By Jasu Diaz –
David Berkowitz murdered six people, wounded 11 others and… is going to Heaven.
Berkowitz is currently serving a life sentence Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Ulster County, N.Y. He is expecting to serve another – though hardly it can be considered a “criminal sentence” or a “correctional facility” – in Heaven.
“I know personally what it is like to be in bondage to sin,” says the serial killer whose crime name was Son of Sam. “I know what it is like to be shackled to Satan. Those cuffs can only be opened in Christ.”
Now the senseless killer who terrorized New York City in 1976-’77 has skipped his latest parole hearing, saying he prefers to stay in prison where he is doing useful work with the Christian ministry to fellow inmates.
“My work is in prison where God has His people confined,” says Berkowitz, now 73. “These men need guidance, help and encouragement. I’m an elder, and this is my calling. The only place I’m looking forward to going is to Heaven to be with the Lord.”
The infamous Son of Sam got his moniker because he wrote letters to press explaining his killing spree and signed them “Son of Sam.” Sam was his neighbor whose dog had a demon that told Berkowitz who and when to kill.
Born n 1953, he was adopted by a childless couple, Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz, who changed his name and raised him in the Bronx. He was a “very alienated, disturbed and frightened” child, a criminologist said. Things worsened when his adopted mother died of cancer when he was 14.
After high school, Berkowitz enlisted in the U.S. Army and after three years returned to New York City and began working as a mail sorter. All seemed fine.
But there were inner torments and voices. He began hearing the demon. According to N.Y.C. authorities he started setting fires in the mid-1970s as the “Phantom of the Bronx.”
From arson, it escalated. In December 1975 he stabbed and wounded two women with a hunting knife. Then, in April 1976, he shot Wendy Savino five times as she sat in her car in Queens. She survived, but lost her right eye.
His first successful murder was believed to be 18-year-old Donna Lauria, who was sitting in a friend’s vehicle in the Bronx in July 1976. Son of Sam approached and fired four shots.
The killings that followed seemed random people, many as they sat in their cars.
The demon in his neighbor’s dog kept demanding more and more mayhem. He worshipped Satan before each murder but not part of a larger death cult. He was free-soloing his Satanism.
As investigators tracked patterns, they got a breakthrough when they traced a parking ticket issued near one of the crime scenes. Son of Sam was 24 when they arrested him in August 1977, ending the manhunt.
At his trial, Berkowitz ignored his counsel’s advice to plead innocent by reason of insanity and accepted full guilt in May 1978. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each of the six killings, plus dozens of additional years for the attempted murders, for a total of 365 years in prison.
He became born-again in 1987.
He has been denied parole repeatedly. At his more recent parole hearing, he declined to attend, preferring to stay in prison and minister to the needs of his fellow inmates.
Sources: New York Post, A&E, CBN, others.
