David Berkowitz: The Man Who Drove New York to the Brink

The last “Son of Sam” letter to the press was published 42 years ago

David Berkowitz confessed to murder shortly after his arrest.

On September 19, 1977, a letter was published in The New York Post. Its author was David Berkowitz, then in custody, subject of the biggest police manhunt in the history of New York. Called both “the .44. caliber killer” and “Son of Sam,” the 24-year-old postal worker could not pass up one more chance to address the city he had terrorized for nearly a year. And the press could not resist printing his missive.

“There are other Sams out there, God help the world,” he informed the tabloid’s readers, in thrall to the deeply disturbed Berkowitz.

The string of nighttime shootings in 1976 and 1977, killing six young people and wounding seven others, had come to an end after a parking ticket left on Berkowitz’s car near a Brooklyn murder scene led police to his apartment building in Yonkers, just over the city line from the Bronx. On August 11, 1977, Berkowitz, after no more than 30 minutes of questioning, confessed to his crimes.

“Why? Why did you kill them?” a detective asked the suspect, according to The New York Times.

“It was a command,” Berkowitz responded. “I had a sign and I followed it. Sam told me what to do and I did it.”