BookCaps - Son of Sam: A Biography of David Berkowitz

LifeCaps Presents:

Son of Sam

A Biography of David Berkowitz

By Paul Brody

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2013. All Rights Reserved.

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Table of Contents

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Chapter 1: The Early Years of David Berkowitz

Betty Broder was a young, single parent struggling to get by in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York in the 1930s. Her family had pieced together a living during the Great Depression, and when Betty announced that she was getting married to Tony Falco, they had no money to help the young couple--even if they had approved of the marriage. The Broders were Jewish and were opposed to Betty marrying Falco, an Italian gentile. Betty and Tony managed to find money to open a fish market in 1939 before Betty gave birth to their only child, Roslyn. Sometime after Roslyn was born, Tony left Betty for another woman. Betty was forced to close the fish market and raise Roslyn on her own.

After getting involved with a married real estate agent named Joseph Kleinman, Betty became pregnant with his baby. Kleinman insisted that she could not keep the child, so she made arrangements to have the baby adopted. When the baby boy was born on June 1, 1953, Betty listed Tony Falco as the father on the childs birth certificate. Betty continued her relationship with Kleinman until his death in 1965 while the infant Richard David Falco went to live his life in the Bronx as the only child of Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz.

Nathan owned a hardware store and was frequently away from home. While there was tension between David and his father, who phrased Davids presence in the world as a mistake, he had an unusually close relationship to Pearl. Even she had a difficult time managing David, though. He was hyperactive, at times, and had a bullys streak in him. He was also bigger and heavier than other children his age, which made him feel like something of an outcast, even though neighbors remarked that he was a good-looking boy. David missed a terrific deal of school, possibly because of the teasing or possibly simply due to disinterest.

Despite these issues, there were certainly no signs of the magnitude of terror that David would inflict on the city of New York. When he was 7 years old, David was hit by a car and suffered a head injury, although it is not known if that had any long-term effects. However, David had a fetish for burning bugs, and that progressed to arson when he was older. Many that evaluated David as an adult believe that the loss of his mother also had an impact on him. When he was young, Nathan and Pearl did not tell their son that Pearl had already battled breast cancer once before. In 1965 and in 1967 the cancer returned, and Davids world was turned upside down. He was shocked. He had no healthy method of coping with his mothers illness and watching her decline during her chemotherapy treatment. Predictably, when Pearl died in 1967, David was devastated.

David became increasingly introverted following his mothers death. He questioned whether it was part of Gods larger plan to destroy him. His focus on his schoolwork at Christopher Columbus High School deteriorated along with his mental stability. In 1971, David was left alone in New York City when Nathan remarried a woman that David did not like. She did care for David much, either. Soon after the wedding, Nathan and his new wife moved to Boynton Beach near Miami, Florida. With no family and few friends, the environment was ripe for David to sink further and further into his fantasy world. His only real friend was a woman named Iris Gerhard, who David considered a girlfriend, although she saw their relationship as purely platonic. David joined the United States Army in the summer of 1971. The U.S. was involved in the Vietnam War at this time, but David avoided serving in Vietnam when he was assigned to a unit in Korea. Friends say that the Army changed him. His stint in the military not only provided him with his first sexual experience, which resulted in a sexually transmitted disease, but it also taught him to shoot a gun. He proved to be a good marksman. After he was honorably discharged from the Army in 1974, David returned to New York, with few prospects and no goals.

Berkowitzs Mental Decline

At 21 years old, Berkowitz was lonely when he returned to New York. Many of his friends had moved away and with no family to turn to, he used money he had saved to rent an apartment and enroll in classes at Bronx Community College. The friends that remained said that he returned from his service in the Army a devilishly difficult man to talk to and highly argumentative. His political views and his views on war changed, too. Berkowitz had been pro-military action when he joined the Army, but by the time he got out, he was more of a dove, or a pacifist. A friend who spoke to reporters after Berkowitzs arrest in 1977 said that he thought that Berkowitzs mind sort of went while he was in the Army.

Berkowitz worked odd jobs, including spending time as a cab driver, a security guard, and finally as a mail sorter at the Bronx Post Office, where he worked the night shift. His fellow postal worker employees described him as quiet, reserved, and shy, recalling that he rarely interacted with anyone unless he was spoken to first. Berkowitz rented an apartment for $250 a month in Yonkers. His neighbors thought that he was quick-tempered, and he became known to the local police department because of disputes with his neighbors. One of his neighbors was Craig Glassman, a corporal for the Westchester County Sheriffs Emergency Force. Glassman lived on the floor below Berkowitz and over time received four handwritten threatening notes. Edna Williams, who lived next door to Berkowitz, never saw him in the two years that they were neighbors.

At one point, Berkowitz reconnected with his birth mother, Betty Falco. He visited Betty and Roslyn regularly at first, but when he found out why he was given up for adoption, he lost interest in those relationships and stopped visiting. Those who have analyzed Berkowitzs past suggest that this disappointment, along with the death of his mother and his lack of success in developing successful relationships with women all combined to create a level of hatred for women that became deadly. When Berkowitz was in prison, he eventually admitted that this was, indeed, the real driving force behind his attacks despite his initial claims that he was driven by demons. In a letter to his father in late 1975, Berkowitz wrote about his depression and dark mood, saying, The girls call me ugly and they bother me the most.

Before Berkowitz turned to murder, his infatuation was with fire. His pyromania resulted in him setting nearly 1,500 fires in New York City between 1974 and 1977. Each fire was carefully noted in a journal, in which he referred to himself as The Phantom of the Bronx. FBI Agent Robert K. Ressler is noted for profiling the motivation and behavior of serial killers and interviewed Berkowitz in 1979. Regarding the subject of Berkowitzs pyromania Ressler said, "Most arsonists like the feeling that they are responsible for the excitement and violence of a fire. With the simple act of lighting matches, they control events in society that are not normally controlled As it was for many killers, Berkowitz felt that the fires gave him some sense of control when he felt like he could control darned little else in his life.