The Son of Sam Serial Killer Terrorized New York City with Shootings and Cryptic Letters. Inside the Shocking Case of David Berkowitz By Jessica Sager

The Son of Sam terrified New Yorkers for over a year before he was caught for killing six people and injuring 11 more — and nearly 50 years later, details are still emerging about David Berkowitz.

Berkowitz, now 72, opens up in never-before-heard audio in the new Netflix docuseries Conversations with a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes, out on July 30.

It features audio from an interview with crime reporter Jack Jones from 1980, when he sat down with Berkowitz at Attica Correctional Facility. The show also highlights conversations with detectives, survivors and reporters connected with the case.

The discussions range from Berkowitz’s childhood to his motives, mindset and M.O. when he murdered innocent people. He also touches on the aftermath of the slayings, why he toyed with the press and police and what his life is like now.

Here’s everything to know about David Berkowitz a.k.a. the Son of Sam and the terror he inflicted in the Big Apple.

Who was the Son of Sam killer?

Berkowitz is the .44 Caliber Killer and the Son of Sam, the latter of which is a nickname he gave himself.

Berkowitz was born Richard David Falco in Brooklyn, N.Y., on June 1, 1953. Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz later adopted him, and when David was in middle school, they told him that his biological mother died in childbirth and that his father was too wracked with grief to care for him.

In Conversations With a Killer, Berkowitz says that his antisocial behavior began after learning his birth mother’s fate, and that he began committing vandalism, setting small fires, ripping Pearl’s clothes and breaking all of her lipsticks. Berkowitz said he was “wracked with guilt” over his mother’s death, which led to him acting out.

Pearl died from breast cancer when Berkowitz was around 14 years old, causing him more guilt. He lived with Nathan in the Co-op City neighborhood of the Bronx after her death. As a teen, he became a “police buff” and “fire buff,” listening to emergency calls on a scanner and going to the scenes to try to help.

When he graduated from high school in June 1971, Berkowitz enlisted in the Army and served in the demilitarized zone of South Korea. After returning home, he tried to find his birth father, but it stalled. In a turn of events, Berkowitz discovered his birth mother, Betty Falco, was alive, and they eventually met. He learned that he was born out of wedlock, and his biological father cut off Betty when she gave birth.

Berkowitz went on to work a series of dead-end jobs. In 1976, Berkowitz visited an Army friend in Texas and saw Martin Scorsese’s film Taxi Driver for the first time. He told Jones that he saw himself as Robert De Niro’s character, Travis Bickle. During the same trip, he bought the .44 caliber gun he’d later use in his murders.

How many people did the Son of Sam shoot?

Berkowitz is confirmed to have shot 13 people, including Rosemary Keenan, Carl Denaro, Donna DeMasi, Joanne Lomino, Christine Freund, John Diel, Virginia Voskerichian, Valentina Suriani, Alexander Esau, Sal Lupo, Judy Placido, Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante. Several of them died.

On Oct. 23, 1976, he targeted Rosemary Keenan, 18, and Carl Denaro, 20, while they were kissing in Keenan’s car in Flushing, Queens. Neither of them saw Berkowitz, and both survived.

“I have some limited vision but no other negative effects from being shot that night,” Denaro told PEOPLE in July 2017. “I’m one of the luckiest guys in the world. I didn’t realize how lucky I was until my 30s. When you’re 20, you’re invincible. It took 10 years before I understood the severity of what had happened.”

A month later, Berkowitz shot high school students Donna DeMasi, 16, and Joanne Lomino, 18, on Nov. 27, 1976, while they were sitting on Lomino’s stoop in Bellerose, Queens. They both survived, but Lomino was left paralyzed from the incident, according to The New York Times.

Berkowitz shot Christine Freund, 26, and her fiancé John Diel, 30, while they were in Diel’s car in Forest Hills, Queens, after seeing the movie Rocky on Jan. 30, 1977. Diel survived with minor injuries and drove to get help, but Freund, who was shot twice, was pronounced dead hours later at a nearby hospital.

“I don’t think this guy deserves to live,” Diel told PEOPLE while Berkowitz was still unknown and at large. “I keep hoping he’ll see my car again and stop to look at it. Chris was the first girl I really loved. It’s like you got something that belongs to you, and somebody comes and takes it away. And in this case you can’t do nothin’ about it.”

Virginia Voskerichian, a 19-year-old Columbia University student, was walking to her Forest Hills, Queens, home on March 8, 1977, when Berkowitz shot her to death.

Berkowitz murdered Valentina Suriani, 18, and her boyfriend, Alexander Esau, 20, on April 17, 1977, while they were sitting in her car in the Bronx. Suriani died instantly, while Esau survived long enough to make it to a hospital, where he later died. Berkowitz left a note at the scene addressed to the NYPD’s chief detective in which he first referred to himself as “Son of Sam.”

On June 26, 1977, Berkowitz shot Salvatore Lupo and Judy Placido when they were in Lupo’s parked car outside of a disco in Bayside, Queens. They both survived, The New York Times reported.

The Son of Sam’s last confirmed slaying was Stacy Moskowitz, 20, on July 31, 1977. He shot into the car where Moskowitz and her date, Robert Violante, 20, were parked and kissing. Violante survived but is now vision-impaired from the shooting; Moskowitz died in a hospital several hours later, per CBS News.

Where did the Son of Sam get his name?

At the time of the murders, Berkowitz lived in a building in front of his neighbor, Sam Carr. He had a Labrador retriever named Harvey who barked frequently, agitating Berkowitz.

“Since he was responsible for keeping me up and in an agitated state all the time, that dog raised hell in my life,” Berkowitz said in Conversations With a Killer.

Berkowitz began firebombing the Carrs’ home, sending them threatening letters and even shooting Harvey, who survived. The Carr family corroborated these events during an interview with The New York Times.

Berkowitz used the moniker “Son of Sam” in some of his taunting letters to police and reporters at the New York Post and New York Daily News, as well as on the walls of his apartment. He later claimed that Harvey inspired the name because he belonged to Carr, and that demons spoke to him through Harvey and instructed him to kill.

Prior to that, he also referred to himself as “the Chubby Behemouth” and “Beelzebub.”

Berkowitz later admitted that he didn’t actually hear voices and was “just a sham,” though he wanted it to be true.

“I didn’t, at that time, understand any motives for what I was doing,” he told Jones of the hoax in Conversations With a Killer. “I needed some type of justification. I had to convince myself that, ‘No, I’m not the man that’s doing this. It’s some sinister force that’s controlling me.'”

He added that he deliberately planted notes in his apartment to make investigators think he was mentally unfit to stand trial.

What was the Son of Sam’s motive?

Berkowitz’s own descriptions of his motives vary, but he specified that feeling like he never fit in and being rejected by women were each part of what drove him to kill.

“I was frustrated as hell, I felt really dejected. No job satisfaction, no social life satisfaction … I had reduced [women] to just objects of my anger, hatred or whatever,” he said in Conversations With a Killer.

Berkowitz explained in the docuseries that his misogyny partially stemmed from being conceived out of wedlock, as well as from when a high school girlfriend named Iris cheated on him and made him want to hurt someone.

“My hidden or repressed feelings or emotions … that were below the surface, [police] can’t see that,” he said. “They didn’t understand the motives. It wasn’t so much them that I was trying to fool, it was myself. I wanted to do something good. I wanted to be needed by somebody. I’d have much rather been a hero than a villain.”

Did the Son of Sam get caught?

Cops busted Berkowitz outside of his apartment in Yonkers, N.Y., on Aug. 10, 1977, which stemmed from a simple inquiry. After parking illegally near the scene of Moskowitz’s murder on July 31, 1977, Berkowitz got a ticket. Detectives initially tried to contact him to see if he witnessed the shooting, but he never answered their calls.

Investigators then called the Yonkers Police Department, and Carr’s daughter, Wheat Carr, a civilian dispatcher, answered. When they mentioned Berkowitz, she told them that he’d been harassing their family and sending them threatening letters, per Conversations With a Killer. It was then that they knew they had their suspect.

Officers went to Berkowitz’s apartment and noticed his vehicle outside had a duffel bag with a semi-automatic rifle sticking out of it, as well as an envelope addressed to the Suffolk County police. It had the same handwriting as the letters the Son of Sam sent to the media.

When they finally arrested him, Berkowitz told officers, “You got me. What took you so long?”

Where is the Son of Sam killer now?

In May 1978, Berkowitz pleaded guilty to all six homicides, according to The New York Times. He is currently serving six consecutive life sentences at Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Wallkill, N.Y. Berkowitz is a born-again Christian who goes by “Brother Dave” and is part of an online ministry.

Minister Roxanne Tauriello, a frequent visitor of Berkowitz, told PEOPLE, “[He] has to wake up every day and remember what he did to innocent people. David grieves over that a lot, and … you never want to say ‘Son of Sam’ in front of him. He never uses that name, ever.”

According to the New York Post, Berkowitz became eligible for parole in 2002 and has had hearings every two years since. He was last denied parole in May 2024.

Berkowitz told the Post that despite attending all of his parole hearings, he doesn’t actually want to leave prison.

“To not attend a hearing can be viewed as being defiant towards authority, and that’s not me,” he explained. “Most of all, I attend in order to openly apologize for my past crimes and to express my remorse.”

In the final episode of Conversations with a Killer, Berkowitz told Berlinger, “I’m so very sorry for what happened. I was in a very dark space in my life. Things were falling apart for me mentally, spiritually. My life spun out of control, and I just couldn’t get on that right path.”

When asked what advice he’d give to his younger self, Berkowitz replied, “I would say, ‘Dave, run for your life. Get help.’ I could have gone to my dad, I could have gone to my sister. But I kept everything to myself, thinking, ‘I can handle everything.’ But the pull was too strong.”

He continued. “I wish I could start all over again and take a better path in life, but it just didn’t work out that way.”