David Berkowitz

In the summer of 1976, someone began hunting people in parked cars across New York City.^[1][2]
Over the following year, six people were killed and seven more were wounded, most of them couples sitting together in the dark in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens.^[1][2]

The gunman used a.44 caliber revolver.^[2]
He called himself “Son of Sam.”^[2]
And for a year, New York lived with the knowledge that he was still out there.

The man later identified as the gunman was David Richard Berkowitz, born June 1, 1953.
He would eventually confess, plead guilty, and spend the rest of his life behind bars.^[1][2]
But during that year between his first shot and his arrest, the fear he created reshaped how millions of people moved through their own city. Members of the public later described changed routines and lasting terror in the wake of the “Son of Sam” killings.^[1]

From Bronx Childhood to the Edge of Violence

Summer 1976: The Shootings Begin

By his own later description and contemporary reporting, the killing spree began in the summer of 1976.^[1]

Over roughly the next year, Berkowitz killed six people and wounded seven others.^[1][2]
Using a.44 caliber revolver, he targeted couples sitting in cars in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, turning secluded side streets and lovers’ lanes into crime scenes.^[2]

Victims’ names are largely absent from the surviving summaries and official catalogues, but contemporary accounts agree on those numbers: six dead, seven injured.^[1][2]
One of those killed was a young woman named Stacy Moskowitz, whose name would later appear in a key piece of forensic evidence.^[1]

For New Yorkers, the fear was not abstract. In later video clips, residents described how the shootings changed their behavior: avoiding certain neighborhoods, abandoning late-night outings, and looking over their shoulders even in previously familiar places.^[1]

“Son of Sam”: Letters and a Name That Stuck

As detectives from different boroughs tried to connect a growing list of shootings, a pattern emerged: the same caliber weapon, the same kind of targets, and no obvious traditional motive.^[1][2]

Then the shooter gave himself a name.

The Break: A Parking Ticket and a Yonkers Address

The trail finally narrowed in August 1977.

On August 10, 1977, police arrested David Berkowitz at his home in Yonkers, New York.^[2]
Officers had traced him by a seemingly minor detail: his car had been ticketed near the scene of the last shooting.^[2]

That parking ticket connected a vehicle to a crime scene. When investigators followed the lead to Yonkers, the focus of a sprawling citywide hunt abruptly converged on one man.

News footage from that night shows officers leading Berkowitz into police headquarters. In the clip, one officer says police are convinced they have “bagged the Son of Sam.”^[1]

What they found in his car would soon harden that belief into a case.

The.44 Bulldog and the Ballistics Match

Confession, Guilty Pleas, and Life Sentences

After his arrest, Berkowitz did not force a trial that would stretch on for years.

In the 1999 prison interview, he said he had “confessed to the crimes and pled guilty,” and that therefore “there was never a trial.”^[1]
Court summaries from contemporary reporting state that in June 1978, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.^[2]

Berkowitz has described his sentence in stark terms. He told the interviewer he was serving consecutive life sentences totaling more than 300 years.^[1]
He said his commitment papers listed consecutive terms that he understood to effectively mean life without parole, even though they included formal parole eligibility.^[1]

By the time of that 1999 conversation, Berkowitz said he had already been in prison for 22 years.^[1]

Surviving Prison, Then Working in Mental Health

Faith, Letters, and the Families Left Behind

From inside Sullivan, Berkowitz has tried to recast his identity, though not his culpability.

He said he became a Christian in prison and had been a believer in Jesus for 12 years by the time of the 1999 interview.^[1]
He credited the sharing of his Christian “testimony” with helping him form friendships with people on the outside over the years.^[1]

He also spoke about reaching out to some of the families whose lives he shattered. He said he prays for relatives of his victims and has written to some of them.^[1]
One example he gave was a long letter he wrote to the mother of Stacy Moskowitz many years after the crime, after receiving a letter from her in 1993.^[1]

These gestures did not change his sentence, nor could they undo what happened in New York in 1976 and 1977. But they became central to the way he now talks about his own story: not as a path to freedom, but as an attempt at remorse from within a system he expects never to leave.

Parole: Technical Eligibility, Real-World Denials

The Lasting Shadow of “Son of Sam”

The name “Son of Sam” now sits in library catalogs and crime histories as a fixed label, formally attached to “Berkowitz, David Richard, 1953–.”
It encapsulates a year when a man with a.44 revolver killed six people, wounded seven, and forced one of the world’s largest cities to rearrange its most basic habits out of fear.^[1][2]

Berkowitz’s own narrative—of early psychological trouble, military service, ordinary jobs, sudden violence, a stabbing behind bars, religious conversion, and work as a prison peer counselor—now unfolds entirely within prison walls.^[1]

Outside those walls, the enduring facts remain stark. Six people never came home.^[1][2]
Seven others lived on with the physical and psychological scars of being in his path.^[1][2]
And a city that once scanned the shadows of parked cars for a man with a.44 still remembers the summer when “Son of Sam” became more than a headline—it became a reason to be afraid of the dark.^[1][2]