63 Facts About David Berkowitz

David Berkowitz eluded the biggest police manhunt in the city's history while leaving letters mocking the police and promising further crimes, which were highly publicized by the press.

David Berkowitz was arrested on August 10,1977, and subsequently indicted for eight shootings.

David Berkowitz 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 belonging to his neighbor, "Sam".

David Berkowitz subsequently admitted the dog-and-devil story was a hoax.

In police investigations, David Berkowitz was implicated in many unsolved arsons in the city.

David Berkowitz was born Richard David Falco on June 1,1953, in Brooklyn, New York City.

David Berkowitz's biological father, Joseph Kleinman, was a married businessman who, like David Berkowitz's mother, was Jewish.

David Berkowitz had a bar mitzvah and was frequently bullied for being Jewish.

Journalist John Vincent Sanders wrote that David Berkowitz's childhood was "somewhat troubled".

David Berkowitz lived with his father while attending Christopher Columbus High School and college in a four-and-a-half-room apartment at 170 Dreiser Loop in Co-op City from 1967 to 1971.

In 1971, at age 17, David Berkowitz joined the United States Army and served at Fort Knox in the US and with an infantry division in South Korea.

David Berkowitz attended Bronx Community College for one year, enrolling in the spring of 1975.

David Berkowitz 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.

David Berkowitz bungled his first attempt at murder using a knife, then switched to a handgun and began a lengthy crime spree throughout the New York boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, seeking young female victims.

David Berkowitz exhibited an enduring enjoyment of his activities, often returning to the scenes of his crimes.

David Berkowitz claimed when he was 22, he committed his first attack on Christmas Eve 1975, when he used a hunting knife to stab two women in Co-op City.

David Berkowitz was not suspected of these crimes, and soon afterward he relocated to an apartment in Yonkers.

The first shooting attributed to David Berkowitz occurred in the Pelham Bay neighborhood of the Bronx.

David Berkowitz's hair was short, dark, and curly in a "mod style".

Years later, in 1993, an imprisoned David Berkowitz admitted in an interview with journalist Maury Terry that he had shot Lauria and Valenti.

David Berkowitz shot each of the victims once and, as they fell to the ground injured, he fired several more times, striking the house before running away.

David Berkowitz sustained minor superficial injuries, but Freund was shot twice and died several hours later at the hospital.

David Berkowitz lived about a block from where Freund had been shot.

David Berkowitz was described as a "neurotic" who probably had paranoid schizophrenia, and believed himself to be a victim of demonic possession.

David Berkowitz was a very, very sweet girl but Sam's a thirsty lad and he won't let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood.

Violante lost his left eye; Moskowitz, the only blonde victim of David Berkowitz, died from her injuries.

David Berkowitz ran to her home only to hear shots fired behind her in the street.

The Yonkers police dispatcher who first took Justis' call was Wheat Carr, the daughter of Sam Carr and sister of David Berkowitz's alleged cult confederates John and Michael Carr.

When Justis heard "Sam", he had a very good feeling that David Berkowitz was the real culprit they'd been looking for.

Yonkers investigators even told Justis David Berkowitz might be the Son of Sam.

David Berkowitz himself confessed he was the "Phantom of the Bronx," an unidentified individual or individuals responsible for more than 2,000 arsons committed around the city throughout the 1970s.

David Berkowitz was briefly held in a Yonkers police station before being transported directly to the 60th Precinct in Coney Island, where the Son of Sam task force was located.

David Berkowitz was interrogated for about thirty minutes in the early morning of August 11,1977.

David Berkowitz quickly confessed to the shootings and expressed an interest in pleading guilty.

David Berkowitz said the "Sam" mentioned in the first letter was his former neighbor Sam Carr, and that Harvey, Carr's black Labrador, was possessed by an ancient demon which issued irresistible commands that Berkowitz kill people.

David Berkowitz told interrogators that he was planning to end his spree by "[going] down in a blaze of glory" at a Hamptons nightclub.

Three separate mental health examinations determined David Berkowitz was competent to stand trial.

David Berkowitz appeared calm in court on May 8,1978, as he pleaded guilty to all of the shootings.

At his sentencing two weeks later, David Berkowitz caused an uproar when he attempted to jump out of a window of the seventh-floor courtroom.

On June 12,1978, David Berkowitz was sentenced to 25-years-to-life in prison for each murder, to be served consecutively.

David Berkowitz was ordered to serve time in Attica Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in upstate New York.

David Berkowitz described his life in Attica Correctional Facility as a "nightmare".

David Berkowitz refused to identify his assailant, and he claimed only that he was grateful for the attack: It brought a sense of justice or, in David Berkowitz's own words, "the punishment I deserve".

David Berkowitz's statements were released as a 1998 interview video, Son of Hope, with a more extensive work released in book form, entitled Son of Hope: The Prison Journals of David Berkowitz.

David Berkowitz has continued to write essays on faith and repentance for evangelical websites.

David Berkowitz stays involved with prison ministry, and regularly counsels troubled inmates.

David Berkowitz is entitled to a parole hearing every two years as mandated by state law, though he has consistently refused to ask for his release, sometimes skipping the hearings altogether.

David Berkowitz stated that he would drop the lawsuit only if the attorney signed over all the money he made to the victims' families.

In 1979, David Berkowitz mailed a book about witchcraft to police in North Dakota.

David Berkowitz's death, and the notorious abuse of her corpse in a chapel on campus, was a widely reported case.

David Berkowitz mentioned the Perry attack in other letters, suggesting that he knew details of it from the perpetrator himself.

David Berkowitz said that he and several other cult members were involved in every incident by planning the events, providing early surveillance of the victims, and acting as lookouts and drivers at the crime scenes.

David Berkowitz stated that he could not divulge the names of most of his accomplices without putting his family directly at risk.

David Berkowitz did name two of the cult members: John and Michael Carr.

David Berkowitz claimed that Michael fired the shots at Lupo and Placido.

NYPD officer Richard Johnson, involved in the original investigation, opined that unresolved discrepancies in statements from witnesses and surviving victims indicate David Berkowitz did not act alone:.

Diel contends he and Freund passed no one on their way to the car, and that the position of the car parked at the curb would have made it impossible for David Berkowitz to have sneaked up on them in the few minutes between their encounter outside the restaurant and the shooting at the car; Diel thus reasons he was shot by someone other than David Berkowitz.

From prison, David Berkowitz continued to assert and expand upon his claims of demonic possession.

David Berkowitz himself continues to express remorse on Christian websites and on more mainstream news, including speaking out against gun violence and instead spreading the message to "take the glory out of guns".

Neysa Moskowitz, who previously had not hidden her hatred of David Berkowitz, wrote him a letter shortly before her own death in 2006, forgiving him for killing her daughter, Stacy.

David Berkowitz is referred to by Lee Child in his Jack Reacher Series short novella "High Heat".

The film depicts the tensions that develop in a Bronx neighborhood during the shootings, and David Berkowitz's part is largely symbolic.

Guitarist Scott Putesky used the stage name "Daisy David Berkowitz" while playing with Marilyn Manson in the 1990s, and the band's song "Son of Man" conspicuously describes David Berkowitz.