Where Is David Berkowitz Now? Here’s What Happened to the Son of Sam Killer After He Was Caught in 1977

David Berkowitz shot 13 people in New York City between 1976 and 1977

NEED TO KNOW

• The "Son of Sam" killer David Berkowitz shot 13 people between 1976 and 1977
• He was caught in August 1977 and given six 25 years-to-life sentences
• He remains in prison today and doesn't want to leave

It’s been over 40 years since David Berkowitz — the self-proclaimed “Son of Sam” — terrorized New York City during a 13-month killing spree.

Beginning in 1976, Berkowitz used a .44-caliber revolver to hold the entire city in a grip of fear, often targeting young women and couples. He taunted the police with cryptic letters left behind at the scene of the crime and mailed handwritten notes to local reporters. It would be over a year until NYPD officers apprehended Berkowitz, all thanks to a parking ticket issued on the night of his final murder.

Berkowitz is the subject of the Netflix docuseries Conversations with a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes, which debuted on July 30. The series features previously unreleased audio between Berkowitz and crime reporter Jack Jones, who sat down with him in 1980.

Berkowitz pled guilty to all of his crimes and was sentenced to serve six terms of 25 years-to-life, according to The New York Times. Despite being eligible for early release, Berkowitz is still behind bars — and says he wants to be there for the rest of his life.

So where is David Berkowitz today? Here's what to know about his life in prison.

Who is David Berkowitz?

Berkowitz was born on June 1, 1953, and was later adopted by a couple named Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz. The couple raised him in the Bronx borough of N.Y.C.

Berkowitz had a troubled childhood, experiencing seizure-like attacks and bouts of depression.

“Ever since I was a small child, my life seemed to be filled with torment. I would often have seizures in which I would roll on the floor. Sometimes furniture would get knocked over. When these attacks came, it felt as if something was entering me,” Berkowitz wrote on his website.

When Berkowitz was a teenager, Pearl died from breast cancer. After graduating from high school in 1971, he enlisted in the Army where he spent three years, including serving in South Korea.

Upon his return home, Berkowitz briefly connected with his biological mother, which is when he learned that he was unwanted by his biological father.

Around this time, Berkowitz says he became involved with members of the occult.

“I had always been fascinated with witchcraft, satanism, and occult things since I was a child,” Berkowitz shared on his website. “Now I was age 22 and this evil force was still reaching out to me. Everywhere I went, there seemed to be a sign or a symbol pointing me to Satan. I felt as if something were trying to take control of my life.”

In 1975, Berkowitz says he began to read the Satanic Bible and practice various occult rituals and incantations. However, he later told Jones that he never heard demons communicating to him through a neighbor's dog that commanded him to kill, as he'd previously claimed.

"I didn't, at that time, understand any motives for what I was doing," he said in the 1980 interview. "I needed some type of justification. I had to convince myself that, 'No, I'm not the man that's doing this. It's some sinister force that's controlling me.' "

In 1976, Berkowitz began his crime spree. He murdered six people and wounded seven others before he was identified. Those victims include Rosemary Keenan, Carl Denaro, Donna DeMasi, Joanne Lomino, Christine Freund, John Diel, Virginia Voskerichian, Valentina Suriani, Alexander Esau, Sal Lupo, Judy Placido, Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante.

When was David Berkowitz arrested?

In early August 1977, police finally had a lead in the case — which came in the form of a parking ticket.

During the night of Moskowitz’s murder, Brooklyn resident Cecelia Davis saw a man remove a parking ticket from his car shortly before she heard shots ring out. Several days later, she contacted the police.

NYPD detectives decided to reach out to the owner of the vehicle that was ticketed, believing they may be a witness to the murder. When they contacted the Yonkers police department (where the car was registered), detectives learned that Berkowitz owned the car and the local officers already had their suspicions about him, per NBC News.

The following day, Aug. 9, 1977, NYPD officers found Berkowitz’s car outside of his apartment and discovered a machine gun in the back seat. They camped out, waiting for Berkowitz to leave his apartment. When officers ambushed him, they found bullets in his pocket and a .44-caliber bulldog revolver on the front seat. He was promptly arrested.

Hours after his capture, Berkowitz confessed to committing all of the Son of Sam murders. He was then taken to Kings County Hospital’s psychiatric ward until sentencing.

“When they talked to David Berkowitz that night, he recalled everything step by step by step, the guy has 1000 percent recall and that’s it. He's the guy and there’s nothing else to look at,” Breslin said, per Dateline.

Berkowitz ultimately pled guilty to six counts of murder on May 8, 1978, per The New York Times. He was sentenced to six terms of 25 years-to-life, one for each of the victims he murdered.

Where is David Berkowitz now?

Throughout over four decades behind bars, Berkowitz has spent time at several prisons, including Attica Correctional Facility — which he described on Larry King Live as a “nightmare” experience. During his time there, another inmate attempted to take his life by slashing his neck with a razor, with Berkowitz telling King that it was a “miracle” he survived.

While Berkowitz says he was depressed during his early years in prison and considered taking his own life, it was one of his fellow prisoners who helped him find a purpose through religion.

“Ten years into my prison sentence and feeling despondent and without hope, another inmate came up to me one day as I was walking the prison yard on a cold winter’s night. He introduced himself and began to tell me that Jesus Christ loved me and wanted to forgive me,” Berkowitz shared on his website.

Over time, the inmate shared more about Jesus Christ and gave Berkowitz a Bible. While reading a verse one night, Berkowitz suddenly began to “pour out” his heart to God.

“Everything seemed to hit me at once. The guilt from what I did... the disgust at what I had become... late that night in my cold cell, I got down on my knees and I began to cry out to Jesus Christ,” he wrote. “I told Him that I was sick and tired of doing evil. I asked Jesus to forgive me for all my sins…When I got up, it felt as if a very heavy but invisible chain that had been around me for so many years was broken. A peace flooded over me.”

Berkowitz has since become a devoted born-again Christian and shares his testimony on his website, which is operated for him by other evangelicals. He's also worked as a chaplain's clerk, he told the New York Post in May 2024.

Will David Berkowitz ever be released from prison?

Berkowitz is currently eligible for a parole hearing every two years. However, he is not interested in being released from jail.

In fact, prior to his initial parole hearing in 2002, he wrote a letter to then-New York Governor George Pataki asking for it to be canceled, per CBS News.

"He is genuinely sorrowful and does not want to get out of prison,” minister Roxanne Tauriello, who regularly visits Berkowitz in prison, told PEOPLE in July 2017. “He knows he deserved to die and deserves to be exactly where he is.”

Berkowitz will next be up for parole again in 2026.