David Berkowitz

David Berkowitz was one of the most feared killers in New York City in the 1970's. His crimes caused the death of six people, and the injuries to seven others. His crimes became legendary because of the bizarre content in the letters that he wrote to the police and the media and his reasons for committing the attacks. David Berkowitz, better known as Son of Sam, is a man with a troubled childhood and upbringing. From his many "Parental Figures" to believing that dogs were telling him to kill. During his reign of killing the police felt the pressure to catch David. "Operation Omega" was formed, which was comprised of over 200 detectives - all working on finding the Son of Sam before he killed again. He is currently serving a 365 year sentence at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, New York, and became eligible for parole in 2002.

David Berkowitz was born on June 1, 1953. His birth name was Richard David Falco. His mother, Betty Broder Falco, was born in 1914 and was raised in Brooklyn. She had an affair with a man named Joseph Kleinman, who eventually impregnated her with David. When he was told that she was pregnant, he told her to get rid of the baby. So when he was born, he was immediately put up for adoption. When he was a few days old he was adopted by Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz, a Jewish couple from the Bronx. They reversed the order of his given names and called him David, he would be their only child.

Not much is known about David's early childhood, but it is known that he was a solitary child. He enjoyed playing cowboys and Indians, war games, and other childhood games. He was a chubby kid, and got teased a lot for it. He was also very smart, in 1960; he was given an IQ test, and scored a 118, a "superior" level. One of his elementary teachers described him as a "moody child, very easily upset." David loved to hide; his father gave him various nicknames like Sneaky, Snoop, and Spy. David loved sneaking through the house, trying to be invisible.

In 1967 Pearl Berkowitz died of breast cancer. This was the second mother that he'd lost. He was 14 at the time and devastated by her death. When asked how he felt about her death years later he replied "both happy and sad. It was freedom. She was a pest sometimes and she was very nagging." After 21 months of being a widower, Nathan Berkowitz moved David from his Bronx home to Co-Op City, a high-rise apartment complex.

In 1971, he suffered another psychological blow when his father decided to remarry. David now had a stepmother and a 25 year old step sister. This is when he joined the army. He enlisted because he wanted to "die for a cause". The Vietnam War was going on at the time, and he said he was "fanatically patriotic". But he eventually got stationed in Korea and hadn't seen any combat. His attitude quickly changed, and it became to him not having much of a future in the army. He did learn one skill that he would use later in life though: the use of deadly weapons. He got the ranking of marksman, the basic designation for shooting proficiency. He had buddies in the military, but no close friends. His barracks mates called him Wolf, on the count of all of his body hair. He would later brag about being with Korean prostitutes, and excessive experimentation with LSD, marijuana, mescaline, and amphetamines. But the truth seems to be that his main sexual activity throughout his entire life was masturbation.

In January 1973 his unit was sent back to Fort Knox, KY and with the move, his military career seem to disappear. Also with the move, he had a spiritual rebirth, and began attending services at Beth Haven Baptist Church in Louisville and soon changed from a Jew to a Christian.

In May of 1974 he took the ritual of full immersion in water and was baptized as a member of the congregation. This was the first time he felt as though he belonged somewhere. The passion for this eventually faded as well. In June 1974 he was given an honorable discharge from the army. He then went back to his family in Co-Op City, but it didn't last to long. He was suspicious of his father's new wife, and would snoop through her personal belongings.

His pyromania thoughts had returned at this time, and to his own accounting, between May 13, 1974 and his arrest in 1977, he set no less than 1,411 fires. He would leave detailed records of all the fires he set. The police found notebooks for them from 1974, 1975, and 1977, but they never found one for 1976. He would record them on grids that included the dates and times of the fires, the streets and boroughs in which they occurred, the numbers of the local fireboxes, and the fire department codes indicating the types of responding apparatus. Some of the fires were in empty lots, others in cars and some were major blazes that destroyed buildings.

In 1974 Nathan Berkowitz told David that he planned to move to Florida. Shortly after moving to Florida, his hardware store had been robbed, and he was becoming tired of urban life. David would stay behind, losing his last sympathetic contact in the city. With his father's help he moved into an apartment on Barnes Avenue in the Bronx, where he began driving a Taxi, and he enrolled at Bronx Community College.

After Nathan had moved to Florida, David decided to find his real father, so he joined an organization called ALMA, the Adoptee's Liberty Movement Association, which counsels and supports adoptee searching for their birth parents. Nathan and Pearl had told him his birth mother was dead, so he was surprised to hear that she was more than likely alive. David confronted Nathan about this and the truth finally was told to David: he was an accident, a mistake, never meant to be born-unwanted. He decided that he had to find this woman. He obtained an out-of-date phone book from 1965, and looked up Betty Falco, got the address, and called the operator, and to his surprise, she still lived at the same address, but had an unlisted number. So in May of 1975, almost Mother's day he bought a greeting card, and wrote the following: "So, as once before/ We've been Destined/ To meet once more./ And I guess the time is now/ I should say hello-but how?/ Happy Mother's day!/ (You were my mother in a very special way." He signed the card 'R.F.' for his birth name and then put the card in Betty Falco's mailbox. A few days later the phone rang and he had found his birth mother.

He arranged a meeting with his mother to meet in his half sister's apartment. His sisters name was Roslyn. When they met, his mother apologized for abandoning him at birth and reassured him that what his father told him about him being a mistake was wrong. For the next year David visited his mother and sister on weekends.

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