- In the mid 1970s, new Yorkers were growing accustomed
to violence and a climate of fear permeating its burrows.
But in the summer of 1976,
an unseen menace emerged a serial killer who came
to be known as the son of Sam,
and the 44 caliber killer carried out a series of shootings.
Over the course of a year, he killed six people
and severely wounded seven at close range
with a 44 caliber bulldog revolver.
Several months before the shootings,
a young lady was nearly stabbed to death by the killer.
As she walked home, the serial killer typically targeted
young women with long, dark hair
and couples sitting in parked cars late at night.
There were no ties between the victims.
It seemed to be a case
of senseless stranger on stranger killings.
The trail of carnage was dictated by satanic voices
that only the son of Sam could hear.
It sent a chill through New Yorkers who feared
that they might be next.
In April, 1977,
the serial killer left a handwritten letter near the bodies
of his latest victims, identifying himself as the son of Sam
for the first time, the Kel Taunted Police
and the media with Catch Me, if You Can, letters signed
with scribbled monikers, wicked King, killer Duke of Death,
and the one that gripped the public son of Sam.
Additional rambling letters were sent
to newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin
and Police, with a killer taunting officers
and promising further attacks.
The extensive media coverage lent a grim celebrity status
to the son of Sam with international newspapers.
Closely following the case
as 1976 bled into 1977,
more young couples
and individuals fell victim to the phantom shooter,
The discos, where young New Yorkers danced the night away
to the Be gees closed early
so ladies could return home at a safe hour
to their anxious parents.
During the TV broadcast of Game two
of the 1977 World Series from Yankee Stadium,
viewers saw a fiery inferno.
In the background, it is believed
that legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell commented
The Bronx is burning.
The statement underscored the calamity.
That was New York City in the late 1970s.
In May of 1977,
the serial killer taunted the upcoming
anniversary of the first shooting.
In a letter to daily news columnist Jimmy Breslin, the son
of Sam, boasted about his thirst for blood
and promised more murders.
What will you have for July 29th?
He asked, as the date approached,
NYPD assigned 75 detectives
and 225 other members of the department to a drag dad
of the queens in the Bronx.
To find the man they dubbed, Mr.
Monster named the Omega Task Force
Officers beamed large flashlights into parked cars
to tell young people to go home.
Then on the night of July 13th at 9:37 PM
a lightning strike knocked out power
to the city's largest power generator,
triggering a power failure
that plunged New York City into darkness for 25 hours.
Mobs looted. 1,616 stores
smash shop windows stole furniture, clothes,
and electronics in an orgy of violence.
Dozens of pontiacs were stolen from a Bronx dealership.
They set fire to a five block stretch in the Crown Heights
and assaulted 550 officers.
Two weeks later, the Sun
of Sam struck again in the suffocating summer heat.
On July 31st, Stacey Moskowitz
and her boyfriend were each shot in the head while kissing
in their parked car in Brooklyn.
The headline on the front page
of the New York Post the following day, blared,
no one is Safe from the Son of Sam, New York City,
lived on edge.
Women dyed their hair
to avoid being the typical brunette target.
Then detectives got a break in the case.
A woman walking her dog the night
of the Moscowitz murders remembered seeing a patrolman
ticketing illegally parked cars near the crime scene.
A detective tracked down a ticket issued
to a David Berkowitz of Yonkers
or a Ford Galaxy parked too close to a fire hydrant.
On August 10th, detective Edward Ziko with his gun drawn,
arrested 24-year-old David Berkowitz
after ordering him out
of his car at the apartment house where he lived.
Well, you got me, Berkowitz said, adding a moment later,
I am the son of Sam
Berkowitz was a chubby, curly-haired,
baby faced postal worker with no criminal record.
His Ford Galaxy contained a rifle, a letter threatening
to attack a disco and a 44 caliber set of ammunition.
Inside Berkowitz apartment,
NYPD officers discovered a handwriting log,
documenting more than 1,411 fires
set throughout the city, noting dates, locations,
and weather conditions.
Some of the arsons coincided
with the same dates as his murders.
Berkowitz started lighting fires when he was six years old.
He would place his toys on the windowsill
and light them on fire.
He played dumb the few times his parents asked about the
scorched window sills.
Once in custody, Berkowitz claimed his neighbor, Jack Carr,
owned a black Labrador retriever named Harvey,
and that Harvey had been possessed by a demon
and commanded the killings.
He quickly confessed to all eight shootings
and received six life sentences in prison.
Later, Berkowitz claimed
that OC cult assisted him in the murders.
Now, that set off a flurry of TV shows and books,
but you're about to hear that it was a lie.
David Berkowitz confessed that he acted alone
to Dr. Michael Caparelli,
a behavioral science professor in Rhode Island
and former minister of 16 years.
With extensive experience ministering to prison inmates
Caparelli has written Monster Mirror,
a book about his 34 face-to-face interviews totaling 100
hours with one of America's most frightening serial killers.
Today, Berkowitz is 70 years old
and has had a quadruple bypass.
I am drawn to the subject of serial killers
and the mystery of what can cause someone
to become the personification of evil.
Imagine you listen to the True Crime Reporter podcast
because you too share this macabre curiosity.
Dr. Caparelli and I discussed the building blocks
that shaped Berkowitz into a serial killer,
including isolation, trauma, resentment, and shame,
and none of those factors excuse his murders.
We also examined Berkowitz jailhouse religious conversion
and whether true rehabilitation is possible
after committing such atrocities.
One disclaimer, in the wake of the murders,
New York passed legislation known as the Son of Sam Law
to prevent criminals from receiving money from selling their
stories to publishers and movie producers.
Berkowitz does not receive monetary or
otherwise profits from the sales of Capelli's book.
Here's my interview with Dr. Michael Caparelli,
the author of Monster Mirror.
Stay tuned to learn why Berkowitz called himself
the son of Sam.
- It was in 2019. I resigned from pastoring.
Right now I travel the country.
I'm probably speaking at about 70 venues a year.
I'll speak on depression. I speak on criminal psychology.
I speak on, uh, grief, anger management,
seminars, workshops.
I've written five books. Uh,
the book on David Berkowitz is my fifth.
In fact, it was the second book
that I mailed to David Berkowitz.
I mailed it to him at Shore Gun Correctional Facility.
Just had a heart for prisoners because of my background.
And David read the book, must have read a quick
because in about two weeks he responded back with a letter,
uh, saying, I read your book.
He said, uh, I've been looking
for a guy like you to tell my story.
He said, would you visit me?
Uh, you're dual qualifications, both as a clergyman
and, uh, a behavioral scientist,
a researcher in human behavior.
I had already conducted other studies,
I believe is a perfect fit to tell my story.
So I visited him on April 1st, 2022,
and that was the first session in 34 sessions
of meeting with David Berkowitz.
- Dr. Capal was curious.
He had heard that Berkowitz claimed to have converted
to Christianity in prison 35 years ago.
- You know, I kind of went into it being a kid from the
streets and with my education, a little cynical,
maybe skeptical, more than cynical.
And it was partly a curiosity to see if this conversion
was real, but then
to also understand the mental health
factors behind his violence.
Talk to me about your state of mind
when you gunned down 13 people lit 1400 fires
and stabbed a young lady.
What was going on in your head?
Probably because the fact that we live in a country
where there are 13 mass shootings a week.
I mean, those are staggering statistics.
13, you know, that includes
school shootings, mall shootings.
So trying to understand what's behind that sort of thing,
and wanting to know if his conversion was a
testimony or a testimony. Did
- He have a detailed memory of
what unfolded in at each crime?
- Yeah, well, you know, understand,
when David Berkowitz talks about the crimes,
he does not discuss the crimes as easily as some
of the other criminals that I've dealt with.
Um, or even guys you see on maybe tv, a Ted Bundy
or a Ed Kemper.
They sort of discuss it so matter of factly.
For David, it's, it's traumatizing.
And I don't say that in a his histrionic way.
He gets this, this vein across his forehead like he's
deadlifting 300 pounds
and the pressure, it's a weight, he calls it a weight,
and his eyes immediately fill up with tears.
So it's a hard subject.
It would almost be like talking to somebody about a loss.
Now that, that, that may be
insulting some of your listeners.
Like, he's responsible for this loss, and I get it.
Believe me, he's, he's the culprit. He owns it.
There's no justifying or minimizing it,
but it, it still affects him in a very personal way.
So in discussing the, he's very detailed in his childhood,
an incredible analysis of himself, even
in the events right before the crimes,
and even in between the crimes.
But when you actually deal with the murders itself,
it's a lot of fragments that I had to sort through
and put my interpretive skills to, to the task.
- Well, with your experience of, uh, interviewing inmates,
particularly serial killers, I'm sure you've got a,
a very good radar, the sense who's true.
Did you sense that he has real, any remorse
or, you know, misgivings like to take it all back?
- Oh, without a doubt.
You know, first of all, I was exposed to 1600 documents,
psychiatric reports, court records, prison records,
letters between David
and random strangers that write to him.
Letters between David and his father.
Letters between David
and family members of the victims in particular,
NASSA Moskowitz Nassa was the mom of Stacey.
Stacey was his final victim.
Him and Nassa before she passed from cancer stage four,
cancer developed a friendship.
Nassa forgave him and the heartfelt, you know,
statements in those letters.
So you got the 1600 documents,
and then you have, if you sit with somebody
for a hundred hours, Mr. Riggs,
you're not only seeing actions,
actions will tell you something about a person's character,
certainly more than talk,
but what's more profound than actions is reactions.
Reactions are actions that are unscripted when a man is
caught off guard actions in real time when he is taken
by surprise, when things don't go his way.
I got a chance to see David's reactions to all sorts of
unscripted stimuli.
I'll give you for instance, chapter two of my book.
My book is on Amazon. You can order it.
It's called Monster Mirror Chapter two.
I talk about a session where I arrive
and David had a conflict with an inmate,
and the inmate insulted him, and David was enraged.
He was not in good head space,
and I watched how he navigated
through anger for three and a half hours.
So I got a chance to see David Berkowitz very angry
because of this insult from an inmate.
But I watched him have anger and anger not have him.
I watched how he navigated through it.
Typically, when people get angry,
when they're really outta control,
they externalize, externalize.
They talk about people, places, things,
everything outside of them.
The angry are usually introspectively handicapped.
The ability to self-reflect is not very high
when someone's angry.
David Berkowitz took me through a long dark tunnel
into his own soul while he was angry
and really exploring what was underneath the anger,
which in this case was shame.
And we discussed the relationship between shame and anger,
and we also discussed how that applied
to the crimes and the murders.
So I got a chance to see his reactions
and I'd say, David Berkowitz's conversion is real.
Now, he's not a perfect man.
I have definitely noted some character defects
and even confronted him about them,
which I write about in the book.
So he's not perfect. But, uh,
I'd say he had a real conversion 35
years ago, which is another thing.
It's hard to fake a conversion for 35 years.
Jailhouse conversions are typically six months
before a parole hearing ,
they don't last for 35 years.
- So what precipitated the conversion?
- 1988, he's probably about, I don't know,
he's in his thirties and he's walking the prison
yard of Sullivan County.
It's January, it's a cold evening. He would go for walks.
He loves walking outside.
And another inmate by the name of Rick,
he's about five years younger than David, late twenties.
He approaches David
and he, uh, begins to tell David
that Jesus loves him and forgives him.
And David says, well, you don't know my story.
What I've done is unforgivable. And Rick is very persistent.
He joins David in the prison yard every night
over a span of six months.
Finally gives David a bible, a Gideon Bible,
a little pocket Bible with the New
Testament, the book of Psalms.
David brings the Bible back to his cell at night, starts
to read, gets on his knees,
and he says, I just started sobbing.
He said, I wasn't sobbing because I was in prison
and I I'll never see daylight, I'll never see free society.
He said, I wasn't sobbing because I messed up my life.
I was sobbing because of the hurt I caused people and
because of my sins against God.
It was a genuine repentance.
He said, I woke up the next day
and I felt like a thousand pounds was lifted from my chest.
He said, but still that weight, when I think about
what I did, it comes, it says, it's not a day that goes by.
I don't, at some point during the day feel that weight. So
- I've done a lot of stories about serial killers,
a television series, uh, spent time with him in prison.
And of course, the question I always get from listeners
and viewers is, why were they born that way?
Is it nature or nurture?
Did you get any kind of answer like that in all this time?
You spent examining his record and talking with him,
- With Oh yeah.
I mean, that age old question.
A question that is a very common theme in
human growth and development.
The trap that you have to be careful for when trying
to explain human behavior is causal reductionism.
It's to take a complex phenomenon
and to reduce it to one single factor.
Uh, it would be like playing the game.
Jingga and the tower collapses.
You would be a fool
to think the last block caused the tower to collapse.
Uh, in reality, it was a buildup of blocks.
And when you're explaining David Berkowitz's collapse his
psychological breakdown,
only a fool would think it's one factor.
It's a buildup of blocks.
Now, in spending a hundred hours,
I gathered nine themes from the data.
I collect my data. Qualitative study, conduct,
thematic analysis, where you are looking for themes.
And those nine themes,
I would consider the nine building blocks.
Now, are they the nine building blocks
behind every serial killer?
Probably not, but I be, I'll bet
that there's some, some commonality.
One of those building blocks from a very young
age was isolation.
Now we know from the data with behavioral science,
the more isolated people are,
the more their aggression levels go up, they get aggressive,
and the more empathetic or empathy levels go down.
Empathy represented by oxytocin, aggression represented
by cortisol and adrenaline.
So we as people, we don't do well in isolation.
David Berkowitz was always a part of groups.
He grew up in New York City.
He's not like the Unabomber, you know, shaggy beard,
hermit and a cabin.
So he's around people a lot,
but he's always sort of the outsider in the group.
There's a difference between being with people
and bonding with people.
David was with people.
He played on baseball teams, part
of the Appalachian Mountain Club, a group of teenagers
that would climb the mountains,
be bust from the city to upstate New York.
But he never connected. He always felt like the outsider.
In fact, in his letters that he left at the crime scene,
you go back and evaluate the content.
It speaks so much to the themes I gathered.
He says, I'm an outsider that's watching the world go
by programmed to kill.
And you'll see that isolation theme,
that outsider mentality, probably a amongst a lot of the,
especially the school shooters, the mass shooters, one
of the building blocks, I'd say
another building block was shame.
David Berkowitz experienced lots
of shaming in his childhood, not making excuses.
Mr. Riggs, there's no excuse for what he did.
Explanations just shedding some light.
When he was in the third grade, his teacher took his desk
because he was a very hyperactive child in the 1950s.
Nobody understands a DHD.
And the teacher places his desk in the center
of the classroom and says to the other kids, this is
where the bad boys sit.
So he's experiencing shame.
His uncle, his father's brother, adopted father, by the way,
would often body shame him
because he was chubby, overweight.
So shame was one of the building blocks.
We discussed head trauma.
A pipe hit him in the head At about 6, 6, 7 years old,
he was playing stickball in the Bronx on Westchester Avenue.
Another player on the team
accidentally hit him in the head with a pipe.
He was also hit by a car. Two years later.
Now we know TBI, traumatic brain injury.
About 63% of the criminal population in prison
has suffered A TBI.
That's significantly high compared
to the general population head trauma.
In this case, an assault against the frontal lobe can affect
one's impulse regulation.
It can also result in sensitivity to sound,
which David Berkowitz definitely suffers from misophonia.
We know that because of his irritation with barking dogs.
I also know that from watching his, uh, life in prison,
he's dealt with neighbors making loud noises,
how it drives him insane.
Um, so head trauma was another building block.
Now, when I gather all these building blocks,
just like building that tower in the game of Jenga,
at some point in the case of David Berkowitz,
the tower collapses.
I discuss each of those building blocks in the book Monira.
- After this message, I'll be back with Dr.
Caparelli to explain why Berkowitz called
himself the son of Sam.
What did you learn about the moniker son of Sam
and what does he think about it?
- David called himself the son of Sam during
that maniacal time in the 1970s, for a couple of reasons.
He was heavily involved in satanism,
and one of the particular gods that he served
God of the underworld was a God by the name of Sam Hane.
It was a druitt God that demanded human sacrifice.
At the same time, David's neighbor, a man by the name
of Sam, becomes a real source of irritation for David.
This is according to David's testimony,
the neighbor's dog is constantly
barking, a dog named Harvey.
And, uh, David starts to see through his sort
of delusional perspective, he sees Sam the neighbor
as a conduit, a vessel
and avatar almost of Sam Hane,
this God of the underworld.
So, and then the, the name Sam.
So you can imagine what that does in his mind.
The fact that Sam, his neighbor, his name Sam,
and has become this source of irritation, it starts
to play in his head, is this distorted narrative that Sam,
the neighbor, is sort of a representation of Sam Hane,
the un, the guard of God of the underworld.
And he becomes, in his mind, a, a messenger of Satan, a son
of Sam, in committing these crimes.
So we we're dealing with a guy
that definitely had a psychotic break,
and that psychotic break is, you know,
you could make a correlation between that
and some of the themes I discussed in the book,
especially isolation.
I mean, when people isolate for too long,
and David was certainly very isolated the last couple
of years of his crimes, the average person,
their head can get real tied up in knots.
I'm not saying the average person's gonna do what David did,
but I think at some level we're all susceptible
to the effects of isolation on the personality.
- Did he explain to you what he was thinking during the, uh,
that those crime sprees or what he was trying to achieve?
- Well, there were definitely urges to kill that built up
inside of him through a lifetime of resentment.
Resentment is another one of the themes.
The broader name, anger,
that was definitely something building from a young age.
I mean, his, his pyromania is,
and his vandalism of property was probably the,
the seedlings of, of the homicides, the murder.
I mean, he's light and fires constantly from the time he's
six, seven years old, very angry.
A lot of that having to do with his adoption, which is a,
a long story in itself.
And he sees the crimes as partly what he would call demonic,
under demonic influence,
but not this, this like devil made me do it.
Story he believes the demons were
working closely with this buildup of hate
inside his heart and the crimes themselves.
The murders were sort of a release.
He talks about wrestling with the urges.
He said, at some points I'd get in my car, I would drive,
leave my apartment in Yonkers, I park at Orchard Beach.
A very comfortable place for me that brought back a lot
of childhood memories and I would hope to escape the urges.
But, uh, he, he admitting most nights he would succumb
to the urges and he felt sort of a relief
in committing the crimes.
A dopamine rush, if you wanna call it that,
that brought some temporary relief, just like a drug addict
is experiencing relief from a substance
from these particular urges.
But the relief, just like a drug would only last
for a certain window of time.
And the next day he's back to these urges building again
and looking for that outlet of frustration.
- Does he expect to win parole someday? And is he eligible?
- He is. He goes before the parole board every two years,
and he does not expect to meet parole.
He didn't go to a good portion of his parole hearings,
but it was perceived as arrogance on behalf
of the parole committee and the,
the families of the victims.
Like how dare he not show up?
So he didn't want to communicate that message.
So now he goes before the parole board every June,
every other June, every two years he's up
for parole this coming June.
And, uh, he goes just simply with the expectation
of sharing his story of conversion.
But he knows the chances are very slim.
- Dr. Caparelli says isolation
and loneliness are contributing factors to the epidemic
of mass shootings
and impulsive violence sweeping the United States.
- We live in a very extroverted nation.
And you could compare our culture to Japan, for instance.
We're pretty out there. I mean, look at his social media.
Selfies are all over the place,
but extroversion in community are not the same thing.
That's why I make the point in the book
that David was in New York City, very populated.
People are all the time surrounding him, but to be known
and intimacy is to know and to be known.
It's, I know you, you know me.
It's not just shoot the breeze.
Social media's kind of painted this idea
that I'm connected, but are you really?
You got 5,000 friends, but do they really know you?
So, uh, you know, social a great
supplement for relationships.
If you've got real life relationships
and you are using it to supplement, wonderful.
But it's a horrible substitute if it's all you got.
Which more and more people today are sort of turning
to social media because it's easier than dealing
with the risk that come with relationship.
Real face-to-face relationship
where I have a whole lot less control.
Social media is becoming the pseudo relationship.
It's becoming the, I wanna call it the counterfeit,
if it's a substitute.
So with that said, loneliness is gonna skyrocket.
The more people are on social media, the more lonely
and the more depressed they get
according to mood inventories.
And I think the, you're gonna,
you're gonna see less active shooters, less serial killers
in your collectivist countries of the world.
You're not gonna see the same level of serial killings
and school shootings statistically in collectivist nations,
villages in Africa, uh, Asia,
even some countries in in Europe.
But in your more indi, individualistic cultures
where we're sort of competing
with each other more than we are completing each other in
that type of individualistic environment, more loneliness.
More isolation, which paves the way for more violence
- Now from my reporter's notebook.
Some closing thoughts, David Berkowitz serves as an extreme
yet instructive case study about
how social isolation can contribute to violence
by young males, which has become increasingly
common in the United States.
The underlying message of his book, monster Mirror,
is the need for empathy
and emotional intelligence
in today's disconnected society.