and became a man that was more interested in the fantasy in the world than the reality.

Speaker 33 After I got out of the service, I went to look up a lot of old friends, guys I used to hang out with and things, and found everybody pretty much moved on in the three years of my absence.

Speaker 33 So I came back

Speaker 33 on my own, kind of, you know, and wanted to eventually get my own apartment.

Speaker 33 You know, wanted to find a girl, maybe get married and raise a family. And I had all kinds of normal, perfectly normal hopes and dreams.

Speaker 36 What would you tell 23-year-old David Berkowitz today?

Speaker 33 Turn around before it's too late because destruction is coming, you know.

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Speaker 18 Berkowitz lived in Yonkers, north of New York. Police described him as a loner.

Speaker 16 His neighbors discussed their impressions with CBS News correspondent Bill McLachlan.

Speaker 16 He seems strange to you.

Speaker 47 Not strange. When he came in, you know, he spoke what's happening and everything, but uh...

Speaker 16 He was friendly then?

Speaker 51 Yeah, he didn't seem strange. Yeah, I never suspect him in this building.
Out of every building in Yonkers, he's in 35 Pine Street, you know, that shocks me.

Speaker 52 So you're living in Yonkers.

Speaker 29 You move up to Yonkers.

Speaker 39 You have an apartment up on the seventh floor.

Speaker 30 Yeah. 7E.
It's a nice spot.

Speaker 52 You're looking out over the Hudson River.

Speaker 33 Yeah, the building was not anyway peaceful.

Speaker 33 What was it like? It was just chaotic. It was just a strange place.
There was a strange spirit there.

Speaker 10 Live right here in this building.

Speaker 10 Two, three, four. Used to be number 35.
Changed the number in hopes of maybe made people feel a little better.

Speaker 53 If they don't recognize where the buildings, then I say, do you remember San Osam? Oh, I know what the building is. Really? So they know.

Speaker 30 People are familiar with it.

Speaker 53 Yeah. A lot of people know what happened.

Speaker 35 It's still

Speaker 22 hard to believe that even something like that exists in this world. I mean, who goes around killing people? I don't know anybody like that.

Speaker 11 No, you try not to think of things like that.

Speaker 25 But it's people in the neighborhood that knew him.

Speaker 54 Say, you know, he was very, you know, cool with the kids, used to give them ice cream, things like that.

Speaker 54 And like, he was a funked young man.

Speaker 56 Just another guy. Yeah.

Speaker 30 What about the idea that he shot Sam Carr's dog right behind here?

Speaker 34 This dog,

Speaker 34 his master is a 6,000-year-old being talking to him through this dog, and he's baying for blood.

Speaker 20 The dog got on Berkowitz's nerves. Apparently, the dog barked too much.

Speaker 30 Berkowitz could hear him from his window.

Speaker 20 He tried to kill the dog. The dog didn't die.
And then he said, in his own twisted way, that the dog told him to kill.

Speaker 20 So Berkowitz lived on the top floor. He had a clear view right into the backyard here where the dog lived

Speaker 20 owned by a guy named Sam Carr.

Speaker 56 Hence the name son of Sam.

Speaker 33 I wasn't comfortable there. I felt very isolated.
I didn't really have much of a social life. I started to get into a lot of satanic stuff.
So I really was opening myself up to some very dark forces.

Speaker 34 It's not like he had a friend or anything. There was nobody.

Speaker 7 He had a hole in the wall in his apartment.

Speaker 34 It said that Mrs. something or other and her kids live in the wall.
You know, he's

Speaker 34 certifiably nut.

Speaker 33 Well, there was just a battle going on inside me.

Speaker 22 In your head?

Speaker 33 Well, wherever, you know, just a battle going on, yeah.

Speaker 33 Right. Yeah.

Speaker 30 I guess here's the thing.

Speaker 52 Here's a Christian man, a man who knows right from wrong,

Speaker 52 who's had loving parents, right?

Speaker 21 Who's very thoughtful.

Speaker 52 Yet at some point there,

Speaker 36 you killed two people to start this whole thing.

Speaker 44 She was 18-year-old Donna Loria, who was sitting in a parked car with a friend late at night when her parents heard the shots.

Speaker 29 I ran down. By the time I got down, she was dead in the street.

Speaker 29 My daughter was 18 years old and that's what he took out of my heart, 18 years.

Speaker 33 It was a very troubled time, yeah.

Speaker 40 Right.

Speaker 40 But then he did it again.

Speaker 21 It started out as a typical Friday night, drove to 159th Street and 32nd Avenue. Basically, we started making out and like two minutes later.

Speaker 21 Yeah, it was shut in the back of the head, but you know, on the top, the windows just shattered, so I had pieces of glass all over my arms.

Speaker 21 I didn't know I was shot, but I knew something terrible had happened. The skull was blown away.
The only thing protecting my brain from the outside world was a flap of skin.

Speaker 33 Well things happen here but

Speaker 33 that's it, you know.

Speaker 40 And then again,

Speaker 30 then we get to November.

Speaker 56 We have Damasi and Lamino.

Speaker 24 They're shot.

Speaker 32 Yeah, they're standing on the stoop and he walks up and he fires at them.

Speaker 39 So at this point, you have nothing.

Speaker 36 What are you thinking?

Speaker 32 We're thinking we got a tough case here.

Speaker 26 Police have have been engaged in intensive hunt for a man known as the.44 caliber killer.

Speaker 27 There's widespread apprehension that his crime spree is not over.

Speaker 52 I mean, it just kept going for more than a year.

Speaker 32 The hardest cases in the world for homicide detectives are strangers, stranger on stranger. You have very little to go with because you don't have a motive.
You may not have any witnesses, right?

Speaker 32 So you're at a dead standstill.

Speaker 39 Was there any common thread with all of these families, victims of son of Sam?

Speaker 34 Well, the common thread was these were their,

Speaker 34 you know,

Speaker 34 20-year-olds, their young, you know, their children.

Speaker 26 We've got Christine Front again, this shooting.

Speaker 56 Right. Is there any suspicion? Yes.

Speaker 37 At least two witnesses say the gunman walked up to the car, crouched, then fired four shots.

Speaker 32 One of the detectives come over to me and he says, you know, that's a big bullet. He says, and we had a shooting in the 105 with a big bullet.
And then they also had one in Queens.

Speaker 32 So that stirred me up a little bit.

Speaker 6 The.44 bullet is big, nearly twice as big as the conventional.38 caliber police handgun ammunition. The.44 is designed, they say, to kill.

Speaker 52 Then we get to march.

Speaker 32 Virginia, the student, shoots her right in the face.

Speaker 32 Starts to get a little curious now because that shooting is only a block away from where Christine Ford was murdered. We don't really get into the serial killer until the incident in the barn.

Speaker 36 April 17th, 1977.

Speaker 32 That will go down in infamy.

Speaker 30 Until then, you just had a series of shootings without anything.

Speaker 34 At that time, probably, I don't know, 1,500 homicides a year. The big thing about this one was the.44 caliber bullets.

Speaker 56 Now, it's not just a bullet.

Speaker 32 It left a letter to me.

Speaker 8 Tonight's 48 hours will continue.

Speaker 57 I can only describe it as evil.

Speaker 58 Follow and listen to Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 32 I was home in in bed and I got a call. Looks like our boy, why?

Speaker 8 Big bullet.

Speaker 32 Big bullet. So now I got dressed and I went to the box.

Speaker 10 You get to the scene, you get this letter, you read the letter, what do you think?

Speaker 32 To me it looked like some kind of a psychopath wrote this letter.

Speaker 32 Mr. Borrelli, sir, I don't want to kill anymore.
No, sir. No more.
But I must honor thy father. I am deeply hurt by your calling me a woman hater.
I am not, but I am a monster. I am the son of Sam.

Speaker 33 As far as I'm concerned, that was not me. That was not me.

Speaker 33 Even that name, I hate that name, I despise that name. Which name? That moniker, son of Sam.

Speaker 33 That was not.

Speaker 33 That was a demon.

Speaker 33 That was...

Speaker 33 a demonic entity that I was serving in my ignorance and my shame.

Speaker 32 This is no longer a city case. This is now going to get nationwide attention.

Speaker 16 No one in the city of 8 million knows who is next.

Speaker 7 In New York early this morning, the.44 caliber killer tried to kill again.

Speaker 33 That was just

Speaker 33 a break from reality. I thought I was doing something to

Speaker 33 appease the devil. I'm sorry for it, but I really don't want to talk about it anymore.
Appease the devil.

Speaker 33 Well, I was at this time I had was serving him. You know, I was serving him.
I feel that he had taken over my mind and body, and I just surrendered to those very dark forces.

Speaker 33 I regret that with all my heart, but you know, that was like 40 years ago.

Speaker 34 Effectively, it was him winning over us each time he got away with it.

Speaker 44 The only substantial clues so far have been two letters, including one mail to the New York Daily News.

Speaker 41 The killer chose Jimmy Breslin as his conduit to a larger public.

Speaker 31 Jimmy Breslin was a great columnist for the New York Daily News. He was sort of the voice of the people, related to people on a very visceral level.

Speaker 31 And it was no accident that the son of Sam Killer started writing to him.

Speaker 31 Hello from the gutters of NYC, which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine, and blood.

Speaker 31 Hello from the sewers of NYC, which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks.

Speaker 31 JB, I'm just dropping you a line to let you know that I appreciate your interest in those recent and horrendous.44 caliber killings.

Speaker 36 In 77 is when the newspapers, you know, started to cover this.44 caliber killer.

Speaker 30 What else? The son of Sam. You would see this stuff.

Speaker 52 It was on a newspaper, on the TV, on the radio.

Speaker 22 It was everywhere.

Speaker 33 I don't want to discuss that.

Speaker 31 Well, when we realized that this was an authentic letter that he had sent to the Daily News, on one level, we were thrilled because it gave us access to the killer.

Speaker 6 What I thought was one of the most disgusting episodes I've seen in journalism.

Speaker 13 Were you suggesting that murder isn't a big story?

Speaker 6 I think murder, as the story became in the papers, it was blown ludicrously out of proportion and with very unhealthy social results.

Speaker 32 Jimmy Reslin wrote one

Speaker 32 to him. figuring that would trigger Berkowitz to respond again.
And I didn't mind that because I said the more he responds, the more the the opportunity for us to solve the case.

Speaker 31 Jimmy was engaging in this written dialogue with the killer for any number of reasons.

Speaker 31 One, because there might be more clues as to his identity, and two, because it was an ongoing tabloid story that obviously would sell newspapers.

Speaker 13 I mean, he just was going out 30 nights a month looking for someone to kill.

Speaker 41 Did you ever have a moment saying, geez, did I cause this? Did this column trigger this nut?

Speaker 18 No.

Speaker 34 Yeah, I mean, there's no question that the police department was put under a lot of pressure by the press.

Speaker 21 The slow Sunday Sam Newsday would be seven or eight pages.

Speaker 32 Detectives would walk out and they'd have a TV crew follow them.

Speaker 19 The New York Mafia is trying to track the killer down.

Speaker 21 The press stole our goitzen, but it also incited 20 million people.

Speaker 43 We used to stay in front of my house and talking, you know, and kiss goodnight, but we can't do that no more.

Speaker 9 An element of fear pervades neighborhoods which have not known fear before.

Speaker 19 People wouldn't come out at night. They're really scared.

Speaker 5 And I mean, when they're scared, that's all they do is talk about the

Speaker 6 killer.

Speaker 44 Civilian patrolling has been stepped up in the neighborhood. Some women in the area are terrified, particularly ones with shoulder-length dark brown hair.

Speaker 43 People going out cutting their hair and dyeing it.

Speaker 32 They were bleaching their hair, becoming blondes.

Speaker 34 Literally at night, sometimes a thousand, two thousand guys who were just out there patrolling looking for this guy.

Speaker 32 Those phones rang 24 hours.

Speaker 10 But you guys were everywhere.

Speaker 20 You shut down lovers lanes.

Speaker 32 I think all the motel owners in the city loved us. We forced everything indoors.

Speaker 24 I'm leaving my house and I'm walking down the steps and my mom turns to me and she says, Robert, be careful.

Speaker 8 And I turned around.

Speaker 24 And the next thing I said was, I'll never forget this. Ma, don't worry.
I'm going out with blonde tonight.

Speaker 8 Tonight's 48 hours will continue.

Speaker 57 I can only describe it as evil. Something horrible.

Speaker 59 From 48 hours, this is Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard.

Speaker 36 He couldn't control his obsession.

Speaker 58 Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 9 Good evening.

Speaker 7 In New York, early this morning, the.44-caliber killer tried to kill again.

Speaker 37 Robert Violante, 20 years old.

Speaker 18 Stacey Moskiewicz, also age 20, blonde.

Speaker 37 Both shot twice in the head as they sat in their car near the ocean in the Brooklyn section of New York.

Speaker 16 It was their first date.

Speaker 9 She was just a very bubbly, alive,

Speaker 23 full-of-life young lady.

Speaker 52 Now it's Saturday night, the 31st of July, 1977.

Speaker 24 Correct.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 24 we went to see a very popular movie back then, New York, New York, with Liza Minelli.

Speaker 14 And it was a great movie.

Speaker 24 And it was just a great night.

Speaker 30 Well, what happens after the movies?

Speaker 24 So now we decide to drive to one of the, as they call it, a Lover's Lane. Now we're sitting there a couple of minutes and we're just talking, you know, kissing you a little bit and talking.

Speaker 24 And Stacey turns to me and said, Robert, you know what?

Speaker 14 I'm getting a little nervous.

Speaker 24 She said, Robert, let's go. And I said, five more minutes.

Speaker 24 And in that five minutes is when we got shot.

Speaker 8 And I'm screaming now, blowing the horn.

Speaker 14 Help us, help us.

Speaker 24 We've been shot. We've been shot.
But the horn died.

Speaker 39 What do you remember from the shooting itself?

Speaker 24 The bullet totally destroyed the left eye and most of my right eye. And,

Speaker 24 you know, full of blood. I couldn't see anything.
I couldn't see Stacey sitting right next to me. I heard some moaning coming from Stacey.

Speaker 9 This evening, hospital officials said Ms. Moskowitz remains in critical condition.
After eight hours of surgery, she is given a 50-50 chance of living. Violante's condition is guarded.

Speaker 9 He has lost the use of his left eye and probably will retain only 10% of the vision in his right eye.

Speaker 14 What can you tell me about your son?

Speaker 67 We brought him up the right way.

Speaker 67 Good boy, never any trouble, never involved in any dope, never involved in any arrests.

Speaker 67 What can I say? You told him to stay out of Queens. I told him to stay out of Queens.
He says, says, Dad, I'm going to stay out of Queens because he used to go to Queens.

Speaker 67 He says, I'll do it for you and mom.

Speaker 18 I'll hang around in Brooklyn.

Speaker 67 And that's where they found them.

Speaker 34 Violante, I remember his father was just distraught, totally distraught, because he had seen. the results of what had happened to his son.

Speaker 24 He was my best friend in the world.

Speaker 24 He was

Speaker 10 there for me every minute of the day when I was in the hospital.

Speaker 24 I think it was my dad that told me about Stacey.

Speaker 16 At 5.22 p.m. Monday, Stacey Moskowitz stopped living.
The doctors said they had not turned off the life support.

Speaker 16 It was just that the horrible damage done by a.44 caliber bullet in the brain was too much.

Speaker 55 She wasn't worried, you know, because she says, you know, I got blonde hair and, you know.

Speaker 55 I told her, I don't know how many times

Speaker 55 to be careful.

Speaker 28 My daughter is dead, but I would die right here and now to see this man punished. To do this to a young girl and a young boy.
I lost a child. That woman has a son that's blind.

Speaker 28 To do this to young people, he can't be normal. He's not normal.

Speaker 24 And that's the saddest part, that I never got to really know

Speaker 24 Stacey.

Speaker 30 You still think about it to this day.

Speaker 36 Yeah, that was

Speaker 24 really, really the sad part.

Speaker 30 But when Stacey Moskowitz was killed, Berkowitz got a ticket for parking his car in front of a fire hydrant.

Speaker 34 It was a woman there who said, you know, I did see somebody get a summons on a fire hydrate in front of my house.

Speaker 32 We immediately started looking at the summons. All right, they run the plate, and the plate number comes back to David Berkowitz's address in Yonkers.

Speaker 34 It comes out to David Berkowitz, 35 Pine Street. They now decide, again, thinking it's a witness, to call him, so they call the Yonkers Police Department.

Speaker 34 The girl on the switchboard, she says, who to?

Speaker 34 David Berkowitz, 35 Pine Street. She She says, that guy is crazy.
He shot my father's dog. I know that guy.

Speaker 33 What's your father's name?

Speaker 34 Sam Carr.

Speaker 32 Week Carr, who's Sam Carr's daughter, lives next door to David Birkowitz. owns the dog that Berkowitz shot.

Speaker 34 So, you know, that was like, you know, all of these things fell in in one one phone call.

Speaker 32 Everybody's antenna goes up.

Speaker 34 When they get up there, they swing by his house and they see his car. They look in the car and they see a letter to the Suffolk Police Department.

Speaker 34 And they see a duffel bag that had a gun in it, a big rifle.

Speaker 34 And here comes Berkowitz with a little brown paper bag with his 44 guns in it. Goes to the car, they jump him.

Speaker 32 And he says, you got me. He says, I'm the son of Sam.

Speaker 18 At about one this morning, 24-year-old David Berkowitz, who detectives believe is the son of Sam, was brought to police headquarters in Manhattan.

Speaker 18 He was wearing frayed jeans and an open sports shirt, and he was smiling slightly.

Speaker 22 They caught him. They caught him.

Speaker 3 They caught the piece of garbage.

Speaker 24 I'll never forget that, my friend Nikki.

Speaker 56 What'd you say?

Speaker 14 I was so elated, so happy.

Speaker 24 I said, thank God, he's off the streets. He's not going to ever be able to hurt anybody else again.

Speaker 21 I really can't describe how I felt. It was, I guess, a little bit of everything, a little bit of excitement, a little bit of relief, a little bit of closure.

Speaker 21 When I saw the front page, I was like, wow, I didn't expect them to look like that.

Speaker 18 Police ran ballistics tests this morning on the.44-caliber gun they say Berkowitz bought from someone else who got it in Texas.

Speaker 32 It's an infamous gun.

Speaker 32 I could picture the damage that this thing did, you know, when you're looking at the scene of the crime.

Speaker 11 The ballistics section has just called and told us that the.44 caliber gun recovered tonight has been tested and the bullets match the bullets recovered from Stacey Moskowitz.

Speaker 12 What does this mean?

Speaker 11 It means we have the gun to kill Stacey Moscow.

Speaker 52 I mean, these were beautiful young people.

Speaker 33 Yeah, I understand that, but again, there's no,

Speaker 33 you know, it's just the way things turn out. It's regrettable, but that's it, you know.

Speaker 30 Did you do all these crimes alone?

Speaker 38 Well.

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Speaker 34 Now, years later, he tells everyone that he was part of a cult and he was merely one of the shooters.

Speaker 34 You know, he's wacky, you know. I mean, he's...

Speaker 34 So for him to say that he's part of a cult, you know, it was just something he came up with like everything else, you know. Well,

Speaker 33 I felt that there were demons with me, but that was, I'll have to save that for another time.

Speaker 36 But you're the sole person who pulled the trigger, correct?

Speaker 33 Well, a lot of things went to happen in that case, but I take responsibility, you know, and that's it.

Speaker 30 You take responsibility for all Sunnison murders.

Speaker 52 There was nobody else involved.

Speaker 33 Let's just put it this way, there were demons, and that was it.

Speaker 9 You leave the door open, or is that...

Speaker 33 Well, one day maybe I have a chance to share more, but

Speaker 33 we'll leave that at that, you know.

Speaker 32 We shot all that down, you know, and I think I told you, the biggest claim to fame was when they used to say that, the cult, I said, did we have an incident after we locked up Berkowitz?

Speaker 36 The killing stopped.

Speaker 32 Did the killing stop? Yeah.

Speaker 34 For him to say years later that he was part of a cult, you know, it was just more attention. That's all it's about with him.

Speaker 20 But there are people who believe it.

Speaker 34 I'm just telling you, the people that say they believe in it never interviewed David Berkowitz. They never sat the way I did.

Speaker 9 In this room.

Speaker 34 In this room, in this corner.

Speaker 10 Just step back for a second.

Speaker 30 You walk in. I walk in.

Speaker 34 in you lay eyes on him what are you thinking what do you see what does he look like well I'm first I'm looking at him to see what he looks like I said so what happened here you know how did it start

Speaker 34 30 minutes he goes from beginning to end tells me the whole story he was relaxed what kind of demeanor he's saying this was

Speaker 34 talking about it the way you were talking about making a pastrami sandwich

Speaker 34 To just talk about it like that was scary. I thought he absolutely felt he was certifiably wacky.

Speaker 34 And I thought they would just put him in an institution.

Speaker 5 The accused killer is now undergoing a court-ordered psychological examination at the Kings County Medical Center in Brooklyn, where he will be held in maximum security for up to 30 days.

Speaker 15 He will engage in a normal psychiatric examination.

Speaker 32 Dr. Schwartz, he was a court-appointed psychiatrist to analyze him to see if he was fit to stand trial.
And he determined he was fit for trial. So this insane business that goes out the window.

Speaker 12 There was no outward sign of emotion, no expressed remorse today as David Berkowitz pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn, New York court to six random son-of-Sam murders, slayings which terrorized New York for more than a year.

Speaker 36 So you show up in court when Berkowitz was going to be sentenced for the first time.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 39 He said some foul things about Stacy.

Speaker 21 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 18 To a weird nursery rhyme-like tune, Berkowitz, who had never known Stacey Moskowitz, sang, Stacey was a whore. Mrs.
Moskowitz bolted out of her seat and screamed back, you animal.

Speaker 18 And then, Robert Violante, Stacy's date the night she died, rose and shouted, you creep.

Speaker 38 I reacted, go

Speaker 24 yourself, you piece of.

Speaker 38 You should die. You should rot in hell.
I was, oh, I just went off on him.

Speaker 18 Robert Violante explained his courtroom outburst.

Speaker 37 Total anger. Total anger.

Speaker 16 That's it. Just total outrage.
And

Speaker 13 I really couldn't control myself.

Speaker 18 Three weeks after his wild courtroom outburst, which led to a delay for further psychiatric evaluation, David Berkowitz, again judged competent to face sentencing, arrived to learn his fate.

Speaker 41 Berkowitz, who just turned 25, was given a total of six sentences for murder of 25 years to life.

Speaker 39 What do you say to the victims' families, to the victims who are still living today?

Speaker 33 Well, I've apologized many times, and I just always let them know that I'm very sorry for what happened, that I wish I could go back and change things and that I hope these people are getting along in life as best as possible.

Speaker 32 I never forget

Speaker 33 where I came from and what my situation was like some four decades ago. People that were hurt, people that are still in pain, suffering loss.
because of my criminal actions. And I never forget that.

Speaker 33 That sometimes weighs very heavy on me.

Speaker 33 Yeah.

Speaker 21 It kind of took over my personality.

Speaker 21 And wherever I went, everything would just stop. And everyone, and you'd just hear whispering.
That's the guy that was shot by Son of Sam.

Speaker 21 And it got to the point where it became disturbing for me. And I really felt like I was losing my identity.

Speaker 24 Didn't have any children, so I never got married, never had children, unfortunately. He ruins not just my life, 12 other lives, plus the families.

Speaker 55 So,

Speaker 24 how do you forgive something like that, somebody like that?

Speaker 36 You don't.

Speaker 25 When you think about the irony, I mean, here's a kid who lost his mom at 14, and you think about the depth of the pain that you felt, and then years later,

Speaker 25 because of you,

Speaker 30 six people have that same kind of pain.

Speaker 30 Seven others injured for life.

Speaker 33 How's that strike you? It's very painful. It's very painful.
I carry around a pain, too.

Speaker 33 Not the same kind, but one that I'm aware of what happened.

Speaker 33 I draw comfort,

Speaker 33 if you could call it that,

Speaker 33 from reading

Speaker 33 in the scriptures about some of the

Speaker 33 well-known Bible characters that

Speaker 33 did very bad things and how God forgave them. and God was able to use them in very special ways, very unique ways, and they became what we'd call champions of the faith.

Speaker 33 The Lord did a lot of work on my life, you know.

Speaker 33 That's why I try so hard in my messages to give a cautionary tale to young people about not getting involved in Satanism or the occult or, you know, those kind of things, because I feel that they

Speaker 33 too could maybe take a bad path.

Speaker 25 Does it give you satisfaction to reach young people?

Speaker 33 Yeah, Yeah, sure. I get letters all the time.

Speaker 33 I have a calling to just write to encourage people from all walks of life.

Speaker 33 It's something I do on my own, on my spare time, and I get a lot of satisfaction from it, but most of all, I believe that that's what God has called me to do.

Speaker 36 Berkowitz is a born-again Christian. He's a minister in prison.

Speaker 30 He takes a lot of pride in helping people.

Speaker 39 That's his thing. What do you think of that?

Speaker 34 I think that's a lot better road to go down than serial killer. You're in jail.
What else you got to look forward to?

Speaker 9 You might say, yeah, I found God. Why not?

Speaker 30 But I really think he did.

Speaker 21 You know, that doesn't mean he's exonerated.

Speaker 10 If he's trying to do better with other prisoners,

Speaker 24 so be it.

Speaker 14 That's God's way of probably

Speaker 24 making him understand

Speaker 24 how wrong and bad of a person he was, and now God's giving him a second chance to do right by other people. But it still doesn't change a fact of how I feel.

Speaker 39 I'll never forget. Why not?

Speaker 34 Why not?

Speaker 34 Because he snuffed out six people's lives, ruined another seven, plus all the families involved. for people that didn't do anything to him.
You know, didn't bump into him, didn't say nothing to him.

Speaker 34 So I just can't forget.

Speaker 39 Yeah. But when you look at the front picture right there, there's a two you're right.

Speaker 20 Two pictures of you.

Speaker 33 That's right.

Speaker 36 Well, what do you see?

Speaker 33 I see the old man and I see the new man in Christ. Yeah, I see the one man that was tormented by demons.
And I see the man that

Speaker 33 has the peace of God radiating from him. Yeah.

Speaker 33 Yeah, that's that's where I'm at now.

Speaker 33 That's the way I was always supposed to be.

Speaker 34 A mayor of hope, you know?

Speaker 34 Yeah.

Speaker 21 What is a life worth? I don't know. Mr.
and Mrs. Lauria might feel totally different.
You know, they lost their daughter 40 years ago.

Speaker 40 Does parole, is that attractive to you at this point?

Speaker 33 As a realistic hope, I don't see any hope for the world, though.

Speaker 32 Personally, I feel there has to be justice for the death of those people.

Speaker 32 And that's the justice, life in prison.

Speaker 57 I can only describe it as evil, something horrible.

Speaker 59 From 48 hours, this is Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard.

Speaker 9 He couldn't control his obsession.

Speaker 58 Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 24 Warden, you know who I am.

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Speaker 68 Everyone who comes into this clinic is a mystery.

Speaker 48 We don't know what we're looking for.

Speaker 68 Their bodies are the scene of the crime. No symptoms and history are clues.

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