Evil ‘Sam’ anniversary
IT WAS 40 years ago today when David Berkowitz, known as the “Son of Sam” killer, pleaded guilty to six murders during a spree that terrorized the city.
During the proceeding inside a Brooklyn courtroom on May 8, 1978, three judges — from each borough where the crimes were committed — asked Berkowitz to detail his rampage.
Berkowitz, a 24-year-old postal clerk, admitted he had gunned down five young women, a young man, and wounded seven.
“This plea of his is of his own choosing,” Berkowitz’s lawyer, Leon Stern, told the judges.
Brooklyn judge Joseph Corso wanted to make sure Berkowitz was aware of the penalty he was facing.
“Do you know what the maximum penalty is for murder in the second degree?” he asked Berkowitz, who was wearing a blue suit and striped shirt.
“Twenty-five years to life,” he responded.
In a surprise moment that has largely been lost to history, Mario Merola, the Bronx district attorney at the time, said Berkowitz also may have started up to 2,000 fires. That allegation — based on writings from Berkowitz’s diaries — was never brought up in court again.
Berkowitz has said he killed young women to satisfy his neighbor’s demonic dog.
“I just felt like I had no mind,” Berkowitz told Larry King in 2002. “I felt something else was controlling me.”
Berkowitz launched his crime spree when he fatally shot Donna Lauria, 18, and wounded her friend, Jody Valenti, 19, in the Bronx on July 29, 1976.
He used a .44-caliber Bulldog revolver.
His last victims were Stacey Moskowitz and her boyfriend Robert Violante, both 20, who were kissing in a parked car in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, on July 31, 1977.
Moskowitz died several hours later. Violante was shot in the eye and partially blinded.
Berkowitz, who had taunted cops through anonymous letters he mailed to the Daily News, was caught due to a $35 parking ticket he got before his last killing. A witness remembered seeing him lurking around the crime scene and getting a ticket for parking his Ford Galaxie in front of a hydrant.
The witness, Cacilia Davis, reached out to the NYPD four days later. Cops then crosschecked all the cars ticketed in the area that night.
Berkowitz, who lived in an apartment in Yonkers with Satanic verses painted on the walls, was one of the drivers who popped up. Cops nabbed him as he walked to his car on Aug. 10, 1977.
Berkowitz, now 64, is serving multiple life sentences. Behind bars, he claims to have found God and now calls himself “Son of Hope.” He has recently struggled with health issues and underwent emergency heart surgery in February.