"Sam Told Me To Do It... Sam Is the Devil"

After the capture, the twisted killer's life unfolds

"Kill! Kill!" chanted the vengeful crowd outside Brooklyn's Central Court Building, even though the object of their hatred was nowhere in sight.

"That's the father! That's the father!" shouted others as scores of people mistakenly closed in on Leon Stern, a frightened defense attorney who fled into the courthouse.

"I want five minutes alone with the guy. I'd wipe the floor with the guy!" said Jerome Moskowitz, father of Stacy, one of Son of Sam's 13 shooting victims. Added Neysa Moskowitz, mother of the slain girl: "I must see the face of this animal, this beast, this worthless human who took my baby's life. I don't know a death too horrible for this man."

The fury was directed at David Berkowitz, 24, a U.S. mail sorter, who was captured by police and identified as the lone gunman who had terrified much of New York in a yearlong series of eight nighttime attacks in quiet residential neighborhoods. But as the city's most massive manhunt ended, the killer of six young people (seven others survived their wounds) did not fulfill public expectations of the type of man who would automatically arouse suspicion, fear and hate.

To be sure, the thin half-smile he wore as flashbulbs assailed him was infuriating. But the paunch, the round and smooth face, the short, curly hair and calm manner all seemed far from menacing. Rather than sinister, Berkowitz looked innocuous, an unexceptional figure unlikely to attract attention anywhere. As the facts of his life began to emerge, the much-sought gunman turned out to be the loner the psychologists had predicted. He had apparently abandoned the few friends acquired in his earlier years, lived alone in a sparsely furnished apartment in suburban Yonkers, got along comfortably with fellow postal workers but rarely initiated a conversation, and kept his personal feelings to himself.

Even as police finally grilled the man who had caused them so many hours of frustration and drudgery, he was neither sullen nor hostile. He talked readily of his crimes, showing amazing recall of each attack, correcting police on details that only he could know, never refusing to answer their impatient questions.

But then that twisted side of the mild-mannered killer's mentality exposed itself. Why, why had he murdered? "It was a command," he said in a soft, nonaggressive voice. "I had a sign and I followed it. Sam told me what to do and I did it." Again: "Sam told me to do it. Sam sent me on an assignment. I had to do what I had to do. I had my orders. Sam sent me." Who is Sam? Berkowitz said Sam is at the moment a neighbor of his named Sam Carr, but "really is a man who lived 6,000 years ago. I got the messages through his dog. He told me to kill. Sam is the Devil."

Clearly Berkowitz is crazy or, much less likely, feigning insanity. At his arraignment in the Brooklyn court, the judge ordered psychiatric examinations to determine whether he is sane enough to be prosecuted. Chances are he will spend the rest of his life in a mental institution.

The question of how the once unremarkable Berkowitz acquired his demonic delusions will, of course, be the object of intense psychiatric study. Born Rich ard David Falco, but given up for adoption by his mother at birth, the killer was raised by Nathan Berkowitz, a respected owner of a small hardware store in The Bronx. His first wife pampered David, but one family friend recalls that the boy sometimes would "curse her because he knew he was adopted." Nevertheless, when she died of cancer in 1967, her teen-age son sobbed openly at the funeral; no body could remember his crying since then. The youth apparently was never close to Berkowitz's second wife, a congenial woman, active in charity work. After his father retired two years ago with his wife to Boynton Beach, Fla., David occasionally visited the couple.

The father flew to New York last week and, with tears flowing freely, he faced reporters. Addressing himself "to all those families who lost their children and had their children injured," he said: "If David did these things, I don't expect you to forgive him. The only thing I do ask of you is to understand the pain and agony that is within me, knowing the pain and agony of all you parents." Referring to the Berkowitz family, he said, "We too are victims of this tragedy."

If Berkowitz had no continuing attachment to a mother, he also seemed to have little affinity for women of his own age. According to Columnist Jimmy Breslin, a detective asked Berkowitz: "Do you go with girls?"

"No," he replied.

"Did you ever go with girls?"

"Yeah."

"How long back was that?"

"Couple of years."

"And you don't get invited a second time?"

"That's right."

Said the same detective: "He killed people, and I asked him about it. But he has no remorse. To him it was the same as eating an ice cream cone. He doesn't know the difference."

Around dating bars in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Berkowitz was remembered as a quiet listener who would timidly attempt to join animated conversation, inject a few comments with his bemused smile, quickly be cut out of a group as an odd duck, retreat, then try futilely to strike up a conversation with others.

Nothing seems to have been unusual about his education. He attended Christopher Columbus High School in The Bronx, where he rarely dated and was teased for being fat, and he stuck to Bronx Community College for only one year. He spent some of his free time with the New York City police auxiliary service. This did not involve training in the use of firearms or crime detection. He was taught how to direct traffic, administer first aid and perform other rescue-related duties. Fellow trainees considered him introverted but not particularly reclusive.

Berkowitz's rather withdrawn personality seems to have developed its more ominous oddities after he joined the Army in 1971. He flunked his first rifle-shooting test but eventually qualified as an infantry sharpshooter (the middle ranking between marksman and expert) with the M-16 rifle. Early in his Army service, for unknown reasons, he left Judaism to become a fundamentalist Baptist after attending hand-clapping revival meetings.

In South Korea for a year with the 2nd Infantry Division, he had only one minor disciplinary mark on his record, a temporary demotion for not joining a truck-convoy movement on time. At first nothing about him impressed his Army acquaintances, though one said Berkowitz consistently refused to join the barracks banter about sex. Recalls a fellow soldier: "Whenever the subject of women or sex came up, David would back off."

Two of his high school friends say Berkowitz, once a military hawk who turned pacifist while in Korea, may even have sought release as a conscientious objector (the Army does not publicly discuss such matters). More portentously, Berkowitz's letters began to ramble incoherently, use odd imagery--and he signed at least one letter "Master of Reality." He apparently abandoned some of his religious fervor at this time, began swearing, which was out of character for that period of his life, and became ever more withdrawn and disagreeable.

Authorities are checking reports that he plunged heavily into drugs, including LSD, while in Korea--which might have drastically altered his behavior. His few former friends found him changed and difficult when he returned from the Army in 1974. He picked up various jobs, including serving as a private security guard before taking a civil service exam and landing his $256-a-week position sorting mail by machine. He worked 4 p.m. to midnight, which gave him ample time after hours to search for young women whom he could gun down in the dark with minimal risk of being caught.

After his prowling, he would return to his $238.50-a-month studio apartment, which overlooked the Hudson River from the seventh floor of a trim building occupied mainly by Hispanics and blacks. But Berkowitz's apartment was a mess, furnished with little more than a low mattress. The windows were covered by sheets to keep neighbors from seeing in. Pornographic magazines were strewn near the bed. One large hole had been knocked in a wall, with an arrow pointing to it and a puzzling hand-printed message: "Hi. My name is Mr. Williams, and I live in this hole." Also on the wall was another irrational declaration: "I have several children who I'm turning into killers. Wait til they grow up."

More often, Berkowitz couched his strange ideas in vivid verbiage. Said part of a note found in his car: "And huge drops of lead/ Poured down upon her head/ Until she was dead. Yet the cats still come out at night to mate; and the sparrows still sing in the morning."

From a letter sent to Columnist Breslin: "I am a spirit roaming the night. Thirsty, hungry, seldom stopping to rest, anxious to please Sam. I love my work."

The torments within Berkowitz, a man who sometimes greeted people in his apartment building with a friendly, smile and even gave a newspaper delivery boy a $30 tip one Christmas, also surfaced in anonymous crank letters to neighbors --notes that helped lead to his capture. Two were to Sam Carr, the fatherly figure Berkowitz was to fancy as a source of the commands to kill. Carr, 64, a frail, grizzled man who operates a telephone answering service from his home and maintains an astonishing arsenal of guns (he said he has a .22 automatic, .32 revolver, .38 revolver, .30-06 rifle, .410 shotgun and .357 magnum), suspected that Berkowitz sent the anonymous threatening letters that complained about the howling of Carr's black Labrador retriever Harvey.

The first letter declared that "our lives have been torn apart because of this dog." The second said that "my life is destroyed now. I have nothing to lose anymore. I can see that there shall be no peace in my life or my family's life until I end yours. You wicked, evil man--child of the devil--I curse you and your family forever." Carr claimed that Berkowitz later shot Harvey in the leg with a .44-cal. gun.

The other recipient of hate mail was Craig Glassman, 29, a male nurse and part-time corporal in the Westchester County sheriffs emergency force. He lived directly under Berkowitz's apartment and got four letters. They accused Glassman of being a "demon" and a "wicked person," who (like "Sam") was forcing the writer to kill. Said one letter: "My master Craig, You will be punished. Craig, how dare you force me into the night to do your bidding. I promise you, Craig, the world shall spit on you and your mother ... Sure, I am the killer, but Craig, the killings are at your command." On the same day that he received two of the letters (Aug. 6), Glassman was startled to find a fire burning outside his apartment door. When firemen put it out, they found .22-cal. shells in the ashes.

The fire brought Yonkers police to interview Glassman, who told them about the hate letters. Yonkers detectives quickly linked those letters to the similar ones Carr had reported receiving--and they informed Glassman that Berkowitz was the probable letter writer. At that time Yonkers police knew what type of car Berkowitz was driving and its license number, and they began to suspect that Berkowitz might be Son of Sam. It was three days later that the New York police task force hunting the killer learned Yonkers authorities were pursuing Berkowitz as a potentially dangerous neighborhood crank.

That knowledge apparently followed the tip that broke the case. It came from Cacilia Davis, 49, a terrified woman who told a belated story to New York police. Davis, who lives near the Gravesend Bay site where Stacy Moskowitz was killed, said she was walking her dog Snowball near her apartment at 2:30 a.m. on the night of the murder. A young man "who walked strange, like a cat" approached her on the sidewalk, looked directly into her face, then passed. She said he held his right arm down stiffly, as though he were carrying something partly up his sleeve. Five minutes later she heard shots and the wail of a car horn. Next day, learning of the double shooting, she was certain the passing stranger had been the killer. When detectives questioned her, she recalled another vital detail: she had seen a cop tagging a cream-colored car parked illegally near a fire hydrant one block from the murder site.

Incredibly, Berkowitz, who had so cleverly eluded police for so long, had used his own properly registered 1970 Ford Galaxie sedan as his getaway car for each attack, not bothering even to acquire stolen license plates. When New York police checked parking tickets for the murder night in the Gravesend neighborhood, they found one issued to Berkowitz; it led to his Yonkers address. They wondered: What was a Yonkers resident doing 25 miles away in Brooklyn at 2:30 a.m.?

With that, New York detectives went to Berkowitz's apartment house, and they found his car parked handily in front. Peering inside, they spied a rifle butt protruding from an Army duffel bag in the back seat and a note on the front seat. It bore the highly distinctive hand printing of the .44-cal. killer's letters to police and Breslin. A dozen officers staked out the car and the building, while a search warrant was sought.

At 10:30 p.m. Berkowitz walked calmly out of the building, got into his car and started the engine. A couple of officers ran out of the darkness, their guns drawn. They ordered Berkowitz to turn off the ignition, get out of the car and place his hands on top of it. Having followed the mountains of clippings about Son of Sam closely--a scrapbook of them was found in his apartment--Berkowitz recognized the arresting officers' leader, Deputy Inspector Timothy Dowd. "Inspector, you finally got me," he said quietly to Dowd. "I guess this is the end of the trail."

When he was seized, Berkowitz was carrying a manila envelope; in it was the .44-cal. pistol that had been used in all of the Son of Sam murders. He also had a semiautomatic rifle, simulated to look like a submachine gun, in the car.

Telling his story later to police, Berkowitz destroyed some misconceptions that had been spread, sometimes by authorities, more often by frenzied New York tabloids. No, he did not always fire his jolting .44 Bulldog revolver with two hands from a crouch. "The first three times I shot with one hand." No, he was not a skilled marksman. "I was lousy." No, he did not always keep one of the five bullets in his revolver in reserve in case he faced capture. He twice emptied the gun in his attacks. No, he did not look only for dark-haired girls, haunt discotheques for victims or carefully case a site before striking. His hunt was random. "When I got a calling," he said, "I went looking for a spot."

He often cruised various neighborhoods in his car after such a "calling," looking for some "sign" that the timing was right. Even such a chance event as the appearance of a convenient parking space was such a sign to Berkowitz. He did choose victims whom he considered "pretty," claiming he favored the Queens borough for a time because "Queens girls are prettier." He did not walk casually away from the murder sites and slip into the dark. "I ran like hell." He revisited at least two of the scenes of his crimes and tried to find the grave of his first victim, Donna Lauria, 18, whom he had not known but for whom he seemed to develop a posthumous affection.

As the details of his crimes spilled out in Berkowitz's own words, police officials ordered cops to stop talking to reporters about their overwhelming evidence against him. Incredibly, one of his own defense lawyers, Philip Peltz, was accused of trying to sell taped interviews with Berkowitz and book rights to the New York Daily News and the New York Post for up to $100,000. Both newspapers promptly rejected the offer.

Clearly, this was one crime in which there could be no doubt that the right man had been caught. Police had not released Berkowitz's first note to them precisely so they could confront any suspect with something only he could answer. How had he signed that note? "The monster," he correctly replied. Partial fingerprints taken from the killer's notes to the police and Breslin matched those of Berkowitz. Ballistics tests showed that the .44-cal. revolver seized from Berkowitz had fired the shots that killed Stacy Moskowitz. The only legal defense against a murder conviction seemed to be a plea of insanity.

The manhunt over, police felt pride tinged with a few regrets, at this handling of one of their toughest challenges. Once again they had discovered that terrified witnesses rarely provide reliable descriptions. The series of sketches drawn by police artists from such fragmentary impressions turned out to be off the mark --actually hindering police work by inviting people to name suspects bearing likenesses to the errant drawings, but not to the murderer.

The work of criminal psychologists in providing police with personality profiles of the likely killer was more accurate and perhaps did help narrow the search. Such a profile issued by police last May described the killer as "neurotic, schizophrenic and paranoid, with religious aspects to his thinking process, as well as hints of demonic possession and compulsion. He is probably shy and odd, a loner inept at establishing personal relationships, especially with women." Psychologists say Berkowitz is a psychopath, and all evidence points to his lonely nature and inability to relate normally to women.

It is quite likely that police grabbed Son of Sam just before he could claim even more victims in even more spectacular crimes. David Berkowitz told them why he had placed that semiautomatic rifle in his car on the night he was captured. He said he planned to drive out to the fashionable Hampton resort communities on Long Island and blast away at the crowd in a discotheque or nightclub. He was ready, he said with a smile, "to go down in a blaze of glory." -

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.