"Son of Sam" Serial Killer Speaks

9:20Maurice DuBois:A man that went in relatively mellow, relatively peaceful, turned around and became a man that was more interested in the fantasy in the world than the reality.

9:32David Berkowitz:After I got out of the surface, 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. So I came back and I was on my own, kind of, and wanted to eventually get my own apartment. I wanted to find a girl, maybe get married and raise a family, and I had all kinds of normal, perfectly normal hopes and dreams.

10:00Maurice DuBois:What would you tell 23-year-old David Berkowitz today?

10:06David Berkowitz:Turn around before it's too late because destruction is coming, you know.

10:26Maurice DuBois:Berkowitz lived in Yonkers north of New York. Police described him as a loner. His neighbors discussed their impressions with CBS News correspondent Bill McLaughlin. He seemed strange to you. Not strange. When he came in, you know, he spoke what's happening and everything. But, uh... He was friendly then? Yeah, he didn't seem strange. I never suspect him in this building. out of every building Yonkers, he's in 35 Pine Street. You know, that shocks me. So you're living in Yonkers, you move up to Yonkers. You have an apartment up on the seventh floor. 7E, it's a nice spot. You're looking out over the Hudson River.

11:01David Berkowitz:The building was not in any way peaceful. Not that way, what was it like? It was just chaotic. It was just a strange place. There was a strange spirit there.

11:16Maurice DuBois:I live right here in this building. Two, three, four. Used to be number 35. Changed the number in hopes of maybe made people feel a little better.

11:25David Berkowitz:If they don't recognize where the building is, then I say, do you remember Son of Sam?

11:30Maurice DuBois:Oh, I know where the building is. Really? So they know. People are familiar with it. Yeah, a lot of people know what happened. It's still 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. No, you try not to think of things like that. It's people in the neighborhood that knew him. They say, you know, he was very, you know, cool with the kids. You used to give him ice cream, things like that. And, like, he was a functional man. Just another guy. Yeah. What about the idea that he shot Sam Carr's dog right behind here?

12:04Maurice DuBois:This dog, his master is a 6 ,000-year-old being talking to him through this dog. And he's begging for blood.

12:19Maurice DuBois:The dog got on Berkowitz's nerves. Apparently, the dog barked too much. Berkowitz could hear him from his window. 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.

12:40Maurice DuBois:So Berkowitz lived on the top floor. He had a clear view right into the backyard here, where the dog lived, owned by a guy named Sam Carr. Hence the name, Son of Sam.

12:57David Berkowitz:I wasn't comfortable there. I felt very isolated. You know, 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. It's not like he had a friend or anything.

13:13Maurice DuBois:There was nobody. He had a hole in the wall in his apartment. It said that Mrs. something or other and her kids live in the wall. You know, he's certifiably nuts.

13:25David Berkowitz:Well, there was just a battle going on inside me. In your head? Well, wherever, you know, just a battle going on, yeah.

13:33Maurice DuBois:Right. Yeah. I guess here's the thing. Here's a Christian man, a man who knows right from wrong. who's had loving parents, right, who's very thoughtful. Yet at some point there, you kill two people to start this whole thing.

13:57Maurice DuBois: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. I ran down. By the time I got down, she was dead in the street. My daughter was 18 years old, and that's what he took out of my heart, 18 years.

14:12David Berkowitz:It was a very troubled time, you know. Right.

14:15Maurice DuBois:But then he did it again. 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, 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. I didn't know I was shot, but I knew something terrible would happen. The skull was blown away. The only thing protecting my brain from the outside world was a flap of skin.

14:44David Berkowitz:Well, things happen, but that's it, you know.

14:48Maurice DuBois:And then again. Then we get to November. We have DeMassi and Lamino. They're shot. They're standing on the stoop, and he walks up, and he fires at them. So at this point, you have nothing. What are you thinking? We're thinking we got a tough case here. Police have been engaged in intensive hunt for a man known as the.44 caliber killer. There's widespread apprehension that his crime spree is not over. I mean, it just kept going for more than a year. 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.

15:29Maurice DuBois:You may not have any witnesses, right? So you're at a dead standstill. Was there any common thread with all of these families, victims of Son of Sam? Well, the common thread was these were their, you know, 20-year-olds, their young, you know, their children.

15:50Maurice DuBois:We've got Christine Front. Again, this shooting? Right. Is there any suspicion? Yes. At least two witnesses say the gunman walked up to the car, crouched, then fired four shots. 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. So that stirred me up a little bit. 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. Then we get to March. Virginia, the student. shoots her right in the face.

16:32Maurice DuBois:Starts to get a little curious now because that shooting is only a block away from where Christine Foren was murdered. We don't really get into the serial killer until the incident in the Bronx. April 17th, 1977. That will go down in infamy. Until then, you just had a series of shootings without any real sense. But again, we were having, you know, at that time, probably, I don't know, 1 ,500 homicides a year. The big thing about this one was the.44 caliber bullets. Now, it's not just a bullet. It left a letter to me.

17:11Maurice DuBois:Tonight's 48 Hours will continue. I can only describe it as evil. 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.

17:35Maurice DuBois:I was home in bed and I got a call. Looks like a boy. Why? Big bullet. Big bullet. So now I got dressed and I went to the Bronx. You get to the scene, you get this letter, you read the letter, what do you think? To me it looked like some kind of a psychopath wrote this letter. Mr. Borelli, 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.

18:10David Berkowitz:As far as I'm concerned, that was not me. That was not me. Even that name, I hate that name. I despise that name. Which name? That moniker, son of Sam. That was not... That was a demon. That was a demonic entity that I was serving in my ignorance, in my shame.

18:33Maurice DuBois:This is no longer a city case. This is now going to get nationwide attention. No one in the city of 8 million knows who is next. In New York early this morning, the.44 caliber killer tried to kill again.

18:50David Berkowitz:That was just a break from reality. I thought I was doing something to appease the devil. I'm sorry for it, but I really don't want to talk about it anymore. Appease the devil? No, I was, at this time, I 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. I regret that with all my heart, but, you know, that was like 40 years ago.

19:17Maurice DuBois:Effectively, it was him winning over us each time he got away with it. The only substantial clues so far have been two letters, including one mailed to the New York Daily News. The killer chose Jimmy Breslin as his conduit to a larger public.

19:32David Berkowitz: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. And it was no accident that the son of Sam Killer started writing to him. Hello from the gutters of NYC, which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine, and blood. Hello from the sewers of NYC, which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks. 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.

20:15Maurice DuBois:In 77 is when the newspapers, you know, started to cover this.44 caliber killer.

20:22David Berkowitz:Whatever.

20:23Maurice DuBois:Son of Sam. You would see this stuff. It was on the newspaper, on the TV, on the radio. It was everywhere.

20:28David Berkowitz:I don't want to discuss that. You know, yeah. 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.

20:42Maurice DuBois:What I thought was one of the most disgusting episodes I've seen in journalism. Were you suggesting that murder isn't a big story? I think murder as the story became in the papers, it was blown ludicrously out of proportion and with very unhealthy social results. Jimmy Reslin wrote one 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 opportunity for us to solve the case.

21:07David Berkowitz:Jimmy was engaging in this written dialogue with the killer for any number of reasons. 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.

21:24Maurice DuBois:I mean, he just was going out 30 nights a month looking for someone to kill.

21:28David Berkowitz:Did you ever have a moment saying, geez, did I cause this? Did this column trigger this nut?

21:33Maurice DuBois:No. Yeah, I mean, there's no question that the police department was put under a lot of pressure by the press. A slow son of Sam Newsday would be seven or eight pages. The detectives would walk out and they'd have a TV crew follow them. The New York Mafia is trying to track the killer down. The press stoked Barkowitz, but it also incited 20 million people. We used to stay in front of my house and walk, you know, and kiss goodnight, but we can't do that no more. An element of fear pervades neighborhoods which have not known fear before. People wouldn't come out at night and they're really scared.

22:04Maurice DuBois:And I mean, when they're scared, that's all they do is talk about the killer. Civilian patrolling has been stepped up in the neighborhood. Some women in the area are terrified, particularly ones with shoulder-length dark brown hair. People going out cutting their hair and dyeing it. They were bleaching their hair, becoming blondes. Literally at night, sometimes 1 ,000, 2 ,000 guys who were just out there patrolling. looking for this guy. Those phones rang 24 hours. Boy, you guys were everywhere. You shut down lovers' lanes. I think all the motel owners in the city loved us. We forced everything indoors.

22:49Maurice DuBois:I'm leaving my house, and I'm walking down the steps, and my mom turns to me, and she says, Robert, be careful. And I turned around and the next thing I said was, I'll never forget this, Ma, don't worry, I'm going out with a blonde tonight.

23:14Maurice DuBois:Tonight's 48 Hours will continue. I can only describe it as evil, something horrible. From 48 Hours, this is Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard. He couldn't control his obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

23:43Good evening.

23:45Maurice DuBois:In New York early this morning, the.44 caliber killer tried to kill again. Robert Violante, 20 years old. Stacy Motzkowicz, also age 20, blonde. Both shot twice in the head as they sat in their car near the ocean in the Brooklyn section of New York. It was their first date. She was just a very bubbly, alive, full of life young lady. Now it's Saturday night, the 31st of July, 1977. Correct. and we went to see the very popular movie back then New York New York with Liza Minnelli and it was a great movie and it was just a great night well what happens after the movies so now we decided 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 a little bit and talking and uh stacy turns to me and says robert you know what i'm getting a little nervous she said robert let's go and i said five more minutes and in that five minutes is when we got shot

25:05i'm screaming now blowing the horn help us help us we've been shot we've been shot

25:12Maurice DuBois:The horn died. What do you remember from the shooting itself? The bullet totally destroyed the left eye and most of my right eye. And, you know, full of blood, I couldn't see anything. I couldn't see Stacy sitting right next to me. I heard some moaning coming from Stacy.

25:38she.

25:38Maurice DuBois:This evening, hospital officials said Miss Moskowitz remains in critical condition. After eight hours of surgery, she is given a 50-50 chance of living. Violante's condition is guarded. He has lost the use of his left eye and probably will retain only 10 percent of the vision in his right eye.

25:59Maurice DuBois:What can you tell me about your son? We brought him up the right way. Good boy, never any trouble, never involved in any dope, never involved in any arrests. What can I say? You told him to stay out of Queens. I told him to stay out of Queens. He said, Dad, I'm going to stay out of Queens because he used to go to Queens. He said, I'll do it for you and Mom. I'll hang around in Brooklyn. And that's where they found them.

26:37Maurice DuBois:Violante, I remember his father was just distraught, totally distraught, because he had seen the results of what had happened to his son. He was my best friend in the world. He was there for me every minute of the day when I was in the hospital. I think it was my dad that told me about Stacy. At 5.22 PM Monday, Stacy Moskowitz stopped living. The doctors said they had not turned off the life support. It was just that the horrible damage done by a.44 caliber bullet in the brain was too much.

27:20Maurice DuBois:She wasn't worried, you know, because she says, you know, I got blonde hair and, you know,

27:28I told her I don't know how many times to be careful.

27:34Maurice DuBois: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, if I lost a child, that woman has a son that's blind. To do this to young people, he can't be normal. He's not normal. And that's the saddest part, that I never got to really know Stacey. You still think about it to this day? Yeah, that was really, really the sad part.

28:13Maurice DuBois:But when Stacey Moskowitz was killed, Berkowitz got a ticket for parking his car in front of a fire hydrant. Yeah. There was a woman there who said, you know, I did see somebody get a summons on a fire hydrant in front of my house. We immediately started looking at the summonses. All right, they run the plate. And the plate number comes back to David Berkowitz, his address, and Yonkers. 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. The girl on the switchboard, she says, who to? David Berkowitz, 35 Pine.

28:48Maurice DuBois:She says, that guy is crazy. He shot my father's dog. I know that guy. What's your father's name?

28:59Maurice DuBois:Sam Parr.

29:04Maurice DuBois:Wee Kaur, who's Sam Kaur's daughter, lives next door to David Berkowitz, owns the dog that Berkowitz shot. So you know that was like, you know all of these things fell in one phone call.

29:22Maurice DuBois:Everybody's antenna goes up. 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. And they see a duffel bag that had a gun in it, a big rifle. And here comes Berkowitz with a little brown paper bag with his.44 gun in it. Goes to the car, they jump him. And he says, you got me. He says, I'm the son of Sam.

29:50Maurice DuBois: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. He was wearing frayed jeans and an open sport shirt, and he was smiling slightly. They caught him. They caught him. They caught their piece of garbage. I'll never forget that, my friend Nicky. What'd you say? I was so elated, so happy. I said, thank God he's off the streets. He's not going to ever be able to hurt anybody else again. 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.

30:32Maurice DuBois:When I saw the front page, I was like, wow, I didn't expect them to look like that. Police ran ballistics tests this morning on the.44 caliber gun they say Berkowitz bought from someone else who got it in Texas. It's an infamous gunner. I could picture the damage that this thing did, you know, when you're looking at the scene of the crime.

31:01Maurice DuBois: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. What does this mean? It means we have the gun to kill Stacey Moskowitz.

31:23Maurice DuBois:I mean, these were beautiful young people. I understand that, but again, there's no, you know, it's just the way things turned out. It's regrettable, but that's it, you know. Did you do all these crimes alone?

31:38David Berkowitz:Well.

31:56Now, years later, he tells everyone that he was part of a cult, and he was merely one of the shooters.

32:04Maurice DuBois:You know, he's wacky, you know? I mean, he's... 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?

32:14David Berkowitz:Well, I felt that there were demons with me, but that was, I'll have to save that for another time.

32:20Maurice DuBois:But you're the sole person who pulled the trigger, correct?

32:23David Berkowitz:Well, a lot of things wouldn't happen in that case, but I take responsibility, you know, and that's it.

32:30Maurice DuBois:You take responsibility for all the Son of Sin murders? There was nobody else involved?

32:36David Berkowitz:Let's just put it this way, there were demons, and that was it.

32:39Maurice DuBois:Were you leaving the door open, or is that?

32:41David Berkowitz:Well, one day maybe I have a chance to share more. But we'll leave that at that.

32:46Maurice DuBois:We shot all that down. And I think I told you, the biggest claim to fame, when they used to say that, the cult, I said, did we have an incident after we locked up Berkowitz? The killing stopped. Did the killing stop? Yeah. For him to say years later that he was part of a cult, you know, it was just more attention. That's all that's about with him. But there are people who believe it. I'm just telling you, the people that say they believe in it never interviewed David Berkowitz. They never sat the way I did. In this room? in this room, in this corner. Just step back for a second. You walk in. I walk in.

33:17Maurice DuBois:You lay eyes on him. What are you thinking? What do you see? What does he look like? Well, first, I'm looking at him to see what he looks like. I said, so what happened here? You know, how did it start? 30 minutes, he goes from beginning to end, tells me the whole story. He was relaxed. What kind of demeanor? Are you saying this with a straight face? Oh, he was talking about it the way you were talking about making a pastrami sandwich. To just talk about it like that was scary. I thought he absolutely felt he was certifiably wacky. And I thought they would just put him in an institution. 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.

33:58Maurice DuBois:He will engage in a normal psychiatric examination. 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. 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. So you show up in court when Berkowitz was going to be sentenced for the first time? Yeah. He said some foul things about Stacey. Oh, yeah.

34:42Maurice DuBois: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. And then Robert Violante, Stacey's date the night she died, rose and shouted, you creep. I reacted, call yourself, you piece of shit. You should die. You should rot in hell. I was, oh, I just went off on him. Robert Violanti explained his courtroom outburst. Total anger. Total anger. That's it, just total outrage, and I really couldn't control myself. 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.

35:31Maurice DuBois:Berkowitz, who just turned 25, was given a total of six sentences for murder of 25 years to life. What do you say to the victim's families, to the victims who are still living today?

35:44David Berkowitz: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. I never forget, you know, 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. That sometimes weighs very heavy on me. Yeah, yeah.

36:18Maurice DuBois:It kind of took over my personality. And wherever I went, everything would just stop. And you'd just hear whispering. That's the guy that was shot by Son of Sam. And it got to the point where it became disturbing for me. And I really felt like I was losing my identity. Didn't have any children. I never got married, never had children, unfortunately. He ruined not just my life, 12 other lives, plus the family's. So, how do you forgive something like that, somebody like that? You don't. 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, because of you, six people have that same kind of pain.

37:09David Berkowitz:Oh, right.

37:09Maurice DuBois:Seven others injured for life.

37:11David Berkowitz:Mm-hmm.

37:13Maurice DuBois:How does that strike you?

37:14David Berkowitz:It's very painful. It's very painful. I carry around the pain, too. Not the same kind, but one that I'm aware of what happened. You know? Yeah. I draw comfort, if you could call it that, from reading in the scriptures about some of the well-known Bible characters that 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.

37:57David Berkowitz:The Lord did a lot of work in my life, you know. 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 too could maybe take a bad path.

38:14Maurice DuBois:Does it give you satisfaction to reach young people?

38:17David Berkowitz:Yeah, sure. I get letters all the time. I have a calling to just write to encourage people from all walks of life. 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.

38:35Maurice DuBois:Berkowitz is a born-again Christian. He's a minister in prison. He takes a lot of pride in helping people. That's his thing. What do you think of that? 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? So you might as well, yeah, I found God, why not? But I really think he did. You know, that doesn't mean he's exonerated. If he's trying to do better with other prisoners, so be it. That's God's way of probably making him understand how wrong and bad of a person he was. and now God's giving him a second chance to do right by other people.

39:25Maurice DuBois:But it still doesn't change the fact of how I feel. I'll never forget. Why not? Why not? 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. So I just can't forget.

39:54Maurice DuBois:But when you look at the front picture right there, those are two you's.

39:58David Berkowitz:Right.

39:58Maurice DuBois:Two pictures of you.

39:59David Berkowitz:That's right.

40:01Maurice DuBois:Well, what do you see?

40:02David Berkowitz:I see the old man, and I see the new man in Christ. I see the one man that was tormented by demons, and I see the man that has the peace of God radiating from him. You know, that's where I'm at now. That's the way I was always supposed to be, a man of hope, you know? Yeah.

40:42Maurice DuBois: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. Does parole, is that attractive to you at this point?

40:53David Berkowitz:As a realistic hope, I don't see any hope for parole, no. Personally, I feel there has to be justice

41:00Maurice DuBois:for the death of those people. And that's the justice. Life in prison.

41:14Maurice DuBois:describe it as evil, something horrible. From 48 Hours, this is Train to Kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard. He couldn't control his obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.