Conversations with a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes

0:00Rebecca Lavoie:I'm Rebecca Lavoie and this is You Can't Make This Up.

0:14Rebecca Lavoie:You Can't Make This Up is the podcast where we uncover the true stories behind your favorite Netflix documentaries and films. On today's episode, we take a closer look at the Netflix documentary series Conversations with a Killer, The Son of Sam Tapes. It's a deadly and very complicated story of how a human mind spirals out of control and becomes a lone gunman and mass murderer. Today we're talking to director Joe Berlinger and executive producer Rachel Profolofsky. In 1976 and 77, a string of shootings targeting couples in parked cars threw New York City into a panic. The killing spree of the so-called Son of Sam mobilized an army of detectives, sold millions of newspapers, and forced a fearful public to stay home.

1:01Rebecca Lavoie:In the years after David Berkowitz was caught, the killer opened up to a journalist about his life, dispelling some of the myths he himself had created. The Netflix documentary series Conversations with a Killer, the Son of Sam tapes, features newly released recordings of Berkowitz talking about his troubled past and why he killed. He admits on tape to fabricating some of the most sensational aspects of his criminal persona to build his legend. But how much of what Berkowitz says is true, and how much of it is him still trying to shape his own narrative? The line is just between thinking about it and doing it.

1:35But to cross the line, to me it was frightening, you know. The feeling of power. I didn't enjoy it, I just needed to do it.

1:55Rebecca Lavoie:And I'm joined now by Joe Berlinger and Rachel Profiloski. Welcome to You Can't Make This Up. Glad to be here. Glad to see you again. Glad to be here. Joe, this is the fourth season of Conversations with a Killer. And you don't simply profile the criminal and their crimes. You have audio tape of them telling their own stories. So when did you discover these audio tapes of David Berkowitz talking with Jack D. Jones? We were brought these tapes about a year and a half ago to a little more now. And we thought that they were very compelling, that they kind of fit the bill for our series, which is to provide this kind of inside look at what these guys think, even though they are unreliable narrators.

2:39But the tape seemed like pretty compelling to us.

2:43Rebecca Lavoie:Did you have a different opinion or different insight into David Berkowitz after you heard this material? Joe? Yes and no. I mean, you know, he is a guy who likes to please and likes to spin things. In these tapes, he seemed to be pretty straightforward for a lot of things. So that did take us by surprise that he was not trying to spin a lot of stuff that he's in the future has subsequently in prison and before, you know, the way he was a bit of a spin master. So he was pretty straightforward in these tapes, which I found fascinating. Rachel, could you talk a little bit about Jack D. Jones? How did he get Berkowitz to open up to him?

3:22Well, Jack, first of all, it was tremendous to hear his interactions with Berkowitz across these some 19 hours of tapes. And it's remarkable that he was able to record that much conversation with Berkowitz starting in 1980. Jack was a reporter for a local paper, and he had written an article about Attica prison and a riot that had taken place. And Berkowitz had read that. And I think he reached out thinking that Jack would be a sympathetic or empathetic ear. And he actually seems like he initiated the conversation. And as Jack tells us, how do you turn down an opportunity to try and understand what was going on in the mind of this serial killer?

4:04And so Jack met with Berkowitz and had lengthy conversations. And as Joe said, Berkowitz was surprisingly forthcoming and shared a lot. why sometimes I try so hard to say to society, well, you know, I'm not a mad person. I'm not that mad, but it's impossible for them to know all this. And sometimes it bothers me, but I realize there's nothing I could really, you know, do about it. I was a little surprised hearing them myself the first time. Ferkowitz comes off so nebbish and timid. And I think Jack felt that way. I think anyone listening might feel that way too, because you think of Ferkowitz, the son of Sam, this scary killer.

4:39And it's a little bit alarming to hear how quiet and soft-spoken he is.

4:45Rebecca Lavoie:Rachel, did you get the sense that it was Jack actually steering these conversations? Or did Berkowitz, you know, even in his more reserved affect, did he actually do some of the driving? What do you think? I got the sense that Berkowitz had been craving and seeking attention and an opportunity to talk and share his story. And Jack, as an astute journalist, was asking strong questions. And I think he was able to draw a lot out of David Berkowitz. But I think David Berkowitz wanted someone to hear his story. He was particularly candid. And what I found most fascinating was about his childhood. Yeah.

5:22Orly honest and open about his childhood. And, you know, that to me is the great conundrum. It's like when people have shocks in their childhood, like finding out he was adopted or if you're mistreated in childhood, that is often kind of this knee-jerk excuse as to why somebody does evil things. But to me, that's obviously not an excuse. Many people have horrible childhoods. I myself had a very rough childhood and I, you know, I explore serial killers. I didn't become one. You know, a lot of people find out that they've been adopted under strange circumstances. So it's fascinating how much He relied on that narrative to justify what became of him.

6:01But it's also obviously something that's not an easy excuse to embrace.

6:06Rebecca Lavoie:Can you talk a little bit, Joe, about his meeting with his biological mother, his meeting her? And it seems like he had some disappointment there. Can you talk about that? Well, he had thought his mother had died in childbirth. That's what he had been told. And he went to a self-help group and they all kind of giggled and said, oh, that's that's what they say all the time. and did some digging and realized his mother was alive and he was just the product of an out-of-marriage fling. And so it became his life's mission at that point to find and meet his mother. And when he finally did, he was not happy with the mother that he found.

6:41When I first met her, I saw a short, fat woman, you know, stringy hair, all this old, ruined makeup from like 20 years ago, you know, sitting there, you know, holding a dress, still-fitting dress. I was kind of confused. It wasn't what I pictured, you know. I was hoping maybe a more attractive mother, you know. He thought she was schlubby and not what he had imagined, and I think that's what also kind of set him off, or what he says really set him off on this spiral.

7:17Rebecca Lavoie:So, Rachel, the Son of Sam case is one of these singular cases where it really feels like it's of a certain place and time. It didn't just happen then. It's sort of representative of that place and time. Can you talk about the backdrop for these crimes? Well, I think one of the things that's so fascinating about this story is it's also a chapter in New York City history that's so rich and interesting. That time in the late 70s, there was a fiscal crisis. There was high crime. It was a really rough time for New York. And in the backdrop of that was a serial killer who seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once.

7:57And it was terrifying. I think one of the things that, you know, I love working with Joe on these projects is that dive into archival footage to paint the story and bring it to life. And that really excited me to also look at what it was like New York City. I'm pretty much a lifelong New Yorker to be able to look at New York in that time period in the 1970s and pull out that really, really remarkable, rich archival footage of what it was like then. It's very different than than today.

8:23Rebecca Lavoie:Yeah. Joe, can you talk a little bit about why is it that you think Berkowitz was targeting couples on what would have been the equivalent of Lover's Lanes, right? Well, I think, you know, after realizing his mother was not what he had hoped and realizing he was the product of, in his mind, maybe some backseat act of lovemaking, I think he was preying upon couples, you know, because he had this idea of just, you know, these couples were creating more unwanted children in the world. But I also think he had, and it's one of the reasons I think this is actually a very timely show to do now. You know, I liken Berkowitz more to like the school shooter of today than I do the traditional serial killers that we've covered in the past.

9:11You know, Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer, they all got sexual gratification out of being up close and personal with their victim and watching their victim expire. I mean, the typical serial killer wants to be up close and personal and intimate with their victim and in some cases getting sexual gratification from that. Berkowitz, if he had any kind of human contact with his victim, actually, he called off the shooting. There's a great anecdote in the show where, you know, he comes upon people stuck in the snow. He has a, you know, he has his gun on him. He's thinking about shooting them, but instead he helps free them because they're stuck in the snow because he had human contact.

9:48So he chose to be a hero in that moment rather than a killer. I looked at their faces, you know, and I said to myself, oh, thank God, you know, I mean something to somebody. Just for a second, you know, I'm called upon to help. I would have been more grateful for that incident, you understand, for my chance to help somebody than to go out and hurt somebody.

10:11Rebecca Lavoie:You made this differentiation between Berkowitz and these other serial killers with these psychosexual motivations. is he more like, say, Zodiac, somebody who also then sort of wants the public to know that he exists at the same time he's committing these seemingly random crimes? Exactly. This need for fame. I mean, Dahmer tried to keep it under the lid as long as he could. Same with Gacy. And this desire for fame in this particular era in history is also why I think the Son of Sam case is so interesting to do now, because I think this is a foundational case in the history of true crime, meaning in an era before social media, before the 24-hour news cycle, he gripped New York.

10:56You know, six, seven million people felt like they couldn't go out because they might be shot. And yet that kind of power, if you think about it, the guy, you know, he obviously killed a number of people, but your chances of being shot were still pretty low, just statistically. And he baited the media and the media through Jimmy Breslin, especially, was only too willing to comply. So you have this intersection of violence, of media only too willing to serve up that violence, and a public that just became fascinated by this story. I mean, more newspapers were sold when Son of Sam was caught than when JFK was assassinated.

11:32So to me, this kind of began this codependency of media, violence, and the general public having this fascination with crime.

11:41Rebecca Lavoie:Right. So the public's fear came from the fact that it became apparent that this was one man committing these crimes, but didn't happen right away. Rachel, how long did it take for police to connect all these separate shootings in different parts of the city and attribute them to one killer? One of the things that's also fascinating about this case, since it's before a lot of the forensic technology that we have today, so it wasn't until They got further along in investigating some of the shootings that they recognized that the bullet slugs, the.44 caliber, were all linked to multiple shootings and then could then deduce that it was one killer who was operating.

12:22But some time had gone by. There had been a number of shootings, and that was shooting four with Christine Freund and John Deal that the police were able to match and take the bullets and compare them and recognize that it was a singular, most likely a singular killer that was out there. And I think the other thing that's really fascinating about the story is the year-long, approximately year-long investigation of the police force of New York trying to track down in a city of, as Joe was saying, seven, eight million people in shootings in multiple boroughs. The scale of that is really hard to kind of comprehend.

13:00And the investigative work that they had to do over the course of approximately a year to ultimately catch him is really remarkable.

13:08Rebecca Lavoie:So there is this big shift in the case when police get the so-called Son of Sam letter. Based on what we later learned about Berkowitz, I'm curious, Rachel, what do you think the actual point of that letter could have been? Well, I think this kind of goes Berkowitz reaching out to Captain Borelli and writing letters to the media. But writing these letters, I think it goes back to him being lonely and frustrated internally, but yet also yearning for attention. and to seek some recognition. I think this was an opportunity for him to feel like he was maybe more important than he felt in everyday real life.

13:47And if he was able to kind of reach out and write letters to the police and kind of egg on this cat and mouse game, it's speculation. But I think that he probably felt like he was more important and he was bigger than he felt in his regular normal day-to-day jobs in life and felt very lonely and didn't have a lot of friends and yearned for a girlfriend. And here, by being able to engage the media and engage the police with these letters, he was able to kind of build up the persona of himself as Son of Sam.

14:21Rebecca Lavoie:Joe, you have this great scene in which you have some of the original detectives read the letter out loud and get their reactions. Yours in murder, Mr. Monster. Is that crazy? Is that insanity? Is that, I don't have the words for it. It's just unbelievable. I'm getting annoyed just reading this, Dan. Do you think this is a good example of how true crime storytelling can bring alive these stories that do seem so far in the past? Historically, we have done evocative B-roll and, you know, for Dahmer, we brought the conversation between Wendy Patrikus and Dahmer to life through a one simple recreation.

15:03For this show, we decided to do full-on recreations, which I know is controversial with a lot of documentary makers, like the whole idea of we could talk an hour for whether or not recreations are necessary or journalistically okay. I happen to think for situations like this, they're great and they bring to life things that you can't just communicate with archival footage. And in particular, my whole goal with all of these serial killer profiles is to reach a younger audience that aren't familiar with these stories as a cautionary tale. And Netflix has a huge global audience with a lot of young people.

15:43And you'd be surprised how many people have never heard of The Son of Sam. And so if you want to reach a younger demographic, I want to use the tools of cinema to help engage that audience and to make it satisfying and to bring you into that moment instead of like looking at old, distant archival footage, which, of course, is in the show and is great footage to look at. But if you want to have this more immediate feeling, I think recreations are an important device.

16:09Rebecca Lavoie:Joe, there's a question that I get asked a lot in interviews, and I'd love to get your take on it. there are so many knocks on true crime and the people who consume it. I've heard folks say that it lacks a purpose, that it's sensational, that it's a new phenomenon. How do you respond to that? Oh, my God. We could have a whole podcast on this. You know, part of me hates the phrase true crime associated with my work precisely because of all this baggage. You know, I'm called the true crime pioneer. I like the pioneer part, the true crime thing, what gives me the willies. Well, first of on a larger level.

16:44The only animals on planet Earth that kill for any other reason than survival and food consumption are humans. It's part of the human condition to do terrible things. And so we don't say don't do stories about adultery. We don't say don't do stories about greed. So why should we not do stories about murder as long as they're done responsibly, as long as there's respect for the victim. But this idea that we just wallow in the misery of others without any purpose. Now, admittedly, there are some shows that may do that, just like there's bad political documentaries and bad social justice documentaries.

17:26But a good true crime documentary has the power to get people out of prison. My work has catalyzed the efforts to get six people out of prison, three on death row. My work and many others, and I should say other people have gotten people out of prison too. I don't have a corner on that market, but true crime also identifies new victims of serial killers. We've done that. There's nothing worse than losing a loved one other than not knowing what happened to that loved one. So that brings a measure of closure. In fact, in Son of Sam, we have new information about our new victim, Wendy Savino, that we highlight that has never been part of the narrative before.

18:06She's a survivor, surviving victims. My work and others have changed laws, you know. So as long as you're respectful to the victims, I think this is an essential tranche of documentary storytelling that can be very powerful, can have lots of social justice to it, and wop into great effect. The idea that this is new, I would argue that it's not new. It's just that documentary and podcasting has become how people get their information these days. And so, of course, that has made it very popular.

18:44Rebecca Lavoie:The case does take this whole new turn when The Son of Sam starts corresponding with columnist Jimmy Breslin. Joe, do you think Breslin's coverage helped or hurt things? Um, well, it's, I don't know if there's one answer, you know, the, the, the, the baiting him on the anniversary of the death, I think that was questionable and could have resulted in, you know, a lot of damage. But I think the interaction with Berkowitz led him to ultimately make a few mistakes that ultimately got him caught, although he would claim he made those mistakes on purpose and at a certain point wanted to get caught.

19:21You know, I don't I don't know if it was good or bad. It's the way it unfolded. And I think he probably if he wasn't getting media attention, he probably still would have gone on killing until he was caught. But I think it certainly encouraged him on a certain level. but I don't blame Breslin for that. Is that like taunting the guy into action? No, I don't think it was taunted. I mean, this man had just been going out looking to kill at all times. And where did it begin? It started with him writing about it. The 29th. He was the one that brought up the date. It's hard to say whether it made it better or worse, but it did push us into this era where we have developed now this kind of codependency of public's fascination with the crime.

20:05in the media's desire to serve it up, including us. Look, we serve it up. I try to do it with some social justice, with some social conscious that, you know, but we're serving it up to a public that really wants this stuff. And I think that's what Breslin was kind of an innovator in. You know, it doesn't mean it was good innovation or bad innovation. It just happened.

20:26Rebecca Lavoie:He was an innovator leading the conversation about what was going on, too. I mean, that's what Breslin was all about. Rachel, we heard that the Omega Task Force got hundreds and hundreds of leads that went nowhere. Was there anything in those files that showed anyone, someone somewhere, suspected Berkowitz? It sounds like they just got inundated with a flood of calls and law enforcement had to kind of figure out a way to like assess which ones were completely off the wall and not worth investigating. And they did track down some of them and then they turned out to not turn out to be useful leads.

21:00I think what's fascinating also about this story is something so simple did kind of change things in terms of identifying Berkowitz and catching him. And it's a simple parking ticket. The cops say to themselves, wait a second, what's a nice Jewish boy from Yonkers doing in a mobbed up neighborhood in South Brooklyn at 2.30 in the morning the night of a shooting? We got to call this guy. Like, at the very least, he might be a witness. Out of all the calls and people thinking they saw him and all the leads. And also, I should say, the innovative ways the police were trying to catch him. Like at one point, we were hearing stories from the detectives that they would put in mannequins in cars and park them by Leper's Lane, hoping that they would catch this killer.