Drew Altman

Murdered 3 people personally and aided in 3 more

Chose to kill with a.44 caliber bulldog

Claimed his neighbor’s dog was possessed by a demon that commanded him to kill when it barked

Berkowitz was part of a small satanic cult

David was born through an affair and the father wanted to abort him – but his mother put him up for adoption

Lost interest in school early and engaged in pyromaniac behavior along with committing larcenies

His half-sister was involved in witchcraft, which greatly interested him

Joined the US Army at 16 and served for 3 years after which he had an honorable discharge

Psychologists identified David as a neurotic, paranoid schizophrenic

He believed he was possessed and commanded by demons to kill

Berkowitz began his attacks by assaulting two women with a knife on Christmas Eve, 1975

He then followed with shootings in July, October, and November of He seemed to target two people together in these attacks, mostly women.

4 More shootings followed in January, March, April, and June of All of these except the last followed the same modus operandi and were located around the same area

Berkowitz left a couple of notes for the police department explaining his killings and creating public terror in New York.

Suspicions arose of the Son of Sam David Berkowitz because of multiple eyewitness sightings of his greasy dark hair and fair complexion. The 300 police assigned to find him were catching up.

The Son of Sam’s final shooting was 2 days after the anniversary of his first - July 31, He had left too much of a trail to follow.

Police located Berkowitz’s car and waited for him to enter it. He was arrested on the spot. Maps and plans for his next victims were found in the car, along with a rifle.

Berkowitz’s last words as a free man were this. “You caught me. What took you so long?” He was sentenced to 365 years in prison.

My Thoughts David Berkowitz was quite a strange person. His satanic cult ties possibly sparked by his exposure to his half-sister’s witchcraft took hold of his spiraling social life and created a monster. The psychiatrists identified him with schizophrenia but the similarity in the killings doesn’t make that seem very likely to me. He seemed to feel no remorse and was particularly calm when being caught. The interesting thing is that he is currently a Christian convert that has apologized endlessly and accepts that his life imprisonment is what he deserves. He attempted to give money to his victim’s families and is currently authoring a memoir of his life. This seems totally against his entire life and I’m curious to see what he says about his time of cult following or if he recalls the experience at all. His rehabilitation really surprised me considering he once listened to orders from satan through his neighbor’s dog.