David Berkowitz As A Child: The Early Years Of A Serial Killer

JANUARY 23 2022- Psychologists, victims' families and true crime enthusiasts have all pondered the same question: what happened to David Berkowitz as a child to turn him into a killer? 

Before he was Son Of Sam, infamous American Serial killer, David Berkowitz was a troubled child with complicated origins. From a young age, his life was marked by abandonment, trauma, and a lie about his birth parents that would shatter his entire identity at a critical time in his life. 

Some experts have speculated that David's rage about his own conception contributed to his later killing spree. He grew up to have strict ideas about sexual morality, and as the Son of Sam serial killer, he often targeted couples sitting in parked cars. 

The Berkowitz's were a childless middle-aged couple when they adopted David. Nathan worked six days a week at the hardware store the family owned, while Pearl preferred to spend as much time as possible doting her only son. 

David Berkowitz's emotional and behavioral problems began long before he began to target young women on the streets of New York City as Son of Sam. 

Throughout hist school days, David had a long record of truancy, bullying and difficult behavior. His teachers found him to be a bright boy, but one who had little interest in learning. He had few friends as a child, and tended to hang around weaker and smaller children that he could easily bully. 

By middle school, David Berkowitz had progressed to committing petty larceny and setting fires throughout New York City. His parents arranged for him to see a therapist, but surprisingly, he never received any serious diagnosis or legal consequences for his early crimes. 

Could early intervention have prevented David Berkowitz from growing to commit the Son of Same murders? Unfortunately, the world will simply never know. 

gain a cult following of female admirers in prison, it's difficult to tell what sort of impact these comments might have had on him when he was young. 

It's common for a serial killer like Jeffrey Dahmer or Son of Sam to have a history of cruelty to animals- David Berkowitz was no exception. As a child, he was suspected of killing "Pudgy", his adoptive mother's parakeet. 

David apparently jealous of the close relationship between his mother and Pudgy, and viewed the bird as a rival for her affection. He poisoned the bird with cleaning solutions over several weeks, until it eventually died. 

Berkowitz was also said to be fond of killing bugs, destroying hundreds of them by burning them alive or gluing them down with rubber cement. Although most children who kill insects don't grow up to become serial killers, in David's case, the cruelty of this methods may have been an early warning sign of what he would become. 

In 1967, tragedy struck the Berkowitz family- David Berkowitz's adoptive mother died of breast cancer. Most children would struggle after losing a parent, but the death of Pearl Berkowitz nearly destroyed David. In an interview, he once claimed that "After Mother's death, I lost the capacity to love." 

Berkowitz reportedly had an intense but complicated relationship with his adoptive mother, one that only grew more complicated after she died. Their relationship was said to be much more intense than a typical relationship between mother and son. 

Some believed that the adult David Berkowitz harbored great anger towards his adoptive mother, for abandoning him and hiding the truth about his adoption. After all, many of the young women who were murdered in the Son of Sam killing spree, were white women with long, dark, wavy hair just like Pearl Berkowitz. 

Berkowitz eventually returned home from Korea served the rest of his time in the army stationed at Fort Knox. He was honorable discharged in 1974. 

It was during his time in Kentucky that David Berkowitz got his first real taste of evangelical Christianity. Almost overnight, the Jewish Boy from Bronx converted to a devout Baptist. IT was then that he started to develop extreme ideas about sexual purity- ideas he claimed were the eventual motive behind the Son of Sam killings that made him the most famous serial killer in New York history. 

As a child, David Berkowitz had been told that he was adopted. His adoptive parents, however, didn't tell him the whole truth about his origins. For years, Berkowitz was led to believe that his biological mother died giving birth to him. 

When he was in his teenage years, he finally learned the truth- his birth mother hadn't died and was still alive and well in New York City. He made it his mission to find his biological parents. And in 1974- just one year before his murders started- he finally tracked down the woman who'd given birth to him. 

David had hoped that meeting his birth mother would make him feel better about his origins. Instead, it sent him into a psychological tailspin- instead of feeling guilt for causing his mother's death, he began to simply feel unwanted and abandoned. The discovery that he had a half-sister his mother had kept only made his abandonment more painful. A forensic anthropologist who studies the Son of Sam murders described learning truth about his biological parents as the "primary crisis" of David Berkowitz's life. 

Berkowitz was never able to confront his birth father- by the time he located Betty Broder, his biological father was already dead, along with any hope of getting closure. 

but left after his first year. He moved into the Yonker Apartment where he would eventually meet neighbor Sam Carr, the man whose dog he would later claim was channeling demons and ordering him to carry out his murders. 

David spent some time working at various blue-collar jobs- including a brief stint as a taxi driver- before eventually landing a position as a letter sorter at the US Postal Service. 

He was still working at the Postal Service a few months later when he carried out his first Son of Sam shooting, killing 18-year-old Donna Lauria and wounder her 19-year-old friend Jody Valenti as they were in Lauria's parked car. 

David Berkowitz had an unusual early life, by any standards. At any age where most boys are worrying about girls, sports and homework, David was grappling with the death of the most important person in his life, and the knowledge that she had told him an enormous lie about where he'd come from. 

Perhaps David Berkowitz would have chosen a different path in life if he come from different origins- unfortunately, we'll never know for sure.