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Nearly 50 years after the arrest of David Berkowitz, the serial killer who terrorized New York City between 1976 and 1977, a new documentary series, Conversations with a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes, explores that chilling period in history.
Out July 30, the three-part series features audio of past interviews Berkowitz did with Rochester Democrat and Chronicle journalist Jack Jones, plus a new interview with Berkowitz, who is serving a life sentence in upstate New York.
Berkowitz, now 72, has never shied away from media attention. Before he was caught—a parking ticket traced his getaway car to his home address—he sent letters to police detectives and even the New York City tabloid columnist Jimmy Breslin encouraging them to keep up the search for him.
Conversations with a Killer also features interviews with the victims’ loved ones, researchers, and former law enforcement assigned to the case. Here’s how the series explores what drove Berkowitz to murder.
Childhood resentment
The series traces the origins of Berkowitz’s discontent to his adoption in 1953. While the Bronx native was adopted by a couple that loved to dote on him, one day, his father told Berkowitz that he was adopted, his mother died in childbirth, and his biological father didn’t want him.
“I thought there was a man out there that hated me and was possibly going to try to kill me for causing the death of his wife,” Berkowitz tells Jones.
He wasn’t the same after that moment, and though his adoptive mother loved him, he began to lash out at her, tearing her blouses and ripping her lipstick out of its container. When he graduated high school, he found out that his biological mother was actually alive and visited her. He learned that he was born out of wedlock, and his father didn’t want to stick around.
As he wrote in a letter, he felt like an “outsider” who was on a “different wave length than everybody.” In the recordings, Berkowitz says: “It brings me back to the idea of…
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