David Berkowitz also known as Son of Sam is the serial murder whom I will be writing on.

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        David Berkowitz also known as Son of Sam is the serial murder whom I will be writing on. I will be discussing his child hood and the phases he went through.  I will also be talking about how he was trained in weaponry and how he chose his victims, he also had the state of New York turmoil. David and his disorder of schizophrenia played a role in his killing spree of woman. I will also go into talking about his capture and time in jail.      

In writing about a serial murder you must first defined what a serial murder is.  According to Bartol (2002) a serial murder is usually reservised for incidents in which an individual (or individuals) kills a number of individuals (usually a minimum of three) over time. The time intervals- sometimes referred to as the cooling off period- may be days or weeks, but more likely more likely months of years. The cooling off period is the main difference between serial murders and multiple murders. The murders are premeditated and planned, and the offender usually selects specific victims.

Betty Flaco, his mother already had one child form a previous marriage. Betty soon began an affair with a married man. Things with her affair got disrupted when she became pregnant with David. David was born on June 1, 1953 in an undesirable circumstance. He was a product of a thirteen year affair with a business man with children of his own. The father of David vowed to leave her unless she gave up the child, so she arranged for his adoption. Three days after David’s birth Nathaniel and pearl Berkowitz brought him home. Nat and Pearl were a Jewish couple, they celebrated Sabbath every Friday and went to Temple. They gave David all the attention and affection they could. David and his family lived I a one bedroom apartment, he shared bedroom with his parents until he was nine years old. David was very close to his mother and he was kind of distant with his adopted father. David also resented his father because of the physical closeness he had with his mother. He did not like to share his mother with anyone or anything; David poisoned his mother’s parakeet and also poisoned her tropical fish because his mother paid to much attention to them. His neighbors remember him as a nice looking boy but he had a violent streak, a bully who assaulted neighborhood kids for no apparent reason. He was hyperactive and very difficult for Pearl and Nat to control. David was not a good student, he didn’t like school because he hated to be separated form his mother. He would fake being sick to sty home with him mother. During his school years he would lash out at authorities by starting fires, thieving, vandalizing property and hurting or killing animals. He prided himself on never getting caught that was the thrill. David liked the fact that he could lie his way through a situation and not get caught. In a diary he kept he admitted starting over 200 fires in the Queens- Brooklyn area. According to Dr. Robert Simon, author of Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream, a fire setting by a child is usually a symptomatic expression of sexual and aggressive over stimulation. Fire often expresses the child’s hyperactive excitement and deep seated anger. The sight of fire is thought to be sexually arousing in children and sexually immature adults. His destructive and deviant behavior was never discovered because he was secretive and a loner. Though he had a few friends he was unable to establish any lasting relationships because no one was more important to David. David’s world drastically changed when he was fourteen. Just two months after his Bar Mitzvah his mother Pearl died of breast cancer. He felt abandoned because he was not even told his mother was sick. David graduated from high school in 1971, his constant absent almost made him ineligible for graduation. Nat his adopted father married a women, she had a twenty five year old daughter that was smart, and very social. David was jealous of this so he left there home and wondered around. He also attended a community college to please his father. That same year he enlisted into the Army.  David was very patriotic and wanted to die for a cause. This is where he learned his marksmen skills, he was very good with rifles, and he stayed in the Army for three years. David wanted to go to Vietnam but instead was stationed to Korea. He then transferred back to the states in 1973 to Fort Knox, Kentucky.  During this time in the Army he also converted to Judaism, but lost interest. David was discharged in from the Army in 1974 with no job and no place to live. He moved back in with his father and wife, but that didn’t work out because of the wife’s daughter. In December of 1974 David started to look for his biological family. Believing that his biological mother was died in child birth, he was searching for his biological father. His whole life he carried around the guilt of killing his mother, only to find out that is was a lie. A copy of his birth certificate gave him his birth name, Richard David Flaco, the name of his mother. He met his mother in 1975, she did not reject him outright but they had a few discouraging meetings. It was not what David expected, he was disappointed in the meetings because he found out that he had an older sister half sister, who was not put up for adoption, then he found out that he was illegitimate and the man listed on his birth certificate was not his father. The most injury was caused when he found out that he was given up because he was not wanted by his mother and her lover, he was an accident, nothing more than a mistake.

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This is the beginning of the Berkowitz and his victims. Around Christmas 1975, David went to see a psychiatrist about a problem with him having demons tormenting him. On Christmas Eve David attached a fourteen year old girl with a 32 inch hunting knife, it was his first attempt at killing, and he chose her because he thought she would be an easy pray. To his surprise she fought back and screamed her head off, she had six wounds form the hunting knife but escaped with her life. Soon after this incident he moved to Westchester County. His apartment was ...

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