Search Results - Berkowitz, David

David Berkowitz

David Richard Berkowitz (born Richard David Falco; June 1, 1953), also known as the Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer and former U.S. Army soldier who committed a stabbing and a series of shootings between 1975 and 1977 in New York City, killing six people and wounding eleven others. Armed with a .44 Special caliber Bulldog revolver during most of his crimes, he terrorized New Yorkers with many letters mocking the police and promising further crimes, leading to possibly the biggest manhunt in the city's history.

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 "Sam" which belonged to his neighbor. After being found mentally competent to stand trial, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to six concurrent life sentences in state prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. He subsequently admitted the dog-and-devil story was a hoax. In police investigations, Berkowitz 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. Provided by Wikipedia