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David Richard Berkowitz (born Richard David Falco, June 1, 1953), also known as the Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer who pled guilty to perpetrating eight shootings in New York City between July 1976 and July 1977, which resulted in six fatalities. Berkowitz grew up in New York City and served in the United States Army. Using a .44 Special caliber Bulldog revolver, he killed six people and wounded seven others by July 1977, terrorizing New Yorkers. Berkowitz eluded the biggest police manhunt in the city's history while leaving letters that mocked the police and promised further crimes, which were highly publicized by the press. Berkowitz was arrested on August 10, 1977, and subsequently indicted for eight shootings. He confessed to all of them, and initially claimed to have been obeying the orders of a demon manifested in the form of a black dog belonging to his neighbor, "Sam". After being found mentally competent to stand trial, he pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences in state prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. He subsequently admitted that the dog-and-devil story was a hoax. In police investigations, Berkowitz was also implicated in many unsolved arsons in the city. Intense media coverage of the case lent a kind of celebrity status to Berkowitz, which many observers noted that he seemed to enjoy. The New York State Legislature enacted new statutes, known popularly as "Son of Sam laws", designed to keep criminals from financially profiting from the publicity created by their crimes. The statutes have remained in New York despite various legal challenges, and similar laws have been enacted in several other states. During the mid-1990s, Berkowitz, by then professing to be a converted evangelical Christian, amended his confession to claim that he had been a member of a violent Satanic cult that orchestrated the incidents as ritual murder. A new investigation of the murders began in 1996 but was suspended indefinitely after inconclusive findings. Early life David Berkowitz was born Richard David Falco on June 1, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York.: 73  Within a few days of his birth, his biological mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Broder, gave the child away.: 80  Broder had grown up as part of an impoverished family and was working as a waitress. In 1936, she had married Tony Falco, an Italian American.: 76–9  After a marriage of less than four years, Falco left her for another woman.: 76  Berkowitz's biological father, Joseph Kleinman, was a married businessman who, like Berkowitz's mother, was Jewish. The infant Richard was adopted by Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz of the Bronx.: 16  The couple were Jewish hardware store retailers of modest means, and childless in middle age. They reversed the order of the boy's first and middle names and gave him their own surname, raising the young David Richard Berkowitz as their only child. Berkowitz had a bar mitzvah and was frequently bullied for being Jewish.: 57  Journalist John Vincent Sanders wrote that Berkowitz's childhood was "somewhat troubled". Although of above-average intelligence, he lost interest in his education at an early age and became infatuated with petty larceny and starting fires. He suffered head injuries as a child. Neighbors and relatives would recall Berkowitz as difficult, spoiled, and a bully. His adoptive parents consulted at least one psychotherapist due to his misconduct, but his misbehavior never resulted in a legal intervention or serious mention in his school records. He attended Public School #123 and Public School #77. Berkowitz's adoptive mother died of breast cancer when he was 14 years old,: 18  and his home life became strained in later years, particularly because he disliked his adoptive father's second wife.: 60–1  Berkowitz lived with his father while attending Christopher Columbus High School (graduating in 1971) and college in a four-and-a-half-room apartment at 170 Dreiser Loop in Co-op City from 1967 to 1971. In 1971, at age 17, Berkowitz joined the United States Army and served at Fort Knox in the U.S. and with an infantry division in South Korea. After an honorable discharge in June 1974, he located his birth mother, Betty. After a few visits, she disclosed the details of his birth. The news greatly disturbed Berkowitz, and he was particularly distraught by the array of reluctant father figures.: 76–79  Forensic anthropologist Elliott Leyton described Berkowitz's discovery of his birth details as the "primary crisis" of his life, a revelation that shattered his sense of identity. His communication with his birth mother later lapsed, but for a time he remained in communication with his adoptive sister, Roslyn. Berkowitz attended Bronx Community College for one year, enrolling in the spring of 1975. In 1976, he went to work as a driver for the Co-Op City Taxi Company. He subsequently had several non-professional jobs, and at the time of his arrest was working as a letter sorter for the United States Postal Service. Beginning of crimes (late 1975 to early 1977) During the mid-1970s, Berkowitz began committing violent crimes. He bungled his first attempt at murder using a knife, then switched to a handgun and began a lengthy crime spree throughout the New York boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, seeking young female victims. All but one of the crime scenes involved two victims; he infamously committed some of his attacks while the women sat with boyfriends in parked cars. Berkowitz exhibited an enduring enjoyment of his activities, often returning to the scenes of his crimes. Forman stabbing (December 1975) Berkowitz claimed that when he was 22 years old he committed his first attack on Christmas Eve 1975, when he used a hunting knife to stab two women in Co-op City. The first alleged victim, a Hispanic woman, was never identified by police. The second was 15-year-old Michelle Forman, a sophomore at Truman High School, whom he stabbed six times on a bridge near Dreiser Loop and whose injuries were serious enough for her to be hospitalized for a week. Berkowitz was not suspected of these crimes, and soon afterward he relocated to an apartment in Yonkers. Lauria and Valenti shooting (July 1976) The first shooting attributed to Berkowitz occurred in the Pelham Bay neighborhood of the Bronx. At about 1:10 a.m. on July 29, 1976, Donna Lauria (18), an emergency medical technician, and her friend Jody Valenti (19), a nurse, were sitting in Valenti's double-parked Oldsmobile discussing their evening at Peachtree's, a New Rochelle discotheque. Lauria opened the car door to leave and noticed a man quickly approaching. Startled and angered by the man's sudden appearance, she said, "Now what is this..." The man produced a gun from the paper bag that he carried and crouched. Bracing one elbow on his knee, he aimed his weapon with both hands and fired. Lauria was struck by one bullet that.... Discover the David Cataneo popular books. Find the top 100 most popular David Cataneo books.