June 1, 1953 - David Berkowitz

David Richard Berkowitz (born Richard David Falco; June 1, 1953), also known as the Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer and former U.S. Army soldier who committed a stabbing and a series of shootings between 1975 and 1977 in New York City, killing six people and wounding eleven others.

With a parking ticket proving a vital clue to finding him, Berkowitz was arrested on August 10, 1977, and subsequently indicted for eight shootings. He confessed to all of them, and initially claimed to have been obeying the orders of a demon manifested in the form of a black dog "Sam" which belonged to his neighbor. After being found mentally competent to stand trial, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to six concurrent life sentences in state prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. He subsequently admitted the dog-and-devil story was a hoax. In police investigations, Berkowitz was also implicated in many unsolved arsons in the city.

Intense media coverage of the case lent a kind of celebrity status to Berkowitz, which many observers noted he seemed to enjoy.

Content sourced from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David Berkowitz under CC BY-SA 4.0.