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David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz
David Berkowitz was born on June 1, 1953, to Betty Broder and a married man his mother was having an affair with named Joseph Kleinman. He was then adopted by Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz. Growing up, he was always big for his age, and was classified as a loner. In 1967, his adoptive mother, Pearl, died of breast cancer. David was devastated after Pearl’s death and he began to fall behind in school and question his religion. When he turned 17, his adoptive father married another woman and they moved to a retirement community in Florida, leaving David by himself in New York. After high school, he took some classes at Bronx Community College, and then joined the army in 1971 for three years and became an expert marksman.
David never became involved in a romantic relationship. This and his resentment towards his own mother would begin to build up inside of him, and be his motive for committing his crimes.
Berkowitz began setting small fires throughout New York. He would set fires in trashcans, alleyways, and abandoned buildings. He never killed anyone by doing this, or intended to. He was what John Douglas called a “Fetish Arsonist.” He wasn’t so mush of a threat to the public as he was a nuisance to the police and fire department. In Berkowitz’s diary, he wrote about over two thousand fires he had set, and how he would masturbate to them when the police and fire department would arrive. Many criminals have done this. They say that it gives them power by allowing them to control where the police and fire department go.
His first attack was on Christmas Eve of 1975, when he saw a woman leaving the grocery store. He said that the demons inside his head had told him that “she needed to be sacrificed.” David walked up behind her and stabbed her twice in the back. He claims that she turned around and began to scream, which caused him to run away. The police have not been able to verify this story. Shortly afterwards, David found his next victim, 15 year old Michelle Forman. He again came up behind her, only this time he stabbed her in the head and she ended up with a total of six stab wounds. She also survived when she fought back and scared him off. This would be the beginning of the .44 caliber killer, the Son of Sam, David Berkowitz.
When David Berkowitz was later arrested, he told officials that demons inside his head told him when and who to kill. Berkowitz said that when he had lived in a two-family house for three months, his neighbor’s dogs would bark, and that was the way that the demons would communicate with him. He also claimed that the Cassara family, who owned the house, were the hosts of other demons, including The Blood Monster, John Wheaties, and General Jack Cosmo.
After living with the Cassara’s and quitting his job as a security guard and becoming a taxi driver, he rented an appartment next to Sam Carr, who was also a host for a demon. David said that this was the one who commanded him to kill, hence his alias, the Son of Sam.
Berkowitz’s vicims were primarily female. We would walk the streets late at night, looking for young women and young couples to kill. Some where walking home, others were sitting in their cars, talking. He would then approach his victim and shoot them with his gun, a .44 caliber Charter Arms Bulldog. He killed six people and wounded nine more. The follwing is a list of his victims and the date of the attacks:
Donna Laurie and Jody Valenti, July 29, 1976.
Carl Denaro and Rosemary Keenan, October 23, 1976.
Donna DeMasi and Joanne Lomino, November 26, 1976.
Christine Freund and John Diel, January 30, 1977.
Virginia Voskerichian, March 8, 1977.
Valentina Suriani and Alexander Esau, April 17, 1977.
Judy Placido and Sal Lupo, Jun 26, 1977.
Stacy Moskowitz and Bobby Violante, July 31, 1977.
In the beginning, very little evidence was found at the crime scenes and survivors were only able to give vauge descriptions of the killer. The police were not able to connect the attacks until they had found an intact bullet from the Christine Freund and John Diel attack. Detectives came to the comclusion that they were after a man who was stalking women with a .44 caliber gun. A homocide task force was formed and the bullets were sent to balistics to discover that they were from a Charter Arms Bulldog. Detectives also dug into the lives of the victims and found that the killer was randomly choosing his victims.
They would later get a better idea of what was running through the killers head after the murder of Valentina Suriani and Alexander Esau. When the police arrived at the scene, they found a letter, and it was then that they knew about the “Son of Sam.” The following is the content of the letter:
Dear Captain Joseph Borrelli,
I am deeply hurt by your calling me a wemon hater. I am not. But I am a monster. I am the 'Son of Sam.' I am a little brat.
When father Sam gets drunk he gets mean. He beats his family. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. Sam loves to drink blood.
'Go out and kill,' commands father Sam.
'Behind our house some rest. Mostly young -- raped and slaughtered -- their blood drained -- just bones now.
Papa Sam keeps me locked in the attic too. I can't get out but I look out the attic window and watch the world go by.
I feel like an outsider. I am on a different wavelength then everybody else -- programmed too kill.
However, to stop me you must kill me. Attention all police: Shoot me first -- shoot to kill or else keep out of my way or you will die!
Papa Sam is old now. He needs some blood to preserve his youth. He has had too many heart attacks. 'Ugh, me hoot, it hurts, sonny boy.'
I miss my pretty princess most of all. She's resting in our ladies house. But I'll see her soon.
I am the 'Monster' -- 'Beelzebub' -- the chubby behemouth.
I love to hunt. Prowling the streets looking for fair game -- tasty meat. The wemon of Queens are prettyist of all. It must be the water they drink. I live for the hunt -- my life. Blood for papa.
Mr. Borrelli, sir, I don't want to kill anymore. No sur, no more but I must, 'honour thy father.'
I want to make love to the world. I love people. I don't belong on earth. Return me to yahoos.
To the people of Queens, I love you. And I want to wish all of you a happy Easter. May
God bless you in this life and in the next.
I say goodbye and goodnight.
Police: Let me haunt you with these words;
I’ll be back! I’ll be back! To be interrpreted as – bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, - ugh!!
Yours in murder
Mr. Monster
There were no useful fingerprints on the letter and the envelope had been handled by too many people to single out prints from one person, but they did find a partial fingerprint on his second letter that he sent to the Daily News. They published all of the letter, except two paragraphs that the police requested that they leave out. The omitted portion read:
Here are some names to help you along. Forward them to the Inspector for use by the NCIC [National Crime Information Center] Center. They have everything on computer, everything. They just might turn up, from some other crimes. Maybe they could make associations.
Duke of Death. Wicked King Wicker. The twenty-two Disciples of Hell. And lastly, John Wheaties, rapist and suffocator of young girls. P.S., drive on, think positive, get off your butts, knock on coffins, etc.
The finger print that they pulled from the second letter were not useful until they found the killer. Berkowitz had not been arrested before, therefore his fingerprints were not in the database. The print however did help prove that David Berkowitz was the “Son of Sam’ while he was on trial.
The taskforce continued to search for information on the killer. They called in over forty five psychologists to help contribute to the psychological profile, and in May of 1977 they decided that they were looking for a paranoid schiezophrenic who thought he was possesed by a demonic power. He would be a loner who had troubles establishing relationships, exspecialy ones with women. They looked through gun registration databases, the whereabouts and activities of former mental patients, and disquailified thousands of leads they received from people who thought the killer could be their neighbor who stayed out late at night, or their borther-in-law who collected guns.
On June 10, 1977, the Son of Sam wrote another letter. It was sent to Jack Cassara, the man that owned the two family house that berkowitz had lived in for three months. The card contained a photograph of a German Shepard Dog and read:
Dear Jack, I'm sorry to hear about that fall you took from the roof of your house. Just want to say 'I'm sorry' but I'm sure it won't be long until you feel much better, healthy, well and strong: Please be careful next time. Since your going to be confined for a long time, let us know if Nann needs anything.
Sincerely: Sam and Francis.
Jack Cassara and Sam Carr had never met before, nor did they know of their connection by David Berkowitz. Cassara called Carr and they agreed to meet. The Carr’s told of how they had received strange letters about their dog, Harvey, and that he had been shot. The Cassara’s also remembered that a German Shepard dog had been shot in their nieghborhood. It was Cassara’s nineteen-year-old son who rembered David Berkowtiz and how he complained about the nieghborhood dogs. The Carr’s daughter, who was a dispatcher, had two police officers investigate the strange letters.
It wasn’t until nearly two months later when the two officers would piece the clues together. They looked at Berkowitz’s drivers license, and found that he fit the description that eyewitnesses had given and that he once worked as a security guard so he would probably have some knowledge of guns. The two officers relayed this information to their boss, who then gave the tip to the taskforce.
A few days after the Stacy Moskowitz and Bobby Violante shootings, a woman came forward and said that she might have seen the killer. She gave the police a helpful physical profile that aided in catching Berkowitz.
The police later received a call of an arson attempt at Berkowitz’s appartment. Someone had started a fire in front of Craig Glassman’s door and thrown bullets into it. Luckly the fire went out before the bullets went off. Glassman was also a part time sherrifs deputy who had also received strange letters from Berkowitz.
The police still didn’t take the inititive to act on the evidence against Berkowitz because they had received so many other leads that were as convincing as Berkowitz’s. They put his information with the rest, to be checked out later.
Meanwhile, the taskforce was still talking to the woman who said she had seen the shooter at the Moskowitz and Violante shootings. The witness had said that she had seen officers writing traffic tickets a short while before the incident. The detectives looked into and found that one of the violators that had received a ticket was David Berkowitz. Shortly after the discovery they put Berkowitz’s appartment under survelence.
They captured David as he was leaving his appartment and getting inside his car. He was carrying a small brown paper bag with his gun inside, he was going out to kill again. When the police surrounded the car, Berkowitz cooperated with them, smiling the entire time.
While on trial, physciatrists said that, “While the defendant shows paranoid traits, they do not interfere with his fitness to stand trial....the defendant is a normal as anyone else. Maybe a little neurotic.” Berkowitz pleaded guilty and received three hundred and sixty five years in prison.
While David was in Attica prison, he was interviewed by Robert Ressler, a vetran FBI profiler. Ressler told Berkowitz that he didn’t believe that his demon story was true, and later got Berkowtiz to admit that it was all a hoax. Berkowitz later said that his real reason for killing was because it sexually excited him, even more then his past arsons.
Presently, Berkowtiz is fortynine years old and being kept at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, N.Y.. He was up for parole on July 9, 2002, but was denided. Infact, Berkowitz requested that he be denied. He said, “I’m not seeking parole. I don’t feel that I deserve parole.”
The board asked why he felt that he didn’t deserve parole and Berkowitz replied, “Well, for the crimes that were committed and people that are suffering today because of my actions. I know they have a lot of pain and hurt that will probably never go away…I wish that I can go back and change the past. I can’t, so I have to – I came to terms with this and realize that I’m here in prison.”
The board aslo talked to Berkowtiz about why he commited the murders. He said, “I don’t know. I don’t understand what happened….It was a nightmare. I was tormented in my mind and in my spirit. My life was out of control at that time and I have nothing but regret for what happened.
“It was just my mind was not focused right. I thought I was a soldier for the devil and all kinds of crazy things…I had things like the satanic bible that I was reading. I just got stupid ideas out of it. I’m not pushing the blame on anything. I take full responsibility, but I just – at the time things got twisted.”
Berkowitz will be back up for parole in June of 2004.
Ted Bundy
Theodore Robert Bundy
Theodore Robert Cowell was born on November 24, 1946, to 22-year-old Eleanor Louise Cowell. He spent his first four years growing up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his grandparents. He grew up knowing his grandparents as his parents and his mother as his older sister, and would not know the truth until he was 23-years-old.
Later Ted and his matural mother moved to Tacoma, Washington, to live with relatives. His mother married a man named Johnnie Culpepper Bundy, and had herself and Ted take his last name. Ted would have four half brothers and sisters whom he spent most of his time babysitting. His step father tried to include him and make him feel as if he were one of their own, but Ted stayed distant. He very shy, but he kept up good grades and had interests in skiing and politics.
After graduating in 1965, Ted won a scholarship to the Universtiy of Pudget Sound, but in 1966 he transferred to the University of Washington, where he studied chinese. He held a few low-level jobs while in college, bu never stayed at one for very long.
In 1968 Ted graduated from the University of Washington. His girlfirend broke up with him and he sunk into a deep depression. A year later he also found out about his true parentage. With the change of his situation, his personality began to change. He started to become a more focused and dominated character. Ted re-enrolled at the University of Washington and started to study physcology.
Ted also found another girl friend who he stayed with for five years. This helped turn his life around in what seemed a good direction. He started to send applications into various law schools, he worked on a campaign to re-elect a Washington governer, and was also comended by police for saving a three-year-old boy who was drowning in a lake. Sadly, Theodore Robert Bundy took a turn for the worse, and became one of America’s most notorious serial killers.
Ted Bundy had a common mode of operation; he would lure his victims into his car, then kill them by either strangulation or beating them with a crowbar. He also sodomized and raped many of his victims.
His first victim was fifteen year old Kathy Devine, a teenage runaway. She dissapeared on November 25, 1973, and her body was found by a young couple walking in McKenny Park, Washington, on December 6. Kathy has been strangled, sodomized, and raped. Very little evidence was found at the scene, so police suspected that she had been killed elsewhere. An investigation was started immedeately.
On January 4, 1974, Joni Lenz’s roomates found her lying on her bed in a pool of blood. To their surprise she was still alive and in a comma. She had been beaten about her head and face, then sexually assaulted with a bed rod that had been torn off of her bed. She survived, but suffered from brain dammage.
Later that month, Lynda Ann Healy’s parents called police hearing that Lynda never showed up for work and when she didn’t come home for dinner. The police searched her appartment and found her bed drenched with blood, and her nightgown with blood on the collar.
In the summer of 1974, seven other female college students dissapeared. All of the girls were white, thin, single, wearing slacks at the time of dissapearence, with hair that was long and parted in the middle, and they all disappeared in the evening. Students and witnesses claimed to have seen a man wearing arm and leg casts and asking for assistance with his VW Bug. One witness overheard one of the conversations that went on between Bundy and victim Janice Ott, and heard the man mention his name was Ted.
It wasn’t until August that the remains of two of the missing college girls were found. They reamians of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund, who bot dissapeared on July 14, 1974, were found in Lake Sammamish State Park, Washington. Officials had founf five thigh bones, two skulls, a jaw bone, and strands of various colors of hair.
The next dissapearance occurred on October 18, 1974 when seventeen year old Melissa Smith dissapeared. She was the daught of the Midvale, Utah, Police Chief Louis Smith. Nine days after her dissapearance, her body was found. She had also been strangled, sodomized, and raped.
On Halloween of 1974, another seventeen-year-old girl named Laura Aime dissapeared. Coincidentaly, her body was found on the following Thanksgiving Day in the Wasatch Mountains. She had been beaten about the head with a crowbar, sodomized, and raped.
While the Utah police were investigating the recent murders, they began to see simalarities between these murders and the ones in Oregon and Washington. Accounts of the murders, composite sketches, and the name “Ted” appeared in papers all over Washington, Oregon, and Utah. Six people that knew Ted Bundy called officials with tips on the possibility of him being the suspect. Consequently, they set his information aside to investigate other suspects who were less educated and who had past criminal records.
On November 8, 1974, Bundy approached eighteen-year-old Carol DeRonch in a book store, posing as a mall security guard named Officer Roseland. He told her that he saw someone trying to break into her car, and asks her to go outside and see if anything was stolen and then escort her to police headquarters to identify the supposed criminal and file a complaint. When Bundy got her into his car he drove off and later stopped the car and attemped to handcuff DaRonch. She began to scream so he threatened her with a handgun. Bundy then pulled her out of the car and was about to hit her over the head with his crowbar when she kicked him in the genitals and broke free. She made it to the road and jumped into a car that had stopped to help.
When she got to the police station she recapped what happened and gave the police a description of Bundy and his VW Bug. They also found some blood on her coat which was type O, the same as Ted Bundy’s as the police would later learn.
Later that night, Bundy abducted Debby Kent from her highschool parking lot as she was walking to her car. Earlier, Bundy had talked to Jean Graham ad he asked her to help him identify a car, but she refused because she was busy with something.
The next attack came on January 12, 1975, when Bundy took Caryn Campbell from the hotel she was staying at in Colorado. It wasn’t until a month later when they found her body. Bundy also killed five more women in Colorado before moving on.
On August 16, 1975, a Utah Highway Patrolman pulled over Ted Bundy for reckless driving. Then with the assistance of two other officers, Bundy’s vehical was searched. They found a skimask, handcuffs, crowbar, icepick, and wire in his vehical and arrested him under suspision of burglary.
While investigating the contents of Bundy;s vehical, they discovered that the handcuffs they found were the same make as the ones found on Carol DaRonch. The corwbar also looked very similar to the one that she was threatened with. Carol DaRonch and a friend of Debby Kent both picked Bundy out of a line up and identifying him as the man who attacked her and as a man she had seen walking around the school parking lot.
Police began a througho investigation of Ted Bundy and found a lot of evidence against him, so on February 23, 1976, he was put n trial for the kidnapping of Carol DaRonch. Bundy was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and was sentaced to fifteen years in prison with the possibility of parole.
While in prison, Bundy had a pyshcological evaluation done. The psychologists concluded that he had a "strong dependency on women, and deduced that that dependency was suspect." Upon further evaluation, they concluded that Ted had a "fear of being humiliated in his relationships with women."
Jeffrey Dahmer
Birth Date: May 21, 1960
Sex: Male
Home Town: Milwauke, Wisconsin
Previous Crimes:
Victims:
M.O.: He would lure his victims by offering them money for posing for photographs or to enjoy some beer and videos. He would then drug them, strangle them, masturbate on the body or have sex with the corpse, dismember the body and dispose of it. Sometimes he would keep the skull or other body parts as souvenirs.
Capture:
Sentence:
Motive:
Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960, in Millwauke, Wisconsin, to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. As a child he had a fascination with dead animals and road kill that he would find. He even made his own personal cemetary. In 1967, the Jeff, his parents, and his younger brother David, moved to Ohio.
His father said that Jeff’s attitude began to change between the ages of ten and fifteen. That his posture changed from a loose-limbed boy to a strangely rigid and straight figure. Jeff’s father also reported that he had grown very shy during this time, and that he became introverted. His classmates remember him as a loner, who had a few friends, but they driffted away as Dahmer grew more distant. He had average grades, played tennis, and even worked on the school news paper.
Joyce and Lionel divorced in 1978. Lionel remarried shortly thereafter, and his new wife began to notice Jeff’s alcoholic tendancies. They suggested to Jeff that he try college, an they drove him up to Ohio State University. Dahmer continued to stay drunk most of the time and flunked out in the first semester.
His father came to him again and told him to either get a job or join the army. Jeff continued his alcoholic ways, so in January of 1979, Lionel drove Jeff up to the local recruiting office and signed him up. He was later discharged for habitual drunkeness.
After the army, Jeff moved in with his grandmother and got a job. He was later arrested for drunkeness and dissordely conduct, indecent exposure, and even child molesting in 1989. It was shortly thereafter, that he started on his cannibalistic rampage.
June, 1978: When Jeff was only 18 and still living with his parents, he picked up a hitchhiker named Steven Hicks. They had sex, drankl beer, and then Dahmer struck Hicks over the head with a barbell, hilling him. He cut up his body, packaged it in plastic garbage bags, and burried them in the woods behind his parents house. Dahmer recalls that after he got back from the army, he dug up Hicks remians, smashed them with a sludge hammer, and scattered them in the woods.
September, 1987: Dahmer met a man named Steven Toumi in a gay bar. They went back together to a hotel room where Dahmer killed him. He later bought a large suit case, stuffed the body inside, and took it to his grandmothers basement. There he had sex with the corpse, masturbated upon it, desmembered it, then threw it in the garabage.
Jeffrey Dahmer killed two other men in his granmothers basement:
December, 1987: Fourteen-year-old Jamie Doxtator. He was otside of a gay bar, looking for relationships.
March, 1988: Richard Guerrero also met Dahmer at a gay bar.
He would lure his victims by offering them money for posing for photographs or to enjoy some beer and videos. He would then drug them, strangle them, masturbate on the body or have sex with the corpse, dismember the body and dispose of it. Sometimes he would keep the skull or other body parts as souvenirs.
September 25, 1988: Jeff moves into his own appartment in Milwaukee.
September 26, 1988: Dahmer offers a young boy fifty dollars to pose fro some pictures in his appartment. He drugs the boy and fondles him, but does nothing more. The boys parents later took him to the hospital because their son had been acting strange. The doctors confirmed that he had been drugged. The police picked up Dahmer and arrested him for sexual exploitation of a child and second degree sexual assualt. He pleaded guilty on January 30, 1989. He spent one year in the House of Correction under work release and five years on probation.
February, 1989: While awaiting his sentancing at his grandmothers house, he met twenty four year old Anthony Sears. He used the same mode of operation as he had used as the others. He also saved his skull as a trophy.
May 14, 1990: Dahmer was released from the House of Correction and moved into another appartment, and being on probation didn’t stop him from killing the followin tweleve men:
June, 1990 – Edward Smith
July, 1990 – Ricky Lee Beeks
September, 1990 – Ernest Miller
September, 1990 – David Thomas
February, 1991 – Curtis Straughter
April, 1991 – Errol Lindsey
May 24, 1991 – Anthony Hughes
May 27, 1991 – Konerak Sinthasomphone
June 30, 1991 – Matt Turner
July 5, 1991 – Jeremiah Weinberger
July 12, 1991 – Oliver Lacey
July 19, 1991 – Joseph Bradehoft
He killed his victims in the same way as the others that I have mentioned before. He would also take pictures of the corpses while his desmembered them. Dahmer said that he would also sometimes eat the skin of his victims. He also claimed that he had drilled holes in the heads of some of his victims
