‘Son of Sam’ David Berkowitz Speaks to the Daily News, Decries Violence as ‘Senseless’ and Prays for His Victims in Notorious 19
He is one of New York’s most notorious serial killers.
He shot 13 people in cold blood, killing six.
Yet 35 years to the day his reign of terror ended, David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, speaks gently from his jail cell with the words: society needs to take the “glory out of guns.”
“It’s all senseless,” he said from the maximum security Sullivan County Correctional Facility in upstate New York, where he is serving six consecutive 25 years-to-life sentences.
The “.44 Caliber Killer” lamented the recent spate of shootings that have claimed such innocents as a young boy in the Bronx, moviegoers in Aurora, Colo., and worshipers at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
“Society has to take the glory out of guns. Young people have no business carrying a gun. I would love to speak bluntly to those gangbanging teens and wanna-bes and tell them prison is nothing like what you think. If you’re packing a gun, you’re making a big mistake, and you’ll regret it.”
Police arrested Berkowitz outside his Yonkers home on Aug. 10, 1977, ending a 13-month shooting spree. Since then, Berkowitz appears to have gone through a personal and spiritual transformation, and developed an all-consuming passion to discourage youth from lives of crime.
“I’m looking beyond gun control. That’s for the legislators to wrangle with,” he said. “My hope is just that young people would understand just how terrible this violence is. When they use a gun against someone else, they ruin their lives too,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”