48 Hours - Son Of Sam Serial Killer Speaks

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Nearly five decades ago, the "Son of Sam" terrorized New York City. In a 2017 prison interview, convicted serial killer David Berkowitz tells CBS News what led him to kill. "CBS Evening News" co-anchor Maurice DuBois reports. This episode last aired on 8/11/2017. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are we ready? That's a question New Yorkers have been asking themselves a lot lately. Are we ready for another blackout? Or a bus hijacking or a bombing? Or another murder by the 44 caliber killer? I know that I'm not usually known for any public exhibitions of temper, but I want you to know I'm damned angry. The city is preoccupied with the killer.

occupied with a killer who in one note signed himself the son of Sam. He is compelled to kill. I think people are really shook up. People wouldn't come out at night. They're even scared. The whole city was kind of like in lockdown. No one stayed out past 10 o'clock. People were terrified.

And a girl was coming in blood. Oh my God, oh my God. We've been shot. We've been shot. I should have been dead. I guess on one hand, I'm happy to be alive. A lot of people died from the same gun. same gun. He struck again over the weekend shooting a young couple in a Brooklyn Lovers Lane and today the girl died. The killer's sixth victim. He's wounded seven

others. It's just scary. It's frightening. When you're walking, people just look over their shoulder. That's all they do is talk about the killer. Walks up to strangers, usually couples in parked cars, and shoots them with a large, poor revolver. Police say they are nowhere near solving the case. If you're asking whether we have any indication of who he is or where he might be, the answer is no. To do this to a young girl and a young boy, He's not human. He was writing about a dog that talked to him, gave him orders to kill. I mean, he just was going out 30 nights a month looking for someone to kill.

He terrified the city. I mean, I've never seen people like that. Yeah, I see that people will never understand where I came from them. I'm at how much I try to explain it. They wouldn't understand what it was to walk in darkness. Hour away from the city and... Everybody was afraid. After all that, to find out that this was sort of a, you know, where people describe him as this chubby, shy, lonely guy who had the whole city buckling at its knees,

afraid. It's a strange sensation. Serial killer's about to walk in here and talk with us. I think there he goes right there. I look like him, right? Hello. God bless you. Maurice, Du Bois. It's an honor to meet you, sir. God meet you. Thank you for talking with us. Sure, okay. It's a big step, you know.

I have my misgivings and nervousness and all those other things. Understood. Is this a special place for you? Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's a place of refuge, you know. Refuge from the storms of life. And, you know, if you know anything about prison, there's a lot of storms. You know, it's not exactly a happy place.

In prison, a men are walking around carrying a lot of pain. I know I have a lot of pain inside me over, you know, things that happened. and this is a place where you could come and pour your heart out to God. My name is David Berkowitz, and I've been locked up since the time of my arrest, just under 40 years. You just turned 64? Yeah, I just turned 64, yeah. How do the guys look at you? How do they see you?

How do they perceive you? Some guys, really, again, because of the passing of time, they're not even familiar with the case or anything. They may have heard about it, but it doesn't just another face in the crowd. you know, no special attention, no special anything. That's the way I want it to be. In the summer of 1977, New York lost its mind. Well, this was a city that looked like Berlin after the war. It was devastated.

There were abandoned buildings. There were waves of arson in which people were afraid to go to bed at night. We had a blackout in which 3,000 people were. arrested. It makes you really want to throw up when you look at what's happened and we got to live here. It's no place for us to go. We had the FALN, the Puerto Rican Terrace group, planting bombs in department stores. We had a record heat wave. George Willig and mountain climber from Queens climbing up the outside of the World Trade Center. You know it was a very very different time and people were afraid to

walk around. You know, 177, among other things, was the year that Studio 54 opened. It was a time of sexual liberation, perhaps the last gasps of the anything goes sexual revolution. I like to disco. It's a single woman. I feel safe here. This was the era of Saturday Night Fever, and it was that throbbing music that became the backdrop for all the wacky behavior that was going on in the city at the time, including a murder spreeed by a serial killer. In New York early this morning, a mystery deepened and a manhunt intensified. A young couple was shot and wounded while sitting in a parked car.

Most of the victims have been young women with shoulder-length dark brown hair who were gunned down as they said in parked cars are walked the sidewalks of the Bronx and Queens. And you know, you're dealing with a crazy guy, you know, you go up to two innocent girls sitting in a car and shoot them or a guy in a girl in a car and you shoot them for no reason. I wanted to know why he did what he did. That's the one thing about all of these girls in these cases and guys. They did nothing to contribute to their own demise. They were sitting talking to each other and this guy killed him. I grew up in the Bronx. I had good, good times and bad times.

I had some struggles over certain issues that happened. But I also had times of adventure when I ran, played ball with my friends. Really it was in many ways a normal childhood, but that also wrestled. with self-destructive behavior. Why? Well, when I was about four or five, I learned that I was adopted. And when I asked about who my parents were at birth, you know, my dad and mom, you know, well-meaning,

told me that my mother died while giving birth to me. Later on, I found out that, of course, she was alive, and, well, we had a wonderful reunion. It didn't even, it wasn't even true what they told. Yeah, they meant well, because they were told by the experts. That's what you tell. adopted child when they were going to naturally ask questions. I look at your retrospect that characterized much in my life.

I struggle with a lot of depression as a child and obsessions with death because I thought I deserved to die. So take me to when you're 14, your mom dies. Yeah, that was a difficult time, yeah, yeah. Well, just when you lose someone that you love is there's a sense of mourning. You know, I try to put it out of my mind. I was carrying around a lot of guilt. I was carrying around a lot of shame.

around a lot of shame that I deserve to be punished. I can't explain those things. You've- For your mom's death? Yeah, maybe I was angry at God and then, well, my birth mother and then of course my adoptive mother too, you know, I found it very difficult. The victim that's selected usually satisfies something on a fantasy level. A punishing mother could be a wife. And so every time he commits the crime against the person, that has this thing, he's satisfying this basic need of getting back at the original

individual that he had difficulty with. You know, it was just a challenge. It was a challenge, but I mean I ended up doing okay. It was my dad really kept on me to finish school. I graduated from Christopher Columbus High School in 1971, and I joined the Army. He went into the service and a drastic change took place and a different man came out that went in. What do you mean a different man went out? How did he change? I went to Korea and never forget that. You know, you see the advertisements on TV of the guys jumping out of planes and all these exciting things and you know

and you find out the Army life is kind of a mundane and routine. You just turn 18, I'm trying to find my way in life. I wanted to see the world. A man that went in relatively mellow, relatively peaceful, turned around and became a man that was more interested in the fantasy in the world and the reality. After I got out of the surface, I went to look up a lot of old friends, guys I used to hang out with and things, and found everybody pretty much moved on in the three years of absence.

So I came back to find out, I was on my own kind of, you know, and wanted to eventually get my own apartment. You know, wanted to find a girl maybe get married and raise a family, and I had all kinds of normal, perfectly normal hopes and dreams. What would you tell 23-year-old David Berkowitz today? Uh, turn around before it's too late because destruction is coming, you know? Berkowitz lived in Yonkers north of New York. Police described him as a loner.

His neighbors discussed their impressions with CBS News correspondent Bill McLaughlin. He seemed strange to you. Not strange. When he came in, you know, he spoke what's happening and everything, but... He was friendly then? Yeah, he didn't seem strange. Yeah, I never sustained. expect him in this build out of every building in Yonkers, he's in 35 Pine Street. You know, that shocks me.

So you're living in Yonkers, you move up to Yonkers. You have an apartment up on the seventh floor. Yeah. It's a nice spot. You're looking out over the Hudson River. Yeah, the building was not any way peaceful. Not that way. What was it like?

It was just chaotic. It was just a strange place. There was a strange spirit there. You live right here in this building. Two, three, four. Used to be number 35. I've changed the number in hopes of maybe made people feel a little better. If they don't recognize where the buildings, then I say, do you remember Sonosem?

Oh, I know what the building is. Really? So they know. People are familiar with it. Yeah. A lot of people know what happened. It's still hard to believe that even something like that exists in this world. I mean, who goes around killing people? I don't know anybody like that. No, you try not to think of things like that.

There's people in the neighborhood that knew him. I say, you know, he was very, you know, cool with the kids, you'd give him ice cream, things like that. And like he was a funk to you, man. Just another guy, yeah. What about the idea that he shot Sam Carr's dog right behind here? This dog, his master is a 6,000-year-old being, talking to him through this dog, and he's banged for blood.

The dog got on Berkowitz's nerves. Apparently the dog barked too much. Berkowitz could hear him from his window. He tried to kill the dog. The dog didn't die. And then he said, in his own twisted way, that the dog told him to kill. So Berkowitz lived on the top floor.

He had a clear view right into the backyard here, where the dog lived, owned by a guy named Sam Carr. Hence the name Son of Sam. I wasn't comfortable there. I felt very isolated. I didn't really have much of a social life. I started to get into a lot of satanic stuff,

so I really was opening myself up to some very dark forces. It's not like he had a friend or anything, there was nobody. He had a hole in the wall in his apartment. It said that Mrs. Something or other and her kids live in the wall. You know, he's bona fervably nuts. Well, there was just a battle going on, a side be, you know. In your head? Uh, well, wherever, you know, there's a battle going on.

battle going on. Yeah. I guess here's a thing. Here's a Christian man, man who knows right from wrong, who's had loving parents, right, who's very thoughtful. Yet at some point there, you kill two people to start this whole thing. She was 18-year-old Donna Loria who was sitting in a parked car with a friend late at night when her parents heard the shots. I ran down by time I got time she was done the street. My daughter was 18 years old, and that's what he took out of my heart, 18 years. It was very troubled time, you know. Right.

But then he did it again. It started out as a typical Friday night, drove to 159th Street and 32nd Avenue. Basically, we started making out, and like two minutes later. Yeah, it was shut in the back of the head, but, you know, on the top. The windows just shattered, so I had a piece of the glass all over my arms. I didn't know why I was shot, but I knew something. I knew something terrible had happened. The skull was blown away.

The only thing protecting my brain from the outside world was a flap of skin. Well, things happened, yeah, but that's it, you know. And then again. Then we get to November. We have Damassi and Romino. They're shot. They're standing on the stoop, and he walks up,

and he fires at them. So at this point, you have nothing. What are you thinking? We're thinking we got a tough case here. Police have been engaged in intensive hunt for a man known as the 44 caliber killer. There's widespread apprehension that his crimes free is not over. I mean, it just kept going for more than a year. The hardest cases in the world for homicide detectives are strangers.

Stranger on strangers. You have very little to go with because you don't have a motive. You may not have any witnesses, right? So you're at a dead standstill. Was there any common thread with all of these, families, victims, the son of Sam. Well, the common thread was these were their, you know, 20-year-olds, their young, you know, their children.

We've got Christine Front. Again, this shooting? Right. Is there any suspicion? Yes. At least two witnesses say the gunman walked up to the car, crouched, then fired four shots. One of the detectives come over to me and he says,

you know, that's a big bullet. He says, and we had a shooting in the 105 with a big bullet. And then they also had one in Queens. So that stirred me up a little bit. The 44 bullet is big. Nearly twice as big as the conventional 38 caliber police handgun ammunition. The 44 is designed, they say, to kill. Then we get to March, Virginia, the student. Shoots her right in the face. It starts to get a little curious now because that shooting is only a block away from where Christine Farn was murdered. We don't really get into the serial killer

until the incident in the Bronx. April 17, 1977. That will go down and in for me. Until then, you just had a series of shootings without any real sense. At that time, probably I don't know, 1,500 homicides a year. The big thing about this one was the 44 caliber bullets.

Now, it's not just a bullet. It left a letter to me. Tonight's 48 hours will continue. I can only describe it as evil. Follow and listen to train to kill. The dog train to kill. the heiress and the bodyguard on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts I was home in bed and I got a call looks like our boy why big bullet big bullet

so now I got dressed and I went to the Bronx you get to the scene you get this letter you read the letter what do you think to me it looked like some kind of a psychopath wrote this left mr. Borrelli's I don't want to kill anymore no sir No more, but I must honor thy father. I am deeply hurt by you calling me a woman hater. I am not, but I am a monster. I am the son of Sam. As far as I'm concerned, that was not me.

That was not me. Even that name, I hate that name. I despise that name. Which name? That moniker, son of Sam. That was not, that was a demon. That was a demonic. entity that I was serving in my ignorance and my shame.

This is no longer a city case. This is now going to get nationwide attention. No one in the city of 8 million knows who is next. In New York early this morning, the 44 caliber killer tried to kill again. That was just a break from reality. I thought I was doing something to appease the devil. I'm sorry for it, but I really don't want to talk about it anymore. He's the devil.

No, I was, at this time, I was serving him. You know, I was serving him. I feel that he had taken over my mind and body, I just surrendered to those very dark forces. I regret that with all my heart, but, you know, that was like 40 years ago. Effectively, it was him winning over us each time he got away with it.

The only substantial clues so far have been two letters, including one mail to the New York Daily News. The killer chose Jimmy Breslin. It's his conduit to a lot. larger public. Jimmy Brezhen was a great columnist for the New York Daily News. He was sort of the voice of the people, related to people on a very visceral level. And it was no accident that the son of Sam Killer started writing to him. Hello from the gutters of NYC, which are filled with

dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood. Hello from the sewers of NYC. Would swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks. J.B. I'm just dropping you a line to let you know that I appreciate your interest in those recent and horrendous 44 caliber killings. In 77 is when the newspapers, you know, started to cover this 44 caliber killer. Whatever. The son of Sam. You would see this stuff. It was on a newspaper, on the TV, on the radio. It was everywhere. I don't want to discuss that. You know, yeah. Well, when we realized that this was an authentic letter that he had sent to the Daily News,

on one level, we were thrilled because it gave us access to the killer. What I thought was one of the most disgusting episodes I've seen in journalism. Were you suggesting that murder isn't a big story? I think murder as the story became in the papers, it was blown ludicrously out of proportion, and it was very unhealthy social results. Jimmy Reslin wrote one to him, figuring that would trigger Berkowitz to receive. Berkowitz to respond again. And I didn't mind that because I said,

the more he responds, the more of the opportunity for us to solve the case. Jimmy was engaging in this written dialogue with the killer for any number of reasons. One, because there might be more clues as to his identity, and two, because it was an ongoing tabloid story that obviously he would sell newspapers. I mean, he just was going out 30 nights a month

looking for someone to kill. Did you ever have a moment saying, geez, did I cause this? Did this column trigger this nut? No. Yeah, I mean, there's no question that the police department was put under a lot of pressure by the press. A slow son of Sam Newsday would be seven or eight pages. Detective would walk out and they'd have a TV crew followed him. The New York Mafia is trying to track the killer down.

The press stole Barkowitz, but it also incited 20 million people. We used to stay in front of my house and walking, you know, and kiss good night. But we can't do that no more. An element of fear pervades neighborhoods which have not known fear before. People wouldn't come out at night. They're really scared. And I mean when they're scared, that's all they do is talk about the killer. Civilian patrolling has been stepped up in the neighborhood.

Some women in the area are terrified, particularly ones with shoulder-length dark brown hair. People going out, cutting their hair and dying. They were bleaching their hair, becoming blondes. Literally at night, there are sometimes a thousand, two thousand guys who were just out there patrolling looking for this guy. Those phones rang 24 hours. But you guys were everywhere. You shut down lovers' lanes. I think all the motel owners in the city loved us. We forced everything indoors.

I'm leaving my house and I'm walking down steps. And my mom turns to me and she says, Robert, be careful. and I turned around and the next thing I said was I never forget this. Ma, don't worry, I'm going out with a blonde tonight. Tonight's 48 hours will continue.

I can only describe it as evil. Something horrible. From 48 hours, this is trained to kill. The dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard. He couldn't control his obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you have a dark curiosity?

Heart Starts Pounding, Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries is a weekly podcast hosted by me, Kailen Moore. Each week, I'll take you on a dark journey through terrifying true urban legends, bizarre true crime cases, chilling tales of backwoods horror and more. So if you're looking to join a passionate community of The Darkly Curious, check out Heart Starts pounding on the free Odyssey app or World. wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay curious.

Good evening. In New York early this morning, the 44-caliber killer tried to kill again. Robert Violante, 20 years old, Stacey Moskowitz, also age 20, blonde. Both shot twice in the head as they sat in their car near the ocean in the Brooklyn section of New York. It was their first date. She was just a very bubbly, alive, full of life.

young lady. Now it's Saturday night the 31st of July, 1977. Correct. And we went to see the very popular movie back then, New York, New York, with Lysmanelli, and it was a great movie. And it was just a great night. Well, what happens after the movies? So now we decide to drive to one of the, as they call it, a lover's lane. Now we're sitting there, We're sitting there a couple of minutes and we're just talking, you know, kissing you a little bit and talking. And Stacey turns to me and says, Robert, you know what?

I'm getting a little nervous. She said, Robert, let's go. And I said, five more minutes. And in that five minutes is when we got shot. And I'm screaming now. Blowing the horn. Help us, help us. We've been shot.

We've been shot. The horn died. What do you remember from the shooting itself? The bullet totally destroyed the left eye and most of my right eye. And, you know, full of blood, I couldn't see anything. I couldn't see Stacey sitting right next to me. I heard some moaning coming from Stacey. This evening, hospital officials said Ms. Moskowitz remains in critical condition

after eight hours of surgery, she has given a 50-50 chance of living. Violante's condition is guarded, he has lost the use of his left eye, and probably will retain only 10% of the vision in his right-up. What can you tell me about your son? We brought him up the right way. Good boy, never had any trouble, never involved in any dope, never involved in any of the rest. What can I say?

You told him to stay out of Queens. I told him to stay out of Queens. He says, Dad, I'm going to stay out of Queens. He says, Dad, I'm going to stay out of Queens. of Queens because he used to go to Queens. He said, I'll do it for you and mom. I'll hang around in Brooklyn. And that's where he found him.

Villalante, I remember his father was just distraught, totally distraught, because he had seen the results of what had happened to his son. He was my best friend in the world. He was there for me every minute of the day when I was in the hospital. in the hospital. I think it was my dad that told me about Stacey.

At 5.22 p.m. Monday, Stacey Moskowitz stopped living. The doctors said they had not turned off the life support. It was just that the horrible damage done by a 44 caliber bullet in the brain was too much. She wasn't worried, you know, because she says, you know, I got blonde hair and, you know. I told I don't know how many times to be careful. My daughter is dead, but I would die right here and now to see this man punished. To do this to a young girl and a young boy, if I lost a child, that woman has a son that's blind. To do this to young people, he can't be normal. He's not normal.

That's the saddest part, that I never got to really know Stacy. You still think about it to this day? Yeah, that was really, really the sad part. Stacey Moskowitz was killed, Berkowitz got a ticket for parking his car in front of a fire hydrant. Yeah. It was a woman there who said, you know, I did see somebody get a summons on a fire item in front of my house. We immediately started looking at the summonses. All right, they run the plate.

And the plate number comes back to David Berkowitz's address in Yonkers. Comes out to David Berkowitz, 35 Pine Street. They now decide, again, thinking it's a witness, to call him. So they call the Yonkers Police Department. The girl on the switchboard, she says, who too? David Berkowitz, 35 pines. She says, that guy is crazy. He shot my father's dog.

I know that guy. What's your father's name? Sam Carr. Wee Carr, who Sam Carr's daughter, lives next door to David Berkowitz, owns the dog that Berkowitz shot. So, you know, that was like, you know, all of these things fell in in one phone call.

Everybody's antenna goes up. When they get up there, they swing by his house. And they see his car. They look in the car, and they see a letter to the Suffolk Police Department. And they see a duffel bag that had a gun in a big rifle. And here comes Berkowitz with a little brown paper bag with his 44 guns. It goes to the car, they jump him. And he says, you got me.

He said, I'm the son of Sam. At about one this morning, 24-year-old David Berkowitz, who detectives believe is the son of Sam was brought to police headquarters in Manhattan. He was wearing frayed jeans and an open sport shirt and he was smiling slightly. They caught him, they caught them, they caught their piece of garbage. I'll never forget that, my friend Nikki. What'd you say? I was so elated, so happy, I should thank God he's off the streets.

He's not gonna ever be able to hurt anybody else again. I really can't describe how I felt. It was, I guess, a little bit of everything, a little bit of excitement, a little bit of relief, a little bit of closure. When I saw the front page, I was like, wow, I didn't expect them to look like that. Police ran ballistics tests this morning on the 44-caliber gun they say Berkowitz bought from someone else who got it in Texas. It's an infamous gun. I could picture the damage at this thing that, you know, when you're looking at the scene of the crime. A ballistics section has just called and told us that the 44 caliber gun recovered tonight

has been tested and the bullets match the bullets recovered from Stacey Moskowitz. What does this mean? It means we have the gun to kill Stacey Moskis. I mean, these were beautiful young people. I understand that, but again, there's no, you know, it's just the way things turn out. It's regrettable, but that's... That's it, you know. Did you do all these crimes alone?

Well. Now, years later, he tells everyone that he was part of a cult and he was merely one of the shooters. You know, he's wacky, you know. I mean, he's, so for him to say that he's part of a cult, you know, it was just something he came up with like everything else, you know. Well, I felt that there were demons with me, but that was, I'll have to save that for another the time when I could...

But you're the sole person who pulled the trigger, correct? Well, a lot of things wouldn't happen in that case, but I take responsibility, you know, and that's it, yeah. You take responsibility for all the son-of-stein murders. There was nobody else involved. Let's put it this way, they were devils, and that was it. You're living a door open, or is that... Well, one day maybe I have a chance to share more, but that's...

We'll leave that at that, you know. We shot all that down, you know? And I think I told it. The biggest claim to frame was when they used to say that, the cult, I said, did we have an incident after we locked up Berkowitz? The killing stopped. Did the killing stop? Yeah.

For him to say years later, he was part of a cult, you know, it was just more attention. That's all that's about what him. But there are people who believe it. I'm just telling you, the people that say they believe in it never interviewed David Berkowitz. They never sat the way I did. In this room? In this room, in this corner. Just step back for a second.

You walk in. I walk in. You lay eyes on him. What are you thinking? What do you see? What does he look like? Well, first I'm looking at him to see what he looks like. I said, so what happened here? You know, how did this start? 30 minutes, he goes from beginning to end tells me the whole story. He was relaxed. What kind of demeanor is saying this was straight-faced?

Oh, he was talking about it the way you were talking about making a pastrami sandwich. To just talk about it like that was scary. I thought he absolutely felt he was certifiably wacky. And I thought they would just put him in an institution. institution. The accused killer is now undergoing a court-ordered psychological examination at the Kings County Medical Center in Brooklyn, where he will be held in maximum security for up to 30 days.

He will engage in a normal psychiatric examination. Dr. Schwartz, he was a court-appointed psychiatrist to analyze him to see if he was fit to stand trial. And he's determined he was fit for trial. But it's insane business that goes out the window. There was no outward sign of emotion, no expressed remorse today, as David Berkowitz pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn New York court to six random son of Sam murders, slains which terrorized New York for more than a year.

So you show up in court when Berkowitz was going to be sentenced for the first time? Yeah. He said some foul things about Stacy. Oh yeah. To a weird nursery rhyme-like tune, Berkowitz, who's... who had never known Stacey Moskowitz saying, Stacy was a whore. Mrs. Moskowitz bolted out of her seat and screamed back,

you animal. And then Robert Villalante, Stacy's date the night she died, rose and shouted, you creep. I reacted. Call you, you piece of shit. You should die. You should rot in hell. I was, oh, I just went off on him.

Robert Vialante explained his courtroom outburst. Total anger. Total anger. That's it, just total outrage, and I really couldn't control myself. Three weeks after his wild courtroom outburst, which led to a delay for further psychiatric evaluation, David Berkowitz again judge competent to face sentencing, arrived to learn his fate. Berkowitz, who just turned 25, was given a total of six sentences for murder of 25 years to life. What do you say to the victims, families, to the victims who are still living?

today. Well, I've apologized many times and I just always let them know that I'm very sorry for what happened, that I wish I could go back and change things and that I hope these people are getting along in life as best as possible. I never forget, you know, where I came from and what my situation was like some four decades ago, people that were hurt, people that are still in pain, suffering loss because of my criminal actions. And I never forget that. That sometimes weighs very heavy on me. Yeah, yeah.

It kind of took over my personality. And wherever I went, everything would just stop. And you'd just hear whispering. That's the guy that was shot by son of Sam. And it got to a point where it became disturbing for me. And I really felt like I was losing my identity. Didn't have any children. I never got married, never had children.

Unfortunately, he ruins not just my life, 12 other lives, plus the families. So how do you forgive something like that? Somebody like that. You don't. When you think about the irony, I mean, here's a kid who lost his mom at 14, and you think about the depth of the pain that you felt. And then, years later, because of you, Yeah, sure, right? Six people have that same kind of pain.

Oh, right. seven others injured for life. How's that strike you? It's very painful. It's very painful. I carry a round of pain, too. Not the same kind, but one that I'm aware of what happened, you know.

Yeah. I draw comfort, if you could call it that, from reading about, in the scriptures, about some of the well-known Bible characters that did. did very bad things and how God forgave them, and God was able to use them in very special ways, very unique ways, and they became what we'd call champions

of the faith. The Lord did a lot of work in my life, you know. That's why I try so hard in my messages to give a cautionary tale to young people about not getting involved in Satanism or the occult or, you know, those kind of things, because I feel that they too could maybe take a bad path. Does it give you satisfaction to reach young people? Yeah, sure.

I get letters all the time. I have a calling to just write to encourage people for more walks of life. It's something I do on my own, on my spare time, and I get a lot of satisfaction from it, but most of all, I believe that's what God has called me to do. Berkowitz is a born-again Christian. He's a minister in prison.

He takes a lot of pride in helping people. That's his thing. What do you think of that? I think that's a lot better road to go down than serial killer. You're in jail, what else you got to look forward to? You might as well, yeah, I found God, why not? But I really think he did. You know, that doesn't mean he's exonerated.

If he's trying to do better with other prisoners, so be it. That's God's way of probably making him understand how wrong and... and bad of a person he was, and now God's giving him a second chance to do right by other people. But it still doesn't change the fact of how I feel. I'll never forgive me. Why not? Why not? Because he snuffed out six people's lives, ruined another seven, plus all the family's involved.

For people that didn't do anything to him, you know, didn't. bump into them, didn't say nothing to him. So I just can't forget. Yeah. But when you look at the front picture right there, there's a two youths. Right. Two pictures of you.

That's right. What do you see? I see the old man, and I see the new man in Christ. Yeah, I see the one man that was tormented by demons, and I see the man that has the peace of God radiating from him. Yeah, that's where I'm back now. That's the way I was always supposed to be a mayor of hope. What is a life worth? I don't know.

Mr. or Mrs. Loria might feel totally different. You know, they lost their daughter 40 years ago. Does parole, is that attractive to you at this point? As a realistic hope, I don't see any hope for parole, no. Personally, I feel there has to be justice for the death of those people. and that's the justice, life in prison. I can only describe it as evil, something horrible. From 48 hours, this is trained to kill, the dog trainer, the heiress, and the bodyguard.

He couldn't control his obsession. Who was the hunter and who was the hunted? Follow and listen on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.