Word: berkowitz
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...defendant was David Berkowitz, 25, the notorious Son of Sam, who had killed five women and one man in a spree that terrorized New York City for more than a year. Two psychiatric panels had already declared him sane enough to be tried. But last week, Bronx Supreme Court Justice William Kapelman wanted to be sure that Berkowitz was legally capable of pleading guilty and receiving criminal punishment. "Notwithstanding any influence the demons might have had," he finally declared, "I hold you competent to be sentenced...
Unfortunately, as most New Yorkers see it, Kapelman may not get his wish. Berkowitz will be eligible to apply for parole in the year 2002, after serving only 25 years. New York's penal law, like many other state penalty statutes, provides for parole eligibility after a prisoner has served his minimum term, or, in cases which carry several sentences, after the single stiffest minimum has been served. The law was designed in 1965 to give courts and parole boards the capability of being lenient. But it also raises, at least remotely, the possibility that a deranged killer like...
Neyda Moscowitz, whose daughter Stacy, 20, was David Berkowitz's last victim, announced that she would meet with candidates in New York's gubernatorial primary to press for restoration of capital punishment. "I want him dead, dead, dead," she told reporters. Berkowitz's judges recommended that he never be paroled, but their counsel is in no way binding on future parole-board decisions. Said Queens District Attorney John Santucci: "The big fear is that those who follow us will forget what we went through...
...FACE was perfect: the manic popeyes gleaming out from the chubby idiot-mask, the lunatic grin flashing defiance at the hundreds of policemen who had spent over a year pursuing him. It was a knowing grin. David R. Berkowitz, popularly known as the Son of Sam, was--as the New York Post's predictably tasteless blood-red headline proclaimed--Caught!, but he hardly looked like a man who was ready to pay for his sins. Berkowitz seemed instead to realize that he was about to become the biggest media sensation of a hot and stickily depressing summer--John Travolta with...
...collect they have. The Berkowitz bandwagon had, of course, begun early, even before his capture, with the sale of Son of Sam T-shirts bearing the latest police sketches of the unknown ".44-caliber killer." Still, it was not until after his arrest that the salesmanship began in earnest. Then-Mayor Abe Beame, faced with a tough primary fight, used the arrest to try to peddle his floundering law-and-order re-election campaign; although he failed, the election finally went to another to another candidate who played to the lingering public panic with repeated calls for the re-instatement...