Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 167 - The Son of Sam: Serial Killer David Berkowitz

Episode Date: November 25, 2019

David Berkowitz. The Son of Sam. One of America's most infamous serial killers. The man who terrorized the already terrible New York City in the mid-1970s. Berkowitz would kill six, injure nine others, and terrify millions. Why did he do it? Because demonic dogs told him to? Because he was mad that his birth mother abandoned him? Because of his romantic failures with women? It's a fascinating true crime tale, and we examine it thoroughly today, on Timesuck. Happy Thanksgiving and Hail Nimrod! Check out Lynze and I's new horror podcast Scared to Death. Listen on Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes, Youtube, and more! Here's the iTunes link: https://apple.co/2MRMgai Sovereign Citizen & The Non Prophets - Hand That Holds You Down: https://youtu.be/abtMhAn3sew Donating $3500 this month to the Patriot Guard Riders nonprofit! - https://www.patriotguard.org/ Happy Murder Tour Standup dates: (full calendar at http://dancummins.tv) December 5-7 Tacoma, WA Comedy Club CLICK HERE for tix! ** LIVE TIMESUCK Tacoma, WA Tacoma Comedy Club CLICK HERE for tix! December 26-28 Spokane, WA Spokane Comedy Club CLICK HERE for tix! Listen to the best of my standup on Spotify! (for free!) https://spoti.fi/2Dyy41d Timesuck is brought to you by the following sponsors: Leesa! Get 15% off your entire order at leesa.com/TIMESUCK - use the promo code TIMESUCK Quip! Get your first refill FREE! QUIP.com/timesuck MVMT! Get free shipping and free returns during the biggest sale of the year. MVMT.com Use code HOLIDAY19. Watch the Suck on Youtube: https://youtu.be/4UUYmMvaThA Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Want to try out Discord!?! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions: https://badmagicmerch.com/pages/contact Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 6000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

David Richard Berkowitz, aka Richard David Falco, the man who had grown to become known to the public first as the 44 caliber killer and then as the now infamous son of Sam. Son of Sam was an American serial killer who terrorized New York City for almost exactly a year. He killed from the end of July 1976 until the end of July 1977. He may have tried to kill a year and a half earlier when he says he was driven to stab two young women on Christmas Eve 1975 In the end Berkowitz killed six and wounded seven Nine if he count those 1975 stabbing victims and he terrified millions Why why did he do all this did he think as many believe he thought as he himself is claimed off and on two of thoughts that

What do you think, as many believe he thought, as he himself has claimed off and on two of thoughts, that literal demons were ordering him to kill? Did he think that those demons were communicating to him, to the barking of neighborhood dogs? And that the only way to quiet and appease those demon dogs, the only way to keep Satan himself from unleashing great and cataclysmic events upon the world, was to murder young women. Did he think that one of those hellhounds belonged to a neighbor named Sam Carr and did he think that Sam, the man behind his self given son of Sam Moniker, was possessed by the most powerful demon of them all, possibly by Satan himself.

And it's Sam, another man, a bunch of dogs, all demons wanted him to kill. Or was it a hell of a lot simpler than that? Did David Berkowitz kill because he was a murderous coward, angry and resentful towards his biological mother for abandoning him? Was he angry about his many failures with women? Did he kill women? Because he hated them because they wanted nothing to do with him or at least that's what he perceived and found and he found killing them to be sexually arousing.

Did he invent the whole satanic talking dog story he wrote about and taunting letters to the press or letters left behind for police to find at crime scenes? So he could later plead insanity if he was ever caught. Did he do all of this because he was a he was a deranged psychopath and it just simply amused him to terrorize the general public? Did he just want to feel powerful? Wanted to be a big bad satanic boogeogie man who could kill you or your mother or your sister or your daughter whenever he wanted and with impunity.

It was the son of Sam and some New York City former detectives continued to believe to this day a real, theistic satanist who was part of a larger satanic, cabal, a pond who took the blame for the killings he was charged with. Killings that were actually carried out by a large secret, satanic organization responsible for many more than just six deaths. Yep, there's a lot to unpack in today's true crime tale. And I'm going to do my best to give you all the details that I can in today's serial killer This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck.

Working weight, Hawk Folk and Dog Folk. It's time for Time Suck. Dan Cummins, Colt, the Curious Captain, the banana peel seducer, the master sucker, the mush mouth moth mouth mother fucker Happy Monday. Hope you're set up to have a great Thanksgiving this week. Happy Thanksgiving Hail name Rodby gone loose a phena praise about jangles and triple M hit the road with the dooby brothers next summer 50th reunion tour and I will y'all will be there Whoa getting tickets

be there. Whoa, whoa, whoa, getting tickets. Today's time is about to you once again by a mattress champions social stewards Lisa. Lisa's on a mission to give your body the rest it needs with two awesome mattresses plus accessories and bases for a better place to sleep. Lisa believes in providing a better night sleep for everybody and And to date, they've donated more than 32,000 mattresses for at least 32,000 bodies through more than 1,000 different nonprofits. Hail Nimrat. Get 15% off your entire order at Lisa.com slash time suck. Use the promo code time suck. That's L E E S A dot com slash time suck promo code time suck for that 15% off, support a great community, support yourself getting a well-deserved night's rest, or afternoon rest, or morning rest. You rest when you need the rest, when you can get it. Link in the episode description.

Stay tuned all the way until the end of today's show for some new music. Reverend Dr. Joe, he has a band Maretta, and you know what? They're awesome. And you know what else? Zach, the script keeper, Flannery, has an awesome band as well, sovereign citizen. Very unique, hard rock, steampunk, a little bit of post-grunge, maybe.

I don't know, I'm not the best music categories. But their new song is fantastic. It's called The Hand that Holds You Down, and we're gonna play at the end of today's suck. There's going to be a link in today's episode description for the awesome YouTube video. So be sure and check that out. Thanks again for the continued ratings and reviews

all over the web. We have now been rated over 10,000 times on iTunes alone. I'm honored. That was a number that seemed impossible to reach when I started this project just over three years ago. Every rating and review helped so much. Well, the good ones anyway, which are most of them and for that I'm grateful.

So thank you for continuing to spread the suck. Thanks for telling your coworkers, talking to people in Grand Rapids about people who let their whole office listen to the suck, their whole workshop, it's really, really cool. And also, I hosted an episode of True Crime today a Chikotilo episode of course The Rostov Ripper caught this episode came out on November 20th

So check out this podcast original show again. It's called True Crime today. What is big deal? You can listen on Spotify or some only places you can listen to today and to crime listen on Spotify or someone in places, you can listen to today and to crime. You check out the Sock Master or a ghost, a ghost, a host, a holy like it. So much to crime on today and to crime. I would listen if I was still alive. Be sure to check that out and be sure to check out a couple of shows before the end of the year. Just a few tour dates left in 2019. Happy murder tour almost over.

Both in Washington State, both locations, it's a Tacoma comedy club in Tacoma, Washington, December 6th through the ninth, last live Ant Hill kids suck of the year on the ninth. And then Tacoma's sister club, Spokane Comedy Club and Spokane, Washington, just over a half hour drive from the suck dungeon is November 26th to 28th and then the tour is over. Then on to a new tour next year. And thanks to all the Michigan Meat Sacks who came out to Grand Rapids every show, except for Thursday ended up selling out, and Thursday was close.

So that was the most meat sacks we've come out in Grand Rapids, and it was fantastic. Last reminder from November's charity, we gave $3,500 on behalf of our space listeners to the Patriot Guard riders, heeeeeell, Nimrod. Patriot Guard riders, 100% volunteer 501 C3 started

in 2005 and responds to the Westboro Baptist Church maniacs. And their mission is to ensure dignity and respect of memorial services honoring fallen military heroes, first responders and honorably discharge veterans. To learn more, donate more yourself, go to patreonguard.org. New suite merch hitting the store, Steph Cox curvy. Now you can see him, what you look like, find out, check out the store, the illustration cracks me up so, so much. If you wear a Steph Cox curvy tassier in public, you might be a killer or you might be a diehard time sucker.

I'm hoping for that one. Steph Scherz made out of Bella 100% cotton, 300% childhood tragedy, 400% alley cat fear and pain and an extra 50% of the blood of pets killed in front of kids who love those pets by those kids' parents. Super fucked up, but it gives the shirts authenticity. Also, we have a hope your day sucks, red and green edition holiday 16 ounce coffee mugs put some suck in your stocking My heck Here's a season to suck a little holiday cheer for the cult of the curious and

Now we're on to some showbiz This is how I do it in Hollywood. Oh my heck. It's true crime time suck time Set your watches to Sam to Sam set your watches to son of Sam o'clock. I almost, it's true crime time, silk time. Set your watches to Sam, to Sam. Set your watches to Son of Sam, a clocker. Almost had it. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Today at age 66, the man who wants terrorized New York City, the infamous Son of Sam, now prefers to be called

the son of Hope. He's found religion in prison. As so many seem to do, it feels convenient to me almost every time. David Berkowitz runs an evangelical Christian website, arisenshine.org from the Shawan Gunk or Shaan Gunm correctional facility, one of those super fun regional names. Even locals can't seem to agree on how to say.

So save your Shawan Gunk pronunciation emails. The president is located just outside a little hamlet of Wal-Kill, New York, known as the home of the original Borden farm that spawned the now Texas-based giant dairy corporation Borden dairy company and their iconic LC the cow logo. Love a little random trippy like that. The president lies just 80 short miles from New York City streets. Berkowitz used to prowl in the mid-70s to find his victims. According to David's own website in 1975, when he was 22 and fresh back in New York after

serving in the army in South Korea, I met some guys at a party who were, I later found out, heavily involved in the occult. I had always been fasting with witchcraft, Satanism, occult things since I was a child. When I was growing up, I watched countless horror and satanic movies, one of which was Rosemary's baby. That movie in particular totally captivated my mind. 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 symbol pointing me to Satan. I felt as if something were trying to take control of my life. I began to read the satanic Bible by the late Anton Leveh, who founded the Church of Satan in San Francisco in 1966.

I began instantly to practice very occult, or various occult rituals and incantations. I began falling under the dark, hypnotic spell of Satan's harp, the Kaliope. Ha ha ha ha, Kyle David! I'm in son of Sam! Hey, buddy! I'm gonna need you to grab a gun and bang, bang,

you're way around the clown town. Ha, ha, ha. Satan wants to turn this desk pool into a death story, his good buddy. Really bring the crowd to their knees. You're gonna be the ringleader. Flack them all, David. Flack them all.

Ha, ha, ha. Oh, he didn't write stuff about the Clipy. Here I'll tell Folly. I am utterly convinced that something satanic had entered into my mind and that looking back Ha ha! Oh, he didn't write stuff about the collIPie. Uh, he wrote the following. I am utterly convinced that something satanic had entered into my mind and that looking back at all that had happened. I realized that I had been slowly deceived. I did not know the bad things were going to result from all of this. Yet over the months, the things that were wicked no longer seemed to be such.

I was headed down the road to destruction and I did not know it. Maybe I was at a point where I just didn't care anymore. He didn't choose to be a murderous piece of shit, you guys. No way, no way, Jose. He's a super duper good kid who just, can got to see by that naughty trickster Satan. It's all Satan's fault. Not David's.

He doesn't have free will. No, sir, gosh dang. He didn't choose to hurt and kill innocent people. Just like last week's happy face killer Keith Jesperson, just an innocent victim, bummer. Too bad those two dipshit's can't share a cell together. Just console each other day after day for all the tragedies that have just been falling them. Sadly, it seems over 40 years after the crimes have happened.

Berkowitz is still not ready to take full responsibility for them. Seems as if he just kind of mostly blames a devil or some big larger organization that used him as a pawn. He's always blaming somebody. Berkowitz has changed his story a number of times as we'll examine in today's timeline. Before we look into the story of his wasted life, let's check in on the backdrop for his crimes, New York City in the mid 70s.

I found the following information fascinating. Turns out the big apple was already a pretty scary place, already a little rotten, before David started killing. 1976 that was New York City's year of terror, not a good PR year. Men and women were being shot just walking the streets and parked vehicles across three burrows with fear lingering in the air that summer turned to winter to coldest winter on record at the time and the winter turned to summer again and the killings didn't stop. On an average day, 1,798 serious crimes or felonies were committed a rate of around 75 an hour.

Crime was up over 13% from the previous year. 1975 had already been a really bad year. 1976 was the worst year on record for crime in New York City. At least since the police had begun compiling crime statistics 45 years earlier. Things were on the decline in New York City in a variety of ways. Travelers arriving at New York City's airports in June of 1975 were actually told to leave. Handed pamphlets with a hooded desk head on the cover, handed them by off-duty police officers, warning them, until things change, stay away from New York City if you possibly can.

Welcome to Fear City, Red the Stark headline on these pamphlets, which were subtitled a survival guide for visitors to the city of New York. Inside was a list of nine guidelines that might allow you to get out of the city alive with your personal property intact. The guidelines painted a nightmarish vision of New York, visitors were advised not to venture outside of Midtown Manhattan, not to take these subways under any circumstances, not to walk outside anywhere after 6 p.m. Visitors were instructed to engrave their possessions with special metallic pens to clutch their bags with both hands to hide any property they might have had in their cars,

not even leave their valuables in hotel vaults, not even the vaults were safe. A laundry list of hyperbolic warnings went out in these fear city pamphlets. They were given out by the hundreds of thousands. Some claim a million of these things were handed out, and that a million more had been printed. Can you imagine getting one of those? Holy shit, step off to play with your family. We've just flown in from Cedar Rapids. Maybe Helen Montana, Prescott, Arizona. All excited to explore the big apple. Ellis Island, see the Statue of Liberty, hit Times Square, maybe take it a Broadway

show. And some grim dude hands you a pamphlet with the hooded skull. You might want to stay the airport and catch the next flight home if you want your family to live. Excuse me? I'll put it plainly, New York City is a house of death. Seems like you have a nice family. If I had one, I'd want to keep them alive.

What are you talking about? We just want to check out Times Square and you can check it out. Just know that you're probably all going to at least get raped there. What? All of us? It's that bad. It's almost as bad as Ellis Island. You will for sure all get raped on Ellis Island

Police won't even go there anymore. The rapists don't even bother wearing clothes these days They don't have time to take them off and put them back on just too busy raping and don't even get me started on the murderers Can we at least just see a musical? Yeah, sure you can see part of one But you won't live to see the end of it. At least one in three audience members at musicals today are known murderers. Most of the actors in all of the stage crew, also murderers. They mostly killed during intermission.

So as they don't interfere with the show, I'm sure you can understand. This is fucking crazy. The group who distributed this fear city literature, they were called the council for public safety. An umbrella group of 28 unions representing some 80,000 police and corrections officers, plus the city's firefighters all infuriated by the city's plans to lay off thousands of their members.

Certainly the warning sauce down these fear city pamphlets were, you know, gross exaggerations of how bad things were. The streets of Midtown Manhattan weren't nearly deserted as the pamphlets claimed after six in the evening. They were mostly safe to walk on or walk around it. The city hadn't, you know, as the pamphlets claimed, had closed to the rear half of each subway train in the evening or had to close, excuse me, off the rear half of each subway train in the evening so that the past years could huddle together and be better protected.

That wasn't happening. There were still plenty of safe and secure neighborhoods outside of Manhattan. There was neither a spade of spectacular robberies nor numerous deadly fires. No, it tells, but there was some frightening truth lurking behind much of the pamphlets propaganda. Crime, especially violent crime, as I stated, had been increasing rapidly for years. The number of murders in the city had more than doubled over the past decade. From 681 in 1965 to 1690 in 1975. There's a reason Charles Bronson's 1974 film Death Wish

was set in Manhattan. A film about an architect who becomes a vigilante, trying to clean up a crime filled New York City after his wife is murdered and his daughter is sexually assaulted during a home invasion. The public perception of New York City for many people was the dark metropolis on display in movies like Death Wish. Carthafs and assaults in New York City had more than doubled over the past decade. Rapes and burglaries had more than tripled. Robberies had gone up and astonishing tenfold. There was a pervasive sense that the social order was breaking down to some it felt like

Batman's Gotham City. Trains were graffitied in dirty. The roads were full of potholes. City funds were being embezzled corruption in local government was the worst it had been in years. Public restrooms were almost nonexistent. They were dangerous and disgusting when they were available at all. Men could often be seen just openly pissing in the gutter down side streets. Times squares, venerable old theaters and spectacular movie palaces were being torn down for office buildings or were just vacant and slowly rotting away. Some being turned into dingy porn theaters. Parts of this city were becoming welfare states thanks to a job shortage, thanks to increasing

despondency and drug use. New York City had over a million wealth every recipients by 1975, more than any other city in the US. In the year since the World War II, the poor and the hopeful had flocked to the city just as they always had since its inception to build better lives for themselves. What they found in the cell was a nightmare

where good dreams died. The city had lost a million manufacturing jobs since 1945, 500 of those jobs have been lost since 1969. With less tourism, fewer jobs, more citizens on the public dull, budget cuts were inevitable. New York's budget cuts fell heaviest on the city's public workforce. And May 1975, Mayor Beam had announced severe reductions in salaries, pensions, and working conditions, plus the layoff of 51,768 city workers, more than one-sixth of the total number of employees. This cutback felt like an added insult to the long as existing injury to the city's workers who had already been bearing the brunt of the social chaos over the past decade.

Workers in public hospitals had already been dealing with hundreds of thousands of heroin junkies. Subway workers have been using deteriorating, antique crime and festive trains for years already. The police have been engaged in almost open warfare with various street gangs, firefighters were being in some instances bombarded with bricks and garbage, even shot at on occasion while they tried to keep the city from burning. And some neighborhoods by 1975, it felt like things had deteriorated to a point of near anarchy. It's worth an image search on the web if you have time. Pictures of fear city from the mid 1970s garbage literally burning in the street because no one was coming to pick it up. People sitting around playing poker on full-out tables set up and

burned out buildings. It's one picture you know, these people doing that were a restaurant and just recently existed. Police and riot gear are clearly fearful of the citizens around them. It was ugly. On June 30th, 1975, the city laid off an additional 15,000 workers, including thousands of cops, 1600 firefighters, 20% of the city's entire force. Some 26 fire companies were simply disbanded. By September 45,000 workers had been laid off. The unions reacted with rage. Mass demonstrations ensued. 10,000 municipal workers demonstrated in front of First National City Bank. Cops held a mass demonstration around City Hall, blocking traffic, letting the air out of motorist tires. When they complained, I find that detail

pretty hilarious. You don't like sitting around and waiting? Don't like haters complaining about not having jobs? You lay for your job? Must be nice to have a job. Good luck getting there with no anion, you tires. You don't like it? Call the police. Go fuck yourself. Highway workers pick it in on major roadways

during rush hour. On one occasion, bridge workers crank up three of the city's draw bridges and just walked away. Oh my God. He's so pissed if you're trying to get across that bridge. Garbagemen, stage two day wildcat strike, left 48,000 tons of trash just to stew out in the street in the June heat. On the picket lines they yelled, this isn't fear city, it's stink city.

Nothing like to smell a hot garbage to create a city full of angst. On a hot day, a lot of New York City doesn't smell good now. I've been there many times over the past 15 years. It can get, it can get a little ripe. Now, a lot of people create a lot of garbage. I can only imagine how it smelled when sanitation workers weren't working. The city's teacher staged a one week strike at the start of the school year in September of 1975. After the city laid off 7,000 teachers, they marched with signs that read, fear city, stink city, and now stupid city. Fun.

Want a fun time to live in New York. I have to imagine it was this New York city that inspired the John Carpenter written screenplay for Kurt Russell's dystopian film Escape from New York. I came out to the few years later, 1921. A movie about the entire island of Manhattan, having been converted into a maximum security prison by 1997. For some living in Fear City,

it probably felt like that movie already existed. And it's this version of New York that the son of Sam lived in, where he hunted and killed, a real Gotham city vibe, and he would end up giving off a real Batman villain vibe. With the stage now set, let's meet the star of today's dark show, today's tragedy, the son of Sam himself, David Berkowitz, in today's time suck timeline. Shrap on those boots, soldier.

We're marching down a time suck timeline. June 1st 1953, Richard David Falco, born at Brooklyn, Jewish hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. I mean Brooklyn, New York, of course, that's not a Des Moines. The hospital merged with St. John's Episcopal Hospital to form Interfaith Medical Center in 1983. Elizabeth Betty Broder, Richard's biological mother, had begun adoption arrangements through a neighbor before he was born. Betty was 39 years old and was having an affair with a man named Joseph Kleinman and a gotten pregnant.

Her husband left her. Joseph told her he would only stay with her if she didn't keep the baby so she chose to give up her son. Pretty sad. You know, I want to judge them both, but I don't know all the details. Betty was able to place her son with a, quote, find Jewish couple who could not have a child of their own, which she would later say helped alleviate the guilt she felt for giving him up. Throughout Birkowitz's life, this abandonment would cause him great anxiety and confusion. Eventually, it seems

to have led to a murderous rage building up inside of him. Later, David would say in an interview, I grew up in the Bronx. I had good times and bad times, I had some struggles over certain issues that happened. But I also had times of adventure when I played ball with my friends. It was in many ways in normal childhood, but there are, I also wrestled with self-destructive behavior. When I was about four or five, I learned that I was adopted. I struggled with a lot of depression as a child and obsessions with death because I thought I deserved to die. Days after his birth in 53, David was adopted by Jewish American hardware store retailers Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz. His adoptive parents switched his first and middle names, gave him their surname.

Young Berkowitz had a, above average intelligence, but you know, quickly lost interest in school, claims that ADD and ADHD caused him to become an out of control kid. He also says he was very accident prone, says I tripped over everything, crashed over everything, rode my bike off the curb. Like a lot of boys, Berkowitz got into a little petty larceny, a little bit of shoplifting at a young age, a little bit of pyromaniac, but come on. What healthy boy doesn't worship the God of fire? For at least a little while while growing up, I definitely had some friends who enjoyed

watching and contemplating the raw destructive immense power of flames. I may have enjoyed the fire more than any of my friends. Maybe, just maybe, I still to this day go a little crazy, you know, with any charcoal, charcoal barbecue or campfire where I accidentally on purpose took the fire a bit too much with lighter fluid. Fire! Feel so alive. A little Davies pyromani would develop into a much deeper love for the flame than I ever had, think, at. He would keep a fire journal that would be found out for his arrest, and if we are to believe him, the dude would set hundreds if not over a thousand up to 1500 fires. These illegal acts never led to legal troubles or impacted a school records too

bad. Maybe if he would have gotten into more trouble as a kid, he could have turned his life round, got into a lot less trouble as an adult. I think that sometimes getting into a lot of trouble as a kid can be the best thing they can ever happen to someone. Fuck up on the stakes below. The Birkwoods family lived in a middle-class home in the Bronx where he would grow up, the couple loved, and dooted on their young son. Yet he would nonetheless grow up feeling rejected and scorned, blaming much of these feelings on being adopted.

Wonder how he would have viewed the exact same childhood if no one had told him he'd been adopted? Possibly radically differently. Ever known someone who is their own worst enemy, no matter what happens in their life, it appears to, even if it appears to be objectively positive, they still put a negative spin on it. We've probably all heard the cliche beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Yeah, oftentimes, you know, just reality in general in the

eye of the beholder. David's adopted parents told him that his mother died in childbirth. He told interviewers that he blamed himself hated himself for killing his mother. His dad, you know, adopted dad Nathan, aka Nat and Pearl Borkowitz claimed that they were told by experts to tell the boy his mother died rather than the truth. David also later claimed that he became the monster he became in part because of being lied to about his birth mother. A lot of things to blame for his future killings. Just like with Keith happy face killer, Jess Percentman, this guy does love to point the finger

in every direction other than at himself. That would be a big theme again today. When I was a kid, I shopped at all the time between the ages of 15 and 17. Mostly when I live for two years down in Las Vegas, down in Vegas, I also set a bunch of open brush fields on fire. Fireers that could have easily spread nearby apartment complexes and hurt people or worse. And why did I do it? Because I wanted things I didn't have enough money for. And I was selfish. I just took it. Just took shit. I said, fire is because I was angry. And I liked watching stuff burn. I probably wanted to watch the world burn because I was angry and selfish.

No one else has felt. I don't remember being forced to steal or burn anything, even one time. I'm guessing no one forced David either. David claims he had a tough time in school as a kid because he was larger than most kids, his age. I'm fucking boo-hoo, not particularly attractive. Although a Mrs. Lillian Goldstein,

who lived just below David, remembers that he was a strikingly good looking boy, nice and tall with brown, wavy hair. He was hyperactive, and his parents had a difficult time coping with him. The kids would complain he'd hit them without provocation. And that's the other thing with this guy. I mean, I really feel like almost all of his problems were in his head. We're not sure exactly what kind of problems those were when you kind of get into the mental illness thing. We'll talk sure exactly what kind of problems those were when you kind of get into the mental illness thing.

We'll talk about a little bit later, but in his head in some form, this guy, he didn't have some horrible childhood. Throughout his childhood, David was reportedly both bullied, but mostly a bully himself. Like so many serial killers before him, he didn't have many friends. He was especially close to his mother. David's parents were not social extroverted people. Berkowitz followed their path. He certainly did not have a bleak childhood. Natton parlor did their best to shower him with toys and attention. His favorite toys were Carl Hubble Strike III mechanical baseball game and a Chinese

checkers game. I can say I love those old mechanical games. The Carl Hubble Hubble game is kind of like pinball. I can only your paddle was the bat. The other player dropped in these little metal balls. You could swing at with your paddle. And then there was places in the field where if the ball reached, they would fall down in a little slot and you get a double or triple, you got out, et cetera. Feels like fun. Play those if you can. Get your face out of a screen.

Play something different than a board game too. Berkowitz like baseball. He developed into a pretty decent first baseman. Playing baseball was his favorite and main outside activity. A childhood friend, Lenny Schwartz would later say, David was a great baseball player. He could field and throw being a big kid. He could really hit the ball. Another acquaintance said David was a great baseball player looked up to by the other kids. So he was he was a good ball player. He had parents that loved him. You know, he could have had a great childhood, but inside he just kept twisting everything and he became a dickhead. Another neighborhood

kid went to school with David described him as a bully, take the ball, wouldn't give it back. David was troubled enough growing up that he was put into a child psychology program every Saturday afternoon for two full years. On October 5, 1967, when David was 14, his adopted mother, Pearl, died of breast cancer, and the already troubled youth was devastated. He been told his biological mom died in childbirth, and now his adopted mom also dies as he's entering his sophomore year of high school, and that really does suck, man, to lose or to at least thank you have lost two mothers by the age of 14.

Pearl had died at only 52, and older acquaintance remembers David crying really hard. The funeral saying quote, I mean, he was really crying. David's grades plummet. He failed some classes just barely passes others. He becomes a boy without a purpose, playing baseball less, spending long hours alone in his room, stewing in his increasingly unhealthy thoughts, not good. David would later go back and forth on the whole demons talking what to do narrative. Tartinofy actually did think demonic forces would work, but if he really did believe that demons wanted him to kill others, as he has claimed off and on over the years, his thoughts may have turned to the occult around this time. He also may have begun to experience delusions of

grandeur, exhibiting symptoms of some type of schizo-typele personality disorder. Jury's kind of out on this, something David was and is mentally ill. Others think he faked the whole thing. David himself has gone back and forth, sometimes claiming that he is mentally ill, sometimes claiming that he has never been mentally ill. If he's mentally ill and his claims are in that regard to be believed that then David began to view his adopted mother's death as some type of master plot, designed to destroy him by nefarious forces, otherworldly forces. He would later say she died as a part of a master plan to break me down. It was no accident that she got cancer.

My dad doesn't know about it, but it wasn't a natural thing. The demons had plans for me, like you know, kill. Everybody always circles around that. Somebody put something in her food, evil forces, poison. she went out one day to eat and she never came back I think if it was at the very least a very Psychologically disturbed individual still is He was he was an intensely angry young man spent a lot of time alone mad at the world angry at God for taking his mother again

Four years later when David's 18 his father remarries of woman named Julia, David doesn't like her. Maybe he was worried about getting attached to her and then losing a third mother. I don't know. Maybe wasn't that complicated. She, uh, she meant well, David would later say, Dad was happy. That's all that mattered. I always told people that she was generous to me, but we didn't get along. She had a different set of rules. See this guy again, something like he's spinning something that could have been good into something bad. She didn't give me any freedom as my dad used to. I never got into trouble. I used to come home at 11 11, 11, 30 at night and never did anything bad.

And she would say something like it was different. The way I just didn't do things right. She made a comment to dad on things I did. But he never said anything specific. It feels like, yeah, it feels like this guy again, is his own worst enemy. She had older children like married with kids of their own already. When they came, I'd say hello and nothing else.

All right, so you're a fucking dickhead. So now young David has another reason he thinks to be angry, a stepmom, he just doesn't like, even though it sounds like she's fine. Luckily he doesn't have to deal with her rules, he doesn't care for for very long. Right after graduating high school, Birkwitz joins the army. Despite his father nat me and against it, and wanting to go to college, David says, I want to some adventure. I wanted to experience life, something different.

You know, I had no idea what to do in college, what to major in. I wanted to serve the country and get an education through the army. In 1971, with public opinion, having turned heavily against the Vietnam conflict, most young men were not interested in the military. It was often, it was no longer seen by many as noble or brave or cool, you know, this made anti-social

David want to join even more. He would say, I sort of live behind the times. I wanted to see some action prove something to myself. It was rebellion then against parents, country and stuff. Kids were hippies and into drugs. I guess I was very patriotic. Nobody else except a couple people were. He was a good dude. He's a patriot. He's an American flagloven patriot who, if the demons just hadn't a fuck with him, he would have probably become a four star general or something, you know. David passed the Army physical.

Also passed these psychological tests. His Army psychological assessment actually revealed nothing atypical. He was perceived to be a normal recruit. The army thought would do well in the infantry and not cause problems. Regarding his time in the army, they were right about that. David told recruiters you wanted to fight in Vietnam, but the US involvement in Vietnam was winding down. Troop from now returning from Southeast Asia, not going there.

Not able to make in Vietnam, David applied for duty in Korea, because my recruiter told me I could get there or from there to know which was not true. He said he served as an infantry men rising to the rank of specialist E4. He patrolled the demilitarized zone between north and south Korea. He said we saw North Koreans. But while there was a potential for action, we never had any. There were some North Koreans by the fences on patrols.

We guarded the bridges over the Incheon River David adapted well to Korean barracks life. He wasn't a perfect soldier But he didn't do anything that would indicate he might become a serial killer either His record indicates he had an inclination to be late. That's how did a lot of other soldiers Once with a second infantry division. He missed a truck convoy. He was supposed to ride along with On another occasion went a wall overnight missing a bus back to his find 50 bucks, his rank reduced from E4 to E3. According to fellow soldiers, specialist David Berkowitz was just an average guy. The one possible significant comment we could find comes from a fellow soldier named Davy Zammett who said, whenever Barrick's banter about sex came up, David would back off.

Okay. So he was reluctant to talk about sex. Maybe he just had some hangups. He was a virgin. When he first got over, there maybe just shy, not necessarily a big red flag. After being arrested for multiple murders, years later, David would talk about his time and create the Bose's legal counsel and to court appointed psychiatrist. Here's some of what he said. I got there in the unit and I was really, you know,

just out of training. I was really gung-ho, super straight. Everyone who got there changed. Wow, when we got exposed to everything, everyone changed. Almost everybody went crazy. There were all these women in the village of Kuma, you know, and we start smoking dope. There were prostitutes in the village if you wanted.

It only cost a couple dollars, but you had to stay clean. It was important to me. You can only go so far with them. They were willing, we live like millionaires there, every GI, we had so much money, the women wanted so little, we really partied. Drugs were very heavy, the guys there zonked out, they used alcohol, there was a group called the juicers

that would stay with alcohol, like Southern guys, Indians, Mexicans. They would constantly be going to the village and you would have to drag them back. The guys had all types of drugs. At first I tried to resist, but everybody else was doing all types. Guys came into the barracks really zonked.

After a while I went into drugs, except for heroin, speed, uppers, downers, acid, masculine. Whatever was brought in, stealthed, everyone's using now. Stealthed sounds American. I like pot best. I don't do, I didn't do too much to the other stuff. Very little, now. Steltz, it sounds American. I like pot best. I don't do, I didn't do too much to the other stuff. Very little, really.

Man, regarding the drugs, what a time to be alive. Back in the days before random drug testing. Here's a little random trivia about that. The Department of Defense would actually introduce drug testing or would introduce drug testing in the military this same year, 1971. But no punitive actions would be associated with it for many years. Some soldiers returning from Vietnam

began to have their urine tested in 1971 to identify those who could benefit from drug rehab programs. For those suffering mainly from opioid dependency. This testing found that roughly 42% of all servicemen in Vietnam had at least tried opioids and at least half of them were actually addicted. That is a lot of opium in heroin. Another round of testing in 1980 would find that 27.6 percent of enlisted men and women had used some type of illegal drugs in the past 30 days.

And it wouldn't be until 1986 that mandatory drug testing would occur. There you go. Now back to David 1971. David did drugs while in the military, not a big deal. Almost everyone else was doing them. If anything, David indulged less than most of his fellow soldiers. Those who started with him who had been interviewed

don't seem to think he indulged in anything stronger than pot. David himself would mention in other interviews that he did LSD twice, maybe less. In addition to indulging in a little recreational drug use, David also claims he lost his virginity in Korea, and Korea would actually be the only place he would ever have sex. And the only sex he ever had, he paid for. I got stang.

He, he, he, oh my heck. That is never good. David later told one of his lawyers he'd achieved penetration with the prostitute in Korea, but he refused to confirm even this in other conversations with other lawyers or psychiatrists. Always been very guarded about his sexual life, which to me means he clearly has some hangups. Clearly has some shit he's not comfortable dealing with. The only prostitute he ever talked about by name was a woman he knew in Korea is mischette. He claims to have stayed with mischette off and on for about a month.

Thanks to a series of overnight passes he was able to get. I paid her $50 for that month, which he claims was a great sum of money for a Korean at that time, saying, I protected myself because we used prophylactics, but not with her. She was very clean. But before I met her, I got gone a real once when I first got to Korea. I remember being treated by the medics with it for it, with big two big two foot long shots of penicillin, one in each hip. I couldn't drink soda or alcohol. I just drank milk and was cured about a week. And uh, oh, uh, I feel like I hear something. He seems a resident prostitution expert. And former Pimp chicken Joe is walking into the

suck dungeon now with his pet rooster Lorenzo to weigh in on David's parade into the suck dungeon now with his pet rooster, Lorenzo, to weigh in on David's parade into the world of sex for height. Bok, bok, blaboy, bok, bok. Wish we could get a little interview with Miss Chad. You can bet she'd have some industry stores about David the vet. She'd like to forget. What's his will? It's all like Chickatillok. Did it fill him with hate?

Did he have a microteen like a camper? See that his mother was fake? Men who always paid a lot with the woman at night, put them on a list with some of their right. They can't connect with a woman without a cast transaction. They had taken time by them and needed some police interaction. And that was Chicken Joe's way of saying that a straight guy who's sexual history only includes interactions with female prostitute should be put on the watch list because

you clearly for some reason does not have a healthy relationship with women, or his own sexuality, or both. I agree, chicken Joe, I agree. While on the service David wrote frequently to his father, Nat, to a former girlfriend, a girlfriend he did not have sex with, named Iris Gerhardt, told them both he'd failed to pass

his first marksmanship test in Fort Dix, but in Korea, he'd become a sharpshooter with an M16. Sharpshooter ranks between marksman and expert, means the rifleman scored better than 44 hits out of 50 shots. So he might not have been a Seemo Hayah, but he wasn't a bad shot.

The Tommy had a fight, he wrote to Iris, and Fort Dix, New Jersey, during basic training, they taught me about weapons, demolition, riot control, self defense, all of these courses will come in handy one day. I plan to use them. And it isn't going to be in the way of life. First career army men want me to use them. All use these courses. He tactics to destroy them the way they destroyed millions of people to the wars they started one day. There will be a better world. Uh oh, he's that guy. Another red flag here as as far as psychological instability goes, more delusions of grandeur.

David is the man who's going to teach the powers that be a lesson. God, what a badass. He can take the fight to DC, right to the Pentagon. Use his military training to become a one man, rec and crew, real life, Rambo, flesh and blood, Punisher. He's an unstoppable killing machine. Does he ever do that? Of course not.

He uses his training to sneak up on un-un-suspecting young women, shoot them and run away like a fucking coward. Some bad ass. Later, he would say that these letters he sent home, they were just meant to be shocking. He wasn't serious. Take K. Guys, he's just Jake Hane. Fucking weirdo.

After returning from Korea, Berkowitz is stationed at Fort Knox in Kentucky, less than 40 miles north of Louisville, where he was made a clerk typist, which he describes as a very responsible position. All my time at Fort Knox, he says, I was an A number one soldier. I didn't use drugs, just a couple of pills occasionally. Maybe once a month, someone would have pot. I love when people do this. Say one thing and then contradict what they just said in the very next sentence.

And then don't acknowledge it. Such a weird speech pattern thing. I never did drugs and I was there not once. A couple of times a month I popped some pills. I was a hundred percent clean the entire time. A couple of times a month I smoked some pot. I never killed anyone. I'm completely innocent.

I murdered a few ladies. I was never a murderer. Whether or not this guy is technically mentally ill, he is for sure. Nuck and Futs, not playing with full deck. David continues to describe his time in Kentucky, and I'm going to talk about that right after a quick interlude button for me to have a water break, a water break that you don't have to hear. Oh, the dry day in court of the lane. He says about Kentucky was very straight down there.

You couldn't socialize. Louisville had bars, but Knox itself was a dry town. Elizabeth town, the other town would have lots of booze. Places all along Interstate 65. The guy used to drink a lot. I didn't have much money so I couldn't go out that much. I spent a lot of time on post doing nothing. Every day, you would go back to drink a lot. I didn't have much money so I couldn't go out that much. I spent a lot of time on post doing nothing. Every day, you would go back to the barracks.

There would be a hundred guys there. It was all so ridiculous. If we went into Louisville, there would be one girl and about eight or nine guys with her hands on her. So you had to find other things to do. Sometimes, you kept yourself and masturbated. I love how he actually says that. I'm guessing by sometimes, he meant almost all the time.

This picture is a sad, lonely man man beating this dick like an Audi money. Thinking about the love of his life, Miss Chet. David continues, you could go to Louisville and get a prostitute, but it costs a lot of money. In Korea, you get a prostitute for a whole night, for a week, for $50. But in Louisville, it's like New York. They wanted $40 or $50 ridiculous. I never bothered with them in Louisville. The prostitutes there were dirty too.

The girls in Korea were pretty. The prostitutes there were dirty too. The girls in Korea were pretty. The prostitutes I saw in Louisville were not attractive. Never a fan of the guy who gets pissed at prostutes or denigrates them for attractiveness. I guess mad about how much money they charge. Always reads insanely misogynistic to me. How dare those brods want more money for me to degrade them. So he's cold, dehumanizing objectification.

They're nervousbs these women. Berkowitz's general conduct of Fort Knox is excellent. He receives good efficiency reports. He was actually considered a prime candidate for reenlistment. Too bad he didn't reenlist several deceased New York residents will still be alive. David even won back his former rank of specials E4 and off hours. He chummed around with barracks, buddies. He played softball, crushing the long ball,

getting out to first base, went bowling, went to the movies. You know, he was quiet and respectful when he continually beat off and he claimed up after himself. He was a good guy. Young Jewish man from the Bronx also became a Baptist while at Fort Knox.

Growing up in a lower middle class household, David Berkowitz was Jewish in name and heritage, but never interested in practicing Judaism. When he was bar mitzvitt, he'd temple Adith, Israel, David's total knowledge of Hebrew consisted of four paragraphs learned by a route to be repeated without understanding. This is what David would say about his Fort Knox spiritual transformation. He said, I began searching for a kind of religion of Fort Knox. There was an emptiness there, you know, with God, the meaning of life. I used to read a lot soul searching, you know, they had guys in the barr life. I used to read a lot, soul searching, you know.

They had guys in the barracks like really Christian. They used to go to church all the time. One of them, John Almond, used to ask if I wanted to go along one day I did. I went to church, the service was really uplifting. Men, women, children, singing, holding hands. I never felt a thing like that before my whole life. I considered converting. I wanted to go to church.

I used to go there quite a bit for a time, but not to lose my Jewish niche. I mean, I still wanted to be a Jew, but I didn't want to miss church either. I finally converted. On May 18th, 1974, David was baptized in the first Baptist church along with more than 20 others. He would say, after the baptism, the group accepted me. I continued to pray as a Christian. But towards the end of my tour at Fort Knox, I began to lose interest in Christian stuff.

I could never stay with anything for too long. On June 24th 1974, less than two months after his baptism, the army gives Berkowitz the honorable discharge he wanted. He's done with being a Baptist, took him in the military. He's home sick, he wants to head back to New York. He's back in the city by the end of June. He returns home, not knowing what to do with his life. Neighbors, co-workers will later describe him as a loner who kept to himself.

According to journal entries recovered after his later arrest, he basically became a full-time arsonist around this time, setting so many fires. Uh, never got arrested. This burning shit left and right and fear of city didn't pay the bills. He took a series of jobs, initially working as a night watchman, and then as a taxi driver. And I bet he was a creepy as shit taxi driver.

Imagine you can pick up my David Berkowitz. Hey, wait, hey, champ, Midtown, 866, third Avenue, you bet. Hey, yeah, I know it's none of my business, but I don't see no, what in ring on your finger? Single, ah, divorced, okay, women's rebels, I hear you, do I ever hear you, man, they don't make them all like Miss Chet. X, wife, that kind of, she used to be my girlfriend

back in Korea. Yeah, there's an army over there, it wasn't much fun. I mean, Miss Chet was fun, but I never got to kill me one or nothing, and I couldn't always afford Miss Chet some time, so sometimes she'd be somebody else's girlfriend. You know how this, you know, now back home, I can't afford any more girlfriend's,

20 bucks for a blowjob, what I this, you know, now back home, I can't, I can't afford any more girlfriend's, uh, 20 bucks for a blowjob. What I make, forget about it. Go ahead and just drop you off here. Oh, man, okay. All right. You know, if I had a nickel for every time a customer said that, I'd have a few extra bucks just from today. Uh, David also claims to begin to hear voices in his head around this time,

started to get louder, more persistent, the hounds of hell began to torment him. Late 1974, David starts to pay special attention to some German shepherds. He was been eyeballing from his apartment, 2161 Barnes Avenue in the Bronx. He's peering through the blankets to draped his window, Birkewitz, kept seeing demon dogs in the concrete courtyard outside. He'd later tell investigators they looked like dogs, but they had many human qualities. They could talk. They acted human, but they weren't. They weren't human or dogs either. They were demons. They began to howl things, yell like maniacs. They threw tantrums, strange

things. It was vicious. Slava used to drip down their mouths. They wanted to get it children to tear them up. Young children. I had come under torment. There was constant noise. Howling noise. There's howling howling. Everybody heard it. I never spoke to anyone about it, but everybody heard it. They had to hear it. If he really did start to think he saw and heard these demon dogs, and that is a big if. How terrible would that be? I mean, can you imagine one day your life is continuing just as this right now with the

one exception, exception, the lone exception that a few times a day you look at your window and you see strange German shepherds, right? Some dogs looking at you, it's very human looking eyes, looking at their eyes for a few moments and suddenly you just hear when these dogs say, what the fuck you staring at dude? What the hell? You're a dog, you can't talk. Oh, you're a dog, you can't talk. Talking right now, you dumb fuck.

Of course I can talk. I can hear you till you you shithead, really well. We have great hearing, so maybe keep it down next time you jerk and I, if I can hear Rosie, Paul McCranken, a little record needlety yours from about two blocks away, you greasy loser. Walk off.

I would like to think that if I thought German shepherds were taunting me, I'd set up an appointment with psychiatrist immediately. But I think that because I'm not here in those voices You know those voices you're probably not making a lot of sound logical decisions You know you wouldn't be in your in your right mind I wonder if his taxi ride started to get more interesting after I've been in these dogs Hey wait ahead and chief lowly side you bet. Oh

Gotta be careful down there. Damn demon dogs everywhere. It's down there Can't throw rock down here the hellhound, you rude bastards, man. What told me to fuck my mother last night? Can you believe that? Let's you out here. You know, you're the 10th customer today. They told me that and I've only had 10 customers. Well, David's mind possibly unravels.

He'll start to think more and more about who his birth parents may be. And more on that right after one of today's sponsors. Today's time suck is brought to you by Quip. Quip wants you to know that the one single discovery that matters the most when it comes to your dental care, it's simply that if you have good habits, you are good. That means brushing for two minutes twice a day, flossing regularly no matter what brand you use.

Quip, excuse me, Quip makes that simple. Starting with an electric toothbrush, refillable floss, anti-cabody toothpaste, and it all gets delivered right to your door. Quips electric brush has sensitive sonic vibrations with a built-in timer, 32nd pulses to get a full and even clean. And the quip floss dispenser comes with pre-marked string to help you use just enough. Since quip delivers fresh brush heads, floss and toothpaste,

refills to your door every three months, your routine is always right. And you know, you can keep those teeth looking tight and white. Also shipping is free. So join over three million healthy mouths. Get equipped today, starting at 25 bucks. Since I started using Quip, I definitely brush for longer each time I brush. If you're guilty now, if I cut my brush and short before the two minutes is up, I must have

only been hitting one minute's tops before. So thank you, Quip. And I drink a lot of coffee, so I need to brush off and consistently to keep from getting those coffee stains. My teeth definitely remain more consistently white, bright, right now. So get Quip or go to, excuse me, get Quip.com slash time suck. Get your first refill free. That's your first refill free at get Quip.com slash time suck. you. his birth mother. February 1975, he convinces his dad, Nat, to show in his Bronx surrogate

court adoption papers. Up until this point, David still thought his birth mother was dead, but he thought that maybe he could track down his biological father. He contacted an organization called Alma, ALMA, adoptee's Liberty Movement Association. This group helped reconnect adopted children with their birth families. Every Tuesday evening, Alma was meeting at Queens College and in the early spring in 1975, David went to one of their meetings. After about an hour, he turned to a young man sitting next to him and said, how would I find out about my mother even though she's dead? How do you know she's dead?

She died in childbirth. The guy laughed. That's what they all say. Now David came up with a plan to find New York City telephone books from the year he was born, stored in the fifth Avenue branch in New York Public Library, and he started just cold calling every single listing or every single listing. Looking for anyone with the last name of Falco who lived in Brooklyn, the hunt for mama Betty was on.

Unfortunately it was hard to focus on finding his mom because all the goddamn demon dogs riled him all the time. When we weren't talking to him, they were howling all day, all night, oooh, I'm a demon dog. I don't like you, you're the mom's super evil. Man, stupid hellhounds. 2 a.m. and March 2nd, 1975, David decided to put an end to the howling,

at least to some of it. He got dressed, pumped his shell into the firing chamber of his 12 gauge shotgun and headed out. The howling grew louder as he got closer to the door. He shoved open a fire door at the ground level in his apartment building, stepped out, saw the moon was full. He stepped up two concrete steps, saw what appeared to be a muzzle German shepherd, the animal grew silent if this animal was even there, and this hellhound turned and faced him. David thought he was now facing the demon dog leader.

He moved within three feet of this canine lord of the underworld. Raised a shotgun pointed at this demonic beast and shot it. This figured creature pitched backward, bounced off a wall, flopped down dead in the concrete courtyard, scraps a shattered bone, fur and flesh, rested atop a pool of its own blood. David hurried back upstairs, heart racing, pumped full of adrenaline, excited that he'd been brave enough to confront one of Satan's minions the leader of the demon dogs was dead but as soon as he got back to his apartment he heard how lean start up again damn it that's got that's got to be the most annoying thing about demon dogs just how many of them there are just the sheer numbers there a lot you know what they're they remind me of demon whackimals you bop one one down to hell. And then one other one just pops back up.

Kiss dang, demon, stay down my bop ya. I did before Mother's Day, May 12, 1975, David Berkowitz composed the six lines of poetry. He's a poet. I've been searching for his real mother for nearly a year now. Been super hard to find her, you know, with all the wrong numbers, had to dial all the demon dogs, you know, mess with him, but he finally, he's done it.

Through persistence and senacity, following up on possible leads, it usually led to dead ends, but finally led to Betty. And now he'd written her a little poem. He was going to give her, you know, before actually physically meeting her to introduce himself. And the poem read, I once thought you were dead. That was the lie I have been fed. I became a vet and found in this chat, she was the only woman I got to touch where a woman is wet You gave me away and now demon dogs from hell keep trying to get me to play and to pay

But I killed their leader and sent him back to the river sticks Now I found you and I am so goddamn angry bitch. You have a lot to fix Take a oh my heck got you mother that was not the poem he wrote. That I know, it may have been a rough draft, he threw away. The real poem he wrote when his follows. So as once before, we've been destined to meet once more. And I guess the time is now, I should say hello, but how? Happy Mother's Day.

You were my mother in a very special way. Love, RF. I kind of like my poem, better to be honest. And I think it's kind of weird, like you were my mother in a very special way. Love, RF. I kind of like my poem, Better to be honest. And I think it's kind of weird, like you were my mother in a very special way. Yeah, she gave Bertie that, that's kind of the normal way that people are most. Early on that Mother's Day Sunday morning, he slips his poem into Betty's mailbox and he will soon be reunited with his biological mother before he meets her. Let's take a few moments to get to know her.

Who was Betty Falco? Betty Falco lived in a three bedroom apartment on the third floor of a 75 year old building and she made her living breeding German shepherds. I wish. How great would that horrible coincidence be? David finally finds his mom, you know, walks in and she's surrounded by German shepherds.

He thinks her talking demon dogs. South Dave, hey, welcome home. You weird lonely piece of shit. You shoot one of us again, old David Boyle. Shoot your worthless dick off. Now go buy me a leg bone, bro. I gotta keep these demon dog teeth sharp. Ow.

No, Betty didn't work. She was a 61 year old homemaker when David reconnected with her. At 10 a.m. on Mother's Day, Betty went downstairs, checked her mail out of habits. She found one envelope stuffed into the small metal box. It had been folded over many times, pushed through the tiny slot. It was marked private. Mrs. Betty Falco only.

Betty read and reread the enclosed poem under the initials at the end of the verse was a phone number. The initials RF meant nothing to Betty. Nevertheless, she dialed the number. David answered in the two spoke for the first time. Betty was overwhelmed with emotion, ended the call early, promising to call David back soon. She immediately called her daughter, Roslyn, Ros, a Rothenberg sobbing. Ros would later say, my mother was completely hysterical. She kept crying, my son, my son,

it's my son. When Betty calmed down, the two women agreed to meet with David at Ros's home. The following Saturday, May 17th, Richard David Falco reunited with his biological mother. He met his half sister Ross who lived with her husband Leo Rothenberg and their two children. David told me that he loved me, recalls Betty Falco. He said that he understood that I must have had a good reason for giving him up, but most of all, he kept telling me that he loved me. That was everything to me. I had hoped for, I had, oh, I never had hoped for something this wonderful.

David immediately became one of the family. It was something he'd long for. Now, I can't imagine. As a coming week's past, he would make three to four trips a week to mom's apartment. On weekends, he'd go to his half-sits or Ross's garden apartment in Queens, always bringing everybody gifts to present

for Ross's girls, a cake for the family. He fell in love with Ross's girls. Whenever the bell would ring, Lynn, and nine, and Wendy, 11 would raise to the door to see Uncle Richie. Interesting that he reverted to his birthday with his mom, right, and half sister. Like he was still David in his regular life,

but Richard, when he spent time with his biological family, I am not a psychiatrist, but I have to imagine that fracturing your identity like that is probably not terribly mentally healthy. I don't know, maybe it's not a big deal, but it seems weird to me. And early December 1975, on robbers hold up Nat Berkowitz's hardware store. Damn you, fear city! Nat's 65 years old, he's sick of living amongst a crime in the of 1970s New York city.

The robbery was the final straw, and that would later say that did it. I hadn't lived this long, so a thug could shoot me to death. Then David Richards adoptive dad packed up and moved to Florida. Meanwhile, David continues to unravel. He's gotten a job working at a night as a night security guard for IBI security, patrolling a universal car loading location at 60th Street and 12th Avenue in Manhattan. He made just over a minimum way to 128 bucks a week. Not much ever happened.

He was alone for the vast majority of his shifts. Awesome. Even more time alone for young David Berkowitz. More time to think exactly what he did not need. He also enrolled in Bronx Community College, but he didn't show up much. He didn't study anything in particular. It was a half-hearted effort. Half-hearted effort of a guy who was lost in so many ways. David would later reflect on his time in college saying, I didn't study anything in particular. It was a half-hearted effort, half-hearted effort of a guy who has lost in so many ways.

David would later reflect on his time in college saying, I didn't study anything particular. The first half, I had to take all these remedial courses because I'd been out of school for still long. They started bugging me about making a decision what I wanted to do. I put down plastics. I don't know why. I didn't want liberal arts, because you have to mess with a foreign language, stupid. I wanted to go to college, especially licensed students, but I didn't know what. We have to even think of foreign language with stupid. I wanted to go to college, a special license sounds, but I didn't know what. We have to even think of foreign language with stupid. I feel like he was one of those people who just annoyed, buy, or angry at everything

and everybody's just, everything is stupid. I'm gonna go to the movies, David, I guess, but it sounds stupid. Hey, you wanna watch some TV at home then? I guess, I don't know, it's probably just one of the stupid stuff on everything stupid. Jesse Roberts of fellow student remembers David as someone who sat in the back of the room not participating more often than not.

He was absent. Part of the reason he was nationaled to class was he was mentally deteriorated in a, you know, one of several possible ways. Again, David has changed the story numerous times over the years. I won't keep saying this, but it's a point to point out. From all the tales he's told by the of nineteen seventy five he was likely either a dude who was just really really angry with mom and the fact that she'd given up and wanted to lash out of but for probably

no complex emotional reasons he couldn't actually bring himself to confront his biological mother maybe he's afraid she'd abandoned him all over again so he starts to lash out against other women or he's getting more more with young women romantically, women he couldn't for whatever reason to connect with and his attacks and later killings reflected his rage over not being able to form the type of relationships he wanted with these young women.

Or he had been diving deeper and deeper into the cult for years and thought he was actually worshiping evil forces and that those evil forces wanted him to kill said women. Or he had a severe mental illness that was beginning to manifest, something like paranoid schizophrenia, and he actually was starting to hear talking dogs urging him to kill, or, and I think this is most likely, some combination of everything I just went over. Let's go with the mental, mentally ill narrative being the primary narrative as we move forward, because that's the story David is told the most often, and it's the one the press ran with and most interesting possibility, most entertaining. According to this narrative on Christmas Eve 1975, the voices and David's head have been

growing louder and louder over recent weeks urging him to kill. And David was finally ready to do so just to get them to shut up. On the night before Christmas, he headed out with a large, honey knife and tending to commit his first murder. The demon voice has told him to kill a woman who was young. So he prowled the shadows waiting to see, quote, the right person and how the voices confirm that they were the chosen victim. How does that work with the voices, by the way, the demon voices? Like, are they smart voices?

Are they dumb? Did they argue with one another over, you know, who is supposed to die in that situation? Are they indecisive? Like, what if, what if you had not only voices in your head, not only demon voices, but like dumb demon voices? That's suck, you know. You got killed, David. You got killed tonight. I know. I know.

Why do you think I'm my husband? I'm just I'm doing what you asked me to do. Just tell me who to stab. I want you to stab or David. Stab with your stubborn. I've. Who? You're not being, you're not being

being more specific than the lady in the blue jacket? No, not her. Stabber the lady in the red beret. There, God, there is no lady in a redanie hat. Yes, Debra to be a hat Lady in a beanie hat. Oh God damn it. Okay you guys all go for the lady in the beanie hat. No wait. No, I'm not sure What is Satan say what is Satan say? He wants a pinch put pigeon honey Pinch and honey stepper another lady got damn it dammit. This is fear and fury

Anyways, you know just the things I think about. People never really give the voices in their head like strong personalities, at least in the story's average. Anyway, when the right woman approaches, David says he hears the voices say she has to be sacrificed and that they wanted to drink her blood. So he sneaks up behind this poor young woman,

plunges a honey knife into her back. I just stabbed her, he said, and she didn't do anything. She turned and looked at me and she screamed. It was terrible. She was screaming pitifully and I didn't know what the hell to do. It wasn't like the movies. In the movies, you sneak up on someone

and they fall down quietly, dead. It wasn't like that. She was staring at my knife and screaming. She wasn't dying. Berkowitz ran away in a panic. The demons must have been so irritated. Dammit! You did him pinching with bottom, David!

Later, Dave told a psychiatrist that he couldn't understand why the woman is scream so. He said, I wasn't going to rob her or touch her or rape her. I just wanted to kill her. That's an actual quote. I just wanted to kill her. That's all, gosh, that's a thing. Does he want to kill her?

Why is he had to make it weird? No one ever reported this crime, no one knows who this woman was or if the attack even happened. But David has stuck this story over the year, so I think it probably did. David wasn't done for the night. This next woman, you know, later did come for it. He saw another woman approaching from out of the darkness.

The knife was still in his hand. He concealed it within the denim jacket he wore, started after this second woman. I say woman, really a girl. He would attack her from behind. Her name was Michelle Foreman. She was only 15, just a sophomore and nearby Truman High School. She had reached the very center of the bridge when Berkowitz caught her. Michelle first felt a stepping pain in her head. The knife then struck her upper body three times. She grabbed the bridge railing to keep her balance turned to look at her attacker,

blood spurting from the wound in her head. David struck twice at her face at this point. She was a pretty girl, David would say, he looked at her thinking, why aren't you dead? Michelle would not die. She would live, but with severe injuries. David would flee and get away with it because he'd attacked a stranger because it was dark. She wasn't able to describe him well. The police were left with little to go on.

David would claim that evil voices now had grown quiet, but they would return. On February 1976, David moved into a two-family home in New Rochelle, suburb just Northeast of the city just past East Bronx. Howling demon dogs in this new neighborhood kept Berkowitz from sleeping and he started getting even crazier. He began to think these hellhounds wanted him to kill more women. A couple named Jack and Nan Kassara owned the home and Berkowitz soon became convinced that this quiet couple was part of a demon conspiracy. Jack

wasn't really Jack Kassara. You see, he was General Jack Cosmo, Commander in Chief of the Demon Dogs. They were tormenting him. A neighborhood dog was shot shortly after Berkowitz moved in likely by Berkowitz. David decided he would defy these demons. He didn't want to kill. He's a good guy. So he abruptly moved out, getting away from General Jack Cosmo, leaving his security deposit of $200 behind. Damn demons. What a shitty day when the demon dogs make you lose your security deposit. David later said, I just couldn't go back.

They would have been waiting for me. They had everything planned. Their dog's barking made things so bad that sometimes I couldn't come home to sleep. Finally became too much. It was all too much. Sometimes I had to drive around at night. Driving became David's way of trying to clear real and imagine noises from his mind. When I met General Cosmo, David says he looked like an average man, but he was deceptive. After I got my stuff moved, he let loose his demons in the yard. They tore my head off. They constantly yelled, constantly howled and threatened they were nasty belligerent blast-feeding everything everybody God people the mayor Abe beam One night it was so bad. I couldn't sleep. I stormed out of the house yelling the general came out He said what's going on? What are you doing? I yelled at him stop?

He acted like he didn't know what's going on. He has smirk on his face But then he made it stop just for a little spell until the next morning until the next day and new Reshell the demons began to explain what they wanted. They came to me from the yard. They came into my head. They told me who Jack was. General Jack Cosmo, general of this of this region of demons. He wanted people to die. That's it. Pretty simple. The demons needed blood. The feeling of killing innocent people, the feeling of killing and defying God. It was war. They are still battling, still fighting. They need that blood. Me. I never needed to want a blood. But after I shot someone, the demons would move in and feast. This guy,

this guy had to be a little fucking crazy. David relocates. It would be his last attempt to escape the commands of the demons. There were a few normal things going on in his life as well as his time in February 76, interviewed for a postal job at the Bronx General Post Office on the grand concourse after scoring well in their tests. So while he's having all these demon thoughts, somehow he does well in this test. I wonder if one of their questions was, do you hate dogs? How do I, especially demon dogs? And they were like, we get a buddy, we hate dogs? How do I, especially demon dogs? And they were like, we get a body, we hate dogs too. You're one of us.

You found your tribe. Davis told he could begin work on March 15th. His starting salary would be 13,000 a year, the most money he'd ever made. His first job in the post office was working as a letter disorder, scanning addresses and zip codes from 4 p.m. until half an hour after midnight. Fellow employees say that he ate alone in a corner of the cafeteria like the weird creepy

was. Generally, spoke only after someone at first spoken to him, rarely interacted with anyone. Sweet. More time to be left alone with his crazy thoughts, more time to listen to the demons. Dave will continue working for the post office until the end of July 1977. It would be his last job. And now it is time for our last sponsor for today. Black Friday is almost here and so is movement watches biggest sale of the year. You know, movement for their super sleek, clean watches

that won't break your bank. Now for a limited time only, every single thing at movement.com is even more affordable thanks to this big sale. There's hundreds of premium watches, blue light glasses, wearing one of them right now. There's blue light glasses. Sonny's jewelry styles with the fresh new discount. You can see them on YouTube if you want. Just in time for the holidays. I own five different movement watches right now.

My current favorite is the classic black 45 millimeter with a black leather strap. I like it so much that I work for the taping in my recent standup special shot at the Crowfoot Ballroom Pontiac Michigan. You can see it on that stage. It's simple sleek modern. I get a lot of compliments. My son Kyler also wearing the movement watches now. Dad hasn't ruined that for him. He got one last year for Christmas to make great gifts. So, so, so give the gift of movement. Shop the biggest sell for the year right now at movement.com. Use the code holiday 19 at checkout. Get free shipping, free

returns by going to movement.com code holiday 19. M V M T dot com. Join the movement. Link in today's episode description. Now back to the son of Sam losing his fucking mind during the spring in 1976, April 15th of 76, Berkowitz moves to an apartment house in the Glenwood section of Yonkers on Pine Street, but his dismay, his new home also has loud dogs hanging around. Loud demon dogs, what the flip? There's a demon dog infestation, fair city, more like demon dogs, Ville.

No one of this poor guy went nuts. Who wouldn't go bat shit if they were made to live in some sort of giant demon dog, cannel of a town? When David first moved in, the demon dog didn't bother him too much, but then things got bad. His neighbor, retiree Sam Carr, had a black labrador retriever named Harvey. And Harvey, that's son of a bitch. Harvey was the demoniest demon dog of all. Harvey was a real demony motherfucker. He was the dog who really pushed Berkowitz to kill. He's the real villain in today's tale. Harvey was a real demon mother fucker. He was the dog who really pushed

Birkowitz to kill. He's the real villain in today's tale. Harvey was the one that demanded young girls blood specifically bad dog Harvey and weird that you need the blood of young women more than other people's blood you purve. David saw Harvey's master Sam Carr is a powerful demon possibly Satan. And it was this Sam that David would be referring to when he later dubbed himself the son of Sam. Sam Carr was a 63 year old gunt, quiet andcessant smoker, lived two blocks from David at 316, Warburton Avenue man, which I could go back in time and interview that guy after the fact.

I'm like, what do you think of this guy? Making you the fucking demon guy. Carr was the owner of Carr's telephone answering service. He had three children, including a daughter named Wheat, 26 who was the Yonkers Police Department dispatcher, man, Wheat Car, totally normal. Awesome name for a girl to have, I'm sure she was never made fun of. David believed that Wheat's demonic father Sam worked directly

with General Jack Cosmo, of course he did. General Jack and Sam fucking control the dogs from their demon headquarters For reasons known only David he thought the house next door to Sam 22 Wicker Street was a holiday in for demons He says that's where the demons stayed these demons traveled through the earth You know like on different missions and they stopped at 22 Wicker Street to rest of course they did Demons needed a flop house makes a lot of sense, you know I needed a place to lay makes a lot of sense.

They needed a place to lay low for a little while, place where they didn't have to worry about getting caught by the, I don't know, demon place or something, archangels or something, maybe the Catholic exercise, extra system squad, I don't know. You gotta catch up on their demon zees after exhaust themselves with all their demon doings. David thought they're seemingly quiet,

normal neighborhood was a portal to hell. In the early hours of May 16th, 1976 brave, courageous David Berkowitz decided to fight these demons. He had enough. He wasn't gonna give in to their murderous demands and he's gonna take the fight right to him. He'd later say, how do you destroy a demon? You burn him in the fires of hell.

A demon is first of all, an indwelling evil spirit, but in some interpretations, demons move freely between her, excuse me, earth and hellfire below. Can you destroy a creature native to flames by burning? David believed that he could. Before sunrise, 5 a.m. May 16th, David Gathers his demon killing equipment.

He's a regular poor man's John Cossington. He empties what little remains of a half gallon bottle of table wine, pours in a flammable product called Red Devil Varnish Remover. Terror's an old undershirt. Stuff to strip a cloth into the neck of table wine, pours in a flammable product called red devil varnish remover, tears an old undershirt, stuffs a strip of cloth into the neck of the bottle, leaving a little cloth extended as a fuse. He'd made a weapon, many a guerilla fighter has made to use a stop, to stop a tank, a Molotov cocktail. David walked into the pre-don dark of Pine Street, carefully avoiding street lamps. At the end of Pine going north, he made a left-ung

lindwood turn left again under grove, found himself directly behind his apartment house, Pying View Towers, which rises up on a steep hill. He proceeded to have a block south on Grove, made a right turn into Wicker Street, until he stood just outside the low chain link fence at the front of the White House number 18. He knew that the, quote, Duke of death was inside. He turned the bottle right side up, lit the wick. He threw his Molotov cocktail towards the demon holiday in on Wicker Street, then he fled. He didn't stop running. He

says, he turned to his apartment where he quickly locked the door. Then he stood against the door, listing for the death shrieks that the demons caught in the flames, but he just heard laughter instead. Ah, cocky demons. Demons snicker in Adam for trying to destroy them with such a simple mortal weapon. They're making a mockery of the making a fool out of them. There's by there is by the way, no record of anyone reporting a fire bombing like this to the police. So did it happen? Why not? Or maybe he just didn't make a very good Molotov cocktail. Maybe just kind of petered out. Who knows? This is what he says happened. David also claims he virtually stopped visiting his birth mom.

The visit got really infrequent from this point forward. Doesn't see this half to half sister much around this time. He says there was no falling out. He didn't suddenly hate him. He just didn't have time. All right, he's got a lot of shit on his plate. July 28th, 1976, Birkawitz quits his watchman security job. He doesn't have time.

He has got to refocus on a murder. He planned on committing the very next day. Demons told him he had to kill on July 29th. And it's not like his boss was gonna give him time off for that. Hey Rick, can I have tomorrow off? Why, what's going on, David? Ah, he's demon dogs, let me sleep in the night,

they just told me the only way, you know, get rid of them is I gotta, I gotta get Sam Carr and General Cosmo to call him off, you know, by killing the young lady tomorrow. So, yeah, I'm gonna be pretty busy. Well, that does sound pretty important. As long as you can get Larry, you know, the guys to cover your shift. I guess I don't have a problem with you. Hang on some demon business. Uh, early the next morning, precisely one 10 a.m. David attempts to kill not one but two women. He walks up to a park car in the Bronx

where two young women, 18 year old Donna Loria, 19 year old Jody Valente, talking your lawyer's home. They see a strange man approaching him. Who is this guy? Donna says to Jody, what does he want? Those would be her last words. David who is right handed pulls a charter arms 44 bulldog out from a paper bag even hiding it in assumes a semi-squatting position quickly fires five rounds. The car windows shatter. Donna raises her hands after as if to protect herself from falling glass. One of the slugs strikes her in the right side of the neck. Blood spurts from the wound. She dies in minutes.

She never knew who killed her or why. Another bullet crashes into Jody Valenti's thigh. She screams in pain, rives forward striking the horn. David continues to pull the trigger. Then terrified by Jody's screams, anxious over who might hear the blaring horn, he runs back to his Ford galaxy and speeds off into the night. David didn't know if he had killed either girl, but he recalls feeling satisfaction. The satisfaction of a job well done as he left the crime scene.

He sensed that Sam was pleased. He drove home, careful to keep to the speed limit. He went to sleep feeling totally satisfied, totally fulfilled. Valenti survived her injuries, but had seen Berkowitz, but the police still had little to go on when it came to trying to find her attacker and her friends killer. If you recall from the beginning, the NYPD forced stretch thin at this time. That little to go on and they didn't have the manpower to devote a lot of time to solving one murder in a city full of murders and other violent crimes. When Valenti was questioned by police, she stated that she did not recognize the man gave a description, which fit a statement by Laurie as father, who said he had seen the same man

setting in a yellow car. Tested him on you by other individuals in the neighborhood, stated that the yellow car had been sitting around the neighborhood, or excuse me, driving around the neighborhood, that night as well. Police determined that the gun use

was a 44 caliber bulldog. They weren't able to compile a decent sketch of what Berkowitz looked like because he never touched the crimes. Oh, and because he never touched the crime scene, they didn't have fingerprints. Murdering Donna Lauria, one David had best a couple of weeks of respite and peace from the demons.

When David saw Donna's picture in the tabloids and realized he killed her, he convinced himself that he loved her. Okay, interesting twist. He would later call Donna Lauria his little princess and said that Sam had promised that he could marry Donna. He felt he had made a mythical attachment with Donna and he said if he would have just known what cemetery she was buried in, he would have visited her.

Somehow he believed Donna would rise from the dead like Lazarus to stand beside him for all of eternity. So you know, he seems to be getting better. Seems to really be getting pretty mentally healthy about now. David was happy to have killed her. He felt proud of himself for doing a good job. He felt that Sam and the rest of demons were proud of him. He says he sees to have feelings for people around this time saying, I no longer had any

sympathy whatsoever for anybody. It's very strange. That's what worried me the most. I said, well, I just shot some girl to death and yet I don't feel the demons were turning me into a soldier. A soldier can't stop every time he shoots someone in weep. He simply shoots the enemy. They were people I had to kill.

I can't stop and weep over them. You have to be strong and you have to survive. He had to do it, you guys. He was drafted into Satan's army. He just wanna, you know, beelzy bubs, infantry men. Devils his commander in chief and he's just following orders. None of this is his fault. After Quentin's night watchman job,

David signs on with the co-op taxi company in the Bronx, or actually the co-op city taxi company, starts driving again. As time he starts working in 12-hour day shift, began in seven in the morning, and he says he likes spending time behind the wheel and I can only imagine what he is now saying to his passengers. Hey, what are you doing boss, quints?

Not a problem. Hey, are you smell sofa? Sofa? But it smells a lot of soar for lately. I had to tell if it's coming from the garbage everywhere here in Stinc City if it's coming from the demon dogs. Sorry, sorry if there's hair on your seat back there by the way. I can't keep these hellhounds off the seats.

Hey, would you mind checking under my seat? Sometimes they hide down there. You want to see my 44? I let you hold it. Careful though, it's loaded. Can't take a chance with these demon dogs. Let me let you out here, pull over right now. Okay, buddy.

You know, I should change my name to let me out here. That's all I ever hear. Ha ha ha. July 31st. David visits his half sister Ross. It's been a while since he's seen her. She would later say he complained of headaches. Richie, she asked, have you seen a doctor?

Yes, he replied. I've seen a couple and they tell me I'm very sick. One of them says they have a brain tumor. Horrified, she pursues the matter. Let me take you to someone please, but he won't let her. He's made up the thing about the brain tumor. The whole family is pretty sure at this point, he needs psychiatric help, but he won't see anyone.

By mid September, the demons are pressuring David again, violating his privacy and his peace. He can't escape him. Each night, he finds himself cruising his treats of Westchester and the Bronx. He says, they broke me down, I felt sick, weak. They took a lot away from me, things I can't get back anymore,

like feelings for people. And I'm not trying to be callous here, but he would later be found fit to stand trial. I hate that, man, he just, how can he be an idiot, man? He just blames, it was this mental place, if it's not me, it's a demons, you know? I'm a victim. By the fall of 1976, he visits his family, or I'm sorry, visits to his family had all

but completely stopped. He claimed that he had a new job to keep him from coming, remembers Ross. We were sad he wasn't busy as often, yet glad his new job was going so well. I knew once things became routine at work, he'd come more often, recalls Mama Falco. In the early mornings of October 23rd, 1976 in Queens, Berkowitz, he'd been trying to get through a miserable night. He'd heard a lot of howling again. It was the blood monster, he says, Joe Quinn, the Joker.

I guess a particularly powerful demon dog. Oh boy, they got the big demon dog chased him now, the demon St. Bernard's. They got demon mastiffs after him. For three hours, for three hours, David paces his studio apartment at one 45. He faces the dresser beside the bed. He picks up to 44. caresses it. As always, he makes sure it's loaded. He gets dressed puts the 44 under his belt. He throws on denim denim jacket to conceal the gun, walks to his car, makes his way down parkways across the Bronx, white stone bridge and into Queens.

Just after 2 a.m. he's cruising through flushing at the corner of 159th Street in 33rd Avenue. He pulls up behind the red Volkswagen stop sign. He notices that the driver, 20 year old Carl Denaro had long, wavy hair. He says at the time he couldn't tell whether he was male or female. He says, I drove around. I saw the two of them at park the car.

I pulled around the corner. I parked. I just walked up behind them. I walked up on the passenger side. Berkowitz threw the 44 from his belt and fired five times. Glass shattered, he says. I stayed a couple of minutes watching. While firing, he notices the passengers brown jacket.

He realizes that one of the people whom he is shooting is male. Damn it. The demons did not want him killing males. They've been very clear. Inside the Volkswagen, Rosemary Keenan screams, let's get out of here. She drives back to the taxa pal grill, helps Carl Denaro into the bar. He says to her, I don't feel so good. He rests his head on a table in a large pool of blood, spills out from beneath his shoulder length hair, and he thinks she's terrified, but unarmed. Carl wounded by a slug in the back of his head

would, or I'm sorry, she's terrified, but unharmed. And Carl wounded by a slug in the back of his head, would morack, or I'm sorry, she's terrified, but unharmed, and Carl, wounded by a slug in the back of his head, would miraculously recover after two months of treatment. Surgeons at Queens General Hospital were able to replace shattered bits of his skull with a metal plate. Man, big hand for surgeons and Western medicine. Holy shit. I'm not saying homeopathic remedies don't work for some

ailments, but you're not ever going to crystal or herbal tea your way, you know, into a fixed skull, into fixing a hole in your skull. And also, how impressive is the human body? I've read so many stories about people who've been shot, you know, powerful firearms, shot at close range in the fucking head. And then they not only live but make full recoveries. Our bodies really, really are amazing. Police determined that the bullets are 44 caliber, but they can determine what kind of gun they came from. Not initially.

Investigators do not draw a connection at first between this shooting in the previous one because they occurred in two separate New York burls back in the days before national digital criminal databases you know made it a lot harder to do some criminaling, some criminal, a criminal, a lean, tried to make a word there and it was tougher to say that I thought. The next day, David Berkowitz studies the newspapers, tabloids confirmed that he had indeed shot a man.

He also recalls a sense of surprise that the papers gave greater play to the debate between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Damn, fear city. Guy can't even make front page news with a double shooting. David visits his newly found family one last time in the fall of 1976. This is the last time he would see them while being a free man. Thanksgiving. Instead of driving home, his half-sits or rosin's just that he stays that night.

She says later, David had a restless night. He finally got up and raided the refrigerator. He couldn't sleep. He was like an animal on the prowl. David told me, I'll never hurt you or the girls. I didn't know what he meant. Creepy. Anyone says that to, you know, Lindsey or my kids, man, they do not get invited back ever. David would shoot two girls two nights, two days later, Shortly after midnight in November 27th, 1976, 16 year old Donna Demazi, 18 year old Joanne Lomino, getting home to Queens after a fun night in the city. Earlier they traveled to and from and had to see a movie

and have a hamburger. When they returned to Queens, they met up with some friends started making their way back home with Demeter 12, 30 AM curfew. It was 11, 55. And they noticed a figure standing behind a nearby lamppost. Donna said, Joanne, there's a guy watching us over there. It's kind of scary. It's

walk faster. These two poor kids headed directly for Joanne's house, 23 year old David followed. In 30 seconds, the girls reached the bear concrete stupid Joanne's home so close to safety. They hurried up the three steps to a front door. Nervous Joanne fumbles inside her pocket. Looking for the key. The excitement her fingers miss him. Donna turns to see if the man has followed not seeing him. She relaxes. I don't think he's her sentence is cut short. Cut off in midword as the man dressed in military fatigues comes into view.

I watched him step under the sidewalk and come towards us. Remember, Donna? Joanne says to Donna, just wait with here with me until he leaves. Yeah, he looks kind of spooky. David then steps into the gentle rise of grass that separated him from the girls. He began to speak. Do you know where he never finished? I didn't want them to get frightened,

Berkowitz said at the moment, right? Because he's good dude, right? He's good guy. Then he says, so I began to ask him for directions all the while getting closer. They turn back to the door for an instant, but it stayed locked. Then they turn their heads to me. I had the gun and pointed it in their direction He reached under his jacket and pulled out a gun. It was unreal. Remember Donna the girls watching Tara is the gun pointed towards them

They turned towards the door Joanne's hand tearing the lock the keys still in her pocket and then he began to shoot at us Says Donna the girls screamed their voices lost in the noise of the exploding gunfire. Joanne felt a warmth come over her body as she fell. The first bullet had shattered her lower spine and lodged there. The second struck Donna from the side at the intersection of her neck and shoulder passing within a quarter inch of her spine, exiting out the other side. Both girls fell off the stoop. David watched with fast nation as the girls fell, saying it was just

like it should be. It all happened so fast, we called Donna. One minute I was standing the next I'd fallen into the bushes. Seconds later, three more shots were fired off. The son of Sam had emptied his gun at the house, shattering a window, firing a final shot towards the sky. The demons would not haunt him anymore that night. Both girls survived their wounds, but Lomino would be paralyzed. Police were able to determine that the bullets were from an unknown 44 caliber gun. They were also able to make composite sketches based on testimony from the girls and from other neighborhood witnesses. Glad those girls lived but how extra tragic and a way to be attacked outside

your front door, right? Joanne Lomino's poor parents to think about how their daughter and her friend were so close to safety. January 29, 1977, David goes to bed at 7pm to the sounds of demons, Bane, and the night. He remembers trying to sleep for three hours before dressing in the dark. The temperature outside is only 14 degrees, grabbing his pistol from his dresser, he checks to see if it's loaded before heading to his Ford Galaxy. He remembers feeling the eyes of demons watching him from the shadows. He was ready to use the gun on them.

If he needed to, even though I'm pretty sure, that's not how it works with demons. Ah, I don't think he had to shoot him with the gun. Anyways, it took David, several tries to start the Ford. Then he sat for 10 minutes waiting for the engine to warm for the heater to start functioning. Meanwhile, a few hours later, Christine Frund,

her fiance John Deel, sitting in a park car and flushing a community in the burrow of Queens. John was 30 in a bartender to local lounge. Christine was 26 in the private of his mother's life or of her mother's life. Excuse me. They'd gone on a date to see the movie Rocky, the continental theater on Austin Street and Queens, stopped at a wine gallery after the movie talked about it and talked about their plans for marriage. They left the wine gallery just after midnight walked over to John's car, a blue Pontiac

firebird, sweet ride, sweet ride alert. He parked at a station plaza just off Continental Avenue. As they walked, they passed other couples, hulsing for shelter in the five degree weather. They brushed shoulders unknowingly with David Berkowitz. When David Sockers seen, he said the demons told him she was the one who had to die. The couple made it to their car. John started the engine a few months,

few moments later, David approaches them. He hurries to the passenger side towards Christine. The engine was running. I just walked up from behind, he'd say. He wanted just to kill her. I wasn't told to kill him. I aim for her head, you know, quick and efficient. I guess practice makes perfect.

I was able to control the gun physically. After walking up, I stood in front of the window, crouched slightly. I brought the gun up with two hands. I opened fire. Three shots were all I had to use. I only used three of the five shells in the gun. There really wasn't any reason to use them all. I knew I'd hit her. I had to save my ammunition. After a shot, I began to run. I ran back to my car. It was quite far away. It meant a long run for me. I ran past the Long Island railroad and kept on going. I think I heard the car is horn blowing. I think I heard the man get out. He began to scream, but by that time I was far away. Neither victim ever saw him. John heard the explosion of gunfire. Saw the right front window shattering to a shower of glass. He heard Christine scream as two bullets

hit her. She was struck in the right temple in the neck. The third bullet at the dashboard. A trickle of blood ran from Christine's head to her soft, dark hair down onto her coat. Put one hand on her head, tried to stop the blood from pouring out. He pressed his other hand on the horn. He was crying and frightened.

Shocky called her name. There was no answer. Christine died at the hospital minutes later. John suffered only minor injuries from the broken glass. The police publicly connected this attack with the previous 44 caliber shootings. They noted that the shooters seemed to target young women with long dark hair. For young brunettes, beer city just got a whole lot scarier. When the composite sketches from various tax were released, New York police department officials

first noted they were likely searching for multiple shooters, but then a short time later they narrowed their focus suspect to the single killer. The killer was named the 44 caliber killer by the New York newspapers. The victims up until this point had all been between 18 and 26 years old. Christine Fund's death wasn't enough to satisfy Berkowitz's demons. He would later say they kept needing blood. And if I didn't give them more blood when they wanted it, Sam would have done something real bad, like kill multitudes.

Once I remember his demons were hailing all night long and I didn't do anything the next day, there was an earthquake, where? Turkey, I think. Oh, okay. So not only you see an innocent victim and all this, he's actually a hero. He's saving the world by shooting random young women

around New York City. Let's release him. We should release him. Name him mayor. Give him a whole bunch of trophies. Tuesday, March 8, 1977 in his studio apartment at Pineview Towers, David Berkowitz is restless. He decides to drive to Queens again to the Forest Hills neighborhood saying, I pick Queens because there are a lot of pretty women there. It seemed to me that Forest Hills was where most of the prettiest ones were. For an hour, he roams a small, expensive community called Forest Hills Gardens. And then he spots an attractive young woman walking towards him, a pretty girl with long, dark, brown, wavy hair,

wearing a tan, maxi-coat, and dark boots. Notice it's her books. I think she must be a student coming home from class. Her name is Virginia Vascarcian, and she's a 19-year-old student at Barnard College and a Bulgarian immigrant and American citizen. A junior majoring in Russian language studies who had a 3.5 GPA, a good kid, a smart kid. David thinks that Virginia notices him when he's about 25 feet away.

He's walking towards her. When he gets so close, he can almost touch her. He pulls the 44 out of his pocket. Virginia screams. She instinctively holds her school books in front of her face. David shoots hitting her, as he would later say, somewhere in the face. Berkowitz would later brag, I only fired once because once was all I needed. Virginia died instantly. David ran back to his galaxy.

He saw a man in dark clothing, a 59-year year old civil engineer who was the first witness to see David fleeing the scene of a murder. Hi, Mr. David said, and a friendly tone is if the guy was just gonna, you know, high five him and say something like, good job, Dave. Thanks for keeping those demons in bay. Oh, man. Thanks for making sure they don't kill him more of us. You're the best, Dave. And the minutes after the shooting of neighbor who heard David shot went outside, saw what he described as a short husky teenage boy sprinting from the crime scene. Other neighbors reported seeing this teen as well, a man matching Birkowitz and also a man matching Birkowitz's description in the area of the shooting. The earliest media coverage implied the teen was the perpetrator, eventually police determined

the teen was a witness, not a suspect. A bullet was found intact and matched a bullet found in the scene of Berkowitz's first murder. The New York police announced that a serial killer was definitely on the loose. A serial killer was known to be a white male in his 20s with black hair of average hide and build. And a serial killer was enough even in fear of city to become an investigative priority. The largest group of detectives in New York City, investigative history, ever assembled into one task force, the Omega task force was assigned to track this sick fuck, sick fuck down. These 30 officers would be part of the task force initially between 200 and 300 law enforcement officers would eventually

be part of this force by the end. On the afternoon of March 10th, 1977, New York City Police Commissioner Michael Codd, hold the formal press conference in Manhattan. He announces that a positive link exists between Don Alloria and the Virginia killings. He announces that a 44 caliber handgun, a charter arms bulldog revolver, has been identified as the weapon used in at least three separate incidents in Bronx and Queens. The press goes bananas. Berkowitz would later say, I read about this group. They had started to get me. It was in the papers and on television. I remember Barreli and Dowd. That's two of the lead detectives.

I followed him from that day on. Whenever anything was written about them, I read it. I also listened to radio when it came up. I knew that they'd get me someday. The only question was how and when. At this point, David said he wanted to tell the world about Sam and about the demon dogs. On April Fool's Day, 1977, he started composing a letter to explain himself. He was large block letters like a child to write it. He later said he wrote it that way because it looked more menacing, which leads me to believe he didn't want to understand him. He wanted the city to fear him. I think if he wasn't outright making all this shit up about the demons of the dogs, he was greatly embellishing it. That's just me getting a lot of different opinions out there

in regards to the state of his sanity throughout all this. I don't know. And I can't go back and forth and I don't know. Maybe it was crazy. Here's what the first letter sent into the New York Daily News red reads, I am deeply hurt by your calling me a weemen hater. I am not, but I am a monster. I am the son of Sam. I am a little brat. When father Sam gets drunk, he gets mean. He beats his family. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. Sam loves to drink blood. Go out and kill command father Sam. behind our house. Some rest mostly young raped and slaughtered their blood drained just bones. Now Papa Sam keeps me locked in the attic to I can't get out. But I look out the attic window and watch the world go by. I

feel like an outsider. I'm on a different wavelength than everybody else program to kill. However, to stop me, you must kill me. Attention all police shoot me first shoot to kill. However, to stop me, you must kill me. Attention, all police. Shoot me first. Shoot to kill or else. Keep me out of my or keep out of my way or you will die. Papa Sam is old now. He needs some blood to preserve his youth. He has had too many heart attacks. Too many heart attacks. Uh, me, who did it? Hertz, sunny boy. This is what he wrote. I miss my pretty princess. Most of all, she's resting in our ladies house, but all she, her soon, I am the monster, Bales above the chubby behemoth.

Yeah, you know, the more you think about it, he probably was fucking crazy. That is one creepy letter. The New York Daily News decided not to publish their letters straight away. Ran a few teas articles over the next few days. On the day they published the whole letter Now, the New York Daily News decided not to publish their letters straight away. Ran a few T's articles over the next few days. On the day they published the whole letter and their newspaper, it sold out within an hour.

They kept the presses rolling by the end of the day. They'd sold 1,116,000 copies. It was a record that wasn't broken until Berkowitz was arrested. If it bleeds, it leads. On April 10, Sam Carr received an anonymous letter complaining about Harvey, his black lab, the anonymous letter complaining that Harvey was a public nuisance. Our lives have been torn apart because of this dog, the letter red. It was signed in bold script, a citizen.

The Carrs didn't know what to make it a letter, but for some reason they decided to save it. April 17, 1977, the voices demand blood. David had left his apartment on the hunt around 8.30 pm. He drove around until 10 o'clock. Then at the intersection of Bartel and Baychester Avenue and the Bronx, he was stopped for a routine traffic check by police officers. Berkowitz had no insurance card.

Officer Jose Pinero issued a summons ordering David to appear in the Bronx traffic court on July 6th, or his driver's license would be suspended. He accepted the ticket without incident and continued to hunt so close to getting caught, but they just didn't have a good photo for this guy, you know, to be found by, you know, just a sketch. A few hours later, David would find 18 year old Valentina Suryani, 20 year old Alexander Isau, who happened to be parked just blocks away from the scene at the Valente

Lor, blocks away from the scene of the Valente Loria shooting in the Bronx. At 3 a.m. Sunday, four shots scattered the passenger side window of their car. Two shots struck the beach. Alexander in the passenger seat slumped unconscious towards the dashboard. Valentina fell backwards. David could hear her moans. He raised the pistol again to fire a final shot, but suddenly noticed approaching automobile lights on the street. He thought that the man was dead and that the girl was probably dying. So he quickly took another letter from a ski jacket,

dropped it at the center of the service road about 10 feet from the car, ran back to his galaxy feeling as he would say, flushed with power. Both Valentina and Alexander were dead before the dawn. Investigators determined that they were killed by the same suspect, the man with the 44 caliber firearm. At the crime scene, police discover another letter, a handwritten letter addressed to the captain of the NYPD. David said the purpose of this letter was not to win him more publicity. He denied that he was dropping a clue in the hope that somehow he'd be caught and stopped from killing. No, he wanted the police to capture Sam. Sam's a problem. Berkowitz helped the police would find this letter seek out Sam.

If they could catch Sam car, they could capture Satan, David would be free. Sam's hold over him would die. David would be able to stop killing. When the press hears about this new letter, more fear over the son of Sam builds. The police phone lines are lighten up now. It's good intention people and nut bars alike

all have their own suspects to report. With the information from the letters and the connections between the previous shootings investigators began to create a psychological profile for the son of Sam. The suspect is described as neurotic. Check. Potentially suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. Big check. Believes he is possessed by demons. Check, check, check. Please track down every legal owner of 44 caliber bulldog, revolver in New York City, the question I'm in addition to forensically testing their guns.

Sadly, this is not lead to a murder weapon. NYPD has also set up traps, undercover police officers, posing as couples and parked cars in the hopes of the suspect will reveal himself. One of the, any of those officers actually made out by the way. Like maybe a little romance was already brewing, and then they're like, well, you know, I mean, it would increase our chances of luring them in

if we just made out. I mean, maybe we can just take our shirts off. Nothing below the belt, Becky, I will keep it professional. Some officers start to talk about killer being part of some big satanic organization or some other type of group. One of the investigators, Detective Marlon Hopkins says, there were thoughts at the time that we had a possible conspiracy. A group of people who for whatever reason wanted to go out and kill

lovers, possibly killing anyone who was merely seated in a car as a kind of initiation into a club or cult. But we mostly leaned to one person, a psychotic individual. Yeah, very psychotic. On the morning of April, 1979, two days after the slain of Valentina Suryani and Alexander Ossau, the cars receive a second anonymous letter about their dog Harvey with a menacing handwriting, you know, matching the first. This one was more threatening. They called the police on April 27th, Birkewitz shoots Sam Carr's Labrador retriever. Luckily, the dog recovers and bojangles is now brought under the case. 1977, Bojangles briefly worked as a lead detective for the NYPD crimes against

K9's division. Our sweet brave one eye three-legged pit bull champion was able to interview Harvey, get enough details to break the case wide open. Burkowitz is in prison within the hour. Fear City is temporarily renamed Bojanglesboro. Of course, it didn't happen. In this universe, it may have happened another one. In this universe, the Yonkers police joined the son of Sam investigation. Meanwhile, Berkowitz began sending more bizarre letters, borderline gibberish to other neighbors in his former landlord. These individuals began to suspect Berkowitz to be the son of Sam, reports their suspicions to local police. The Omega task force is notified, but Berkowitz is not tracked down. Why?

Because these detectives are working on thousands of reports, you know, from many, many citizens all reporting that they know the son of Sam. They've got him. They know who it is. It's their neighbors. They're a cousin. It's the guy across the street. It's the guy they work with.

These detectives have a difficult time sifting through all these dead-end leads. And there's a good lesson here. If an important investigation is going on in your town, don't call the police based on like a vague hunch. Don't interfere with investigation because you find somebody to be like, you know, creepy or sketchy. You can literally get someone killed by slowing down the investigation, have some kind of legitimate reason for contacting authorities. May 30th, 1977, Jimmy Brezlin, columnist for the Daily News, receives another son of Sam Letter. The envelope has the word blood and family darkness and death, absolute depravity, 44 caliber

written on the reverse side. In the letter, the son of Sam states that he is a reader of Brezlin's column. He references several past victims, mocks the New York City Police Department over his inability to solve the case. In this letter, he also asked, what will you have for July 29? Investigators believe that this was a warning as July 29 will be the anniversary of the first shooting. And this is how this maniac ends this letter. He writes, here are some names to help you along.

Forward them to the inspector, the Duke of death, the Wicked King Wicker. No, sorry, the Wicked, the Wicked, the Wicked King Wicker, the 22 disciples of hell, John Whedys, rapist and suffocator of young girls, PS, JB, please inform all the detectives working the slain to remain PS, JB, please inform all the detectives working the case that I wished in the best of luck. Keep them digging, drive on think positive, get off your butts, knock on coffins, et cetera. Upon my capture, I promise to buy the guys working on the case new pair of shoes if I can get the money. What the fuck? John Wheaties by the way is a nickname for John

Car, actual son of Sam Car, right? The guy who lived next to Berkowitz when David rented, you know, from Sam Carr. This idiot might have really been crazy because now he's given the police so many clues to his identity. This letter is published about a week later. It sends much of New York City into a panic. Many women opt to change their hairstyle due to Berkowitz's pattern of attacking women with long dark hair.

Emergence began to complain that people are not going out anymore. City of fear, you know, it's the city of fear that the pamphlets warned about, at least that's what it felt like for many. And Berkowitz not done yet, but investigators are closing in. On June 7th, 1977, David Berkowitz fails to answer the summons he had received for driving an uninsured vehicle.

The court automatically suspends his driver's license. Notice of the suspension is forwarded to NYPD, you know, computers. Three days later, on June 10th, police officers, Tom Chamberlain and Pete, Intervalo, interview Sam Carr, who gave them David Berkowitz's name as the possible center of the mysterious letters and the possible shooter of the car's dog. Again, due to so, so many leads, they still don't pursue Berkowitz as a serious suspect, but he's now on their radar for sure. Meanwhile, David's demons continue with their demands. Saturday night, June 25,

1977, David Berkowitz's studio apartment was an oven from the summer heatwave. The demons wanted girls, he would say. He got dressed, hopped in his car, carrying that 44 in the paper bag. Hours later, early in the morning, June 26, 1977, Judy Placito, Sal, Sal, Lupo, sitting their car in base eyed queens on their way home from a disco. They reportedly were ironically discussing the son of Sam Killings while sitting there at 3 a.m. All of a sudden, I heard echoing in the car, Judy Placito says, there wasn't any pain just ringing in my ears. I looked at Sal, his eyes were wide open, just like his mouth. There were no screams. I don't know why I didn't scream. I'll never know why. I just didn't. The couple of first thoughts, someone threw rocks at the car, the car windows, Sal climbed out of

the car, he'd been hitting the right forearm. He ran for help. Judy found herself alone in the Cadillac. She sat there for perhaps five minutes hurting, frightened, mostly dazed. Then she suddenly looked in the rear view mirror, saw herself. Blood was all over me, she said. She tried to open the passenger door, but something was wrong with her right He dazed and she suddenly looked in the rear view mirror saw herself blood was all over me. She said she tried to open the past your door, but something was wrong with the right arm. It wouldn't move. I was injured near the temple. She says near the spinal cord and in my right shoulder.

Yet I was able to run. But the time I had no idea what had happened. I didn't even know I'd been shot. I didn't think for a second I'd been shot by the 44 caliber killer. Placito had been shot three times, but both she and Lupo would luckily survive the attack and neither of them saw their attacker. And I'm guessing Judy was a little pissed at Cell for running off and leaving her in the car.

I know right or wrong, my wife Lindsay will be furious with me. Rule number one, if she and I ever get attacked is for me to never, ever leave her. Do not flee the scene. I'm not sure that that same rule applies to her. I'm pretty sure it is okay for her to leave me to figure shit out for myself

for some reason if that happens. Witnesses report seen a tall stock you man with dark hair fleeing the crime scene as well as a blonde man with a mustache driving in the area. Police believe the dark man is their suspect and the blonde man is a witness and they were right. Public concern over the rampaging serial killer now growing into full-blown panic proportions. New York nightclub's restaurant seen even more

dramatic drop in their business. A blister in heat wave, a 25 hour blackout in mid July helps make Berkowitz's hell feel even more real. New York City, not a fun place to live in the summer of 77. Berkowitz would later recall that he hadn't meant to shoot the man in the car just a woman. As he left the scene, he passed a patrol car, but says, the demons were protecting me. I had nothing to fear from the police. So I 31st, two days after the anniversary of his first killing, David strikes again. I purposely drove out to Long Island to kill someone. He would later tell investigators, it didn't matter who I'd kill, whoever I'd come across. Whenever I'd find the right one, I would be told.

Sam would tell me through his dog, as he usually did when the night would be right. But the dog's not really a dog, it just looks like a dog. It's not. Sam just gave me an idea of where to go. When I got the word, I didn't know who I would go out to kill, but I would know when I saw the right people. When he found the right area, he parked.

He walked away from his car, a blue and white police car, the corner of Crop's Yavano on to Bay 17th. They began to cruise down the street in his direction and he said, I had the feeling they would go by my car. I watched them write the ticket, David says. I waited till they left. Then I went back to my car, took the ticket off the windshield, placed it inside on the dashboard. I wasn't worried about the ticket.

It didn't matter. I paid, of course, in a couple of days. He then began to walk around the area. Eventually, he would see his next targets. Twenty-year-old Robert Vylante, 19-year-old Stacey Mosquits, were on their first date in Brooklyn. It was around 2.15 a.m. The two were parked in Lover's Lane, kissing. Stacey's parents had repeatedly warned her not to go to this place, yet here she was. Again, the son of Sam came up from conversation. Robert suggested that the two of them go for a walk. And Stacy said, it's pretty dark out there. What if the son of Sam is hiding? Are you

kidding? He said, this is Brooklyn, not Queens. And the young would be lovers, lovers went towards a swing set and continued to enjoy each other. When Bobby was kissing Stacy, she suddenly opened her eyes, caught sight of a man looking at them just outside the fence, and she said, Bobby, someone's looking at us. Violante turned around, saw David. Their eyes met for a moment, and Berkowitz turned and walked away. Bobby told Stacey, I don't worry, he won't bother us. Anyway, you're with me, come on.

I'll swing you again. With Stacey, he'd had enough, and she wanted to walk back to the car. So the couple walked back to Bobby's car. Stacey looking around, doesn't see the strange man. And another minute they reached Bobby's Buick, he opens her door first, like a gentleman helps her in, runs around to the driver's side, gets in, turning to her immediately, moves towards her, his hands finding her face, crawling in his palms, he fives her lips, is 2.35 a.m. Stacy says, Bobby, let's leave, let's leave right away. And then Bobby convinces her to spend another five minutes

with him in the car, not knowing that five minutes or those five minutes would cost her her life. I walked straight to the car, David said, when he was later asked about that night, when I got to the rear of it, I looked around and stepped out and decided, walk. I moved right to the driver's side, pulled the gun out. The voices began again, they began to howl.

I knew I'd have to go through it at this time. I didn't care if anyone saw me. It didn't matter, I had to shoot them. David crouched over and held the pistol with both hands. He pointed the barrel into the car at the head of the couple and pulled the trigger. All of a sudden, Bobby says, I heard like a humming sound, a humming, a vibrating.

First I thought I heard glass break, then a humming, then I didn't hear Stacey anymore. I didn't feel anything, but I saw her fall away from me. I don't know who got shot first. Her or me gradually, it seemed like years the hum began to subside. Violante even shot twice in the face. Stacey slumped backwards, human shot once in the head.

She moaned her final moans. Bobby heard her, but he couldn't see her. Berkowitz's bullets had blinded him. Stacey, Bobby's scream. Stacey killed us. Then Bobby thought, but how could he've killed me? I'm still conscious. And Stacey can't be dead if she were dead.

She couldn't be moaning. His hand found the car is horny. He hit it a couple of times. Then blind, Bobby Vylauntay staggered out of his car, wrapped his arm around the nearby lamppost. He thought the attacker might be close by, might shoot him again, but he didn't care. He screamed into the night, help us,

we're shot, help us or shot, help us. Please somebody help us. Mosquitos dies at the hospital from the shot to her head. Violante lost his left eye and was left partially blind in the attack. Several witnesses see the shooting. They're able to provide description to the shooter to police. One of the witnesses describes that the man looked like he was wearing a wig, which could account for some descriptions of the suspect being having blonde hair.

The police were getting closer. They still needed a bigger break to narrow on one suspect. That break would come a few days later, when an eyewitness came forward to report that she had seen a man with what looked like a gun minutes before shots were fired in Brooklyn. Her information led to the first detailed police sketch of Berkowitz.

She also noticed David Jellocar with a parking ticket on it. The press exploded over the news of another son of Sam killing, and now thanks to this parking ticket detail, the Omega detectives were able to track down Berkowitz. On August 10th, 1977, police searched David's car inside they find a rifle, a duffel bag, filled with ammunition, maps of the crime scenes, an unsent son of Sam Letter addressed to Sergeant Dowd of the Omega Task Force. They also find a talking demon dog in the passenger seat. Hey, what's up you guys?

You guys looking for day five guys fucking nuts, you know what I mean? A few clowns, shorter for circus, that guy. Hey, can you scratch me just behind my right ear and while you're close, you might lick my balls? I'm tired of doing it myself No, no dog is found Police decided to wait for Berkowitz to leave his apartment Hopefully with enough time to obtain a warrant as he searches car with that one

The warrant never arrives police surround Berkowitz when he leaves his apartment holding you 44 bulldog in a paper bag When Berkowitz is arrested, he allegedly tells police. Well, he got me. How come it took you so long? when berkowitz is arrested he allegedly tells police well he got me hikamatooki so long or sorry hokamatook you such a long time he denied saying that famous phrase today however that doesn't mean he didn't say he denies all kinds of things that happened today uh... investigators who arrested reported he was gleefully uh... that he gleefully admitted to being the son of sam

honest person was a rifle he explained he was on his way to commit another murder when police search berkowitz's apartment they found satanic graffiti drawn all over the walls, diaries detailing his alleged 1400 arson's in the New York area. When Berkowitz has taken in for questioning, he quickly confesses to the shooting states that he would plead guilty. When police asked what his motivation for the killings free was, he said that his former neighbor Sam Carr had a dog that was possessed by a demon.

And that demon dog told Berkowitz to kill. And the police were like, ah, we figured so. We've been here a lot of rumors about that dog. No, but I'm guessing a lot of demon dog jokes have flowed around New York precincts over the years. The son of Sam has been caught. He pled guilty. Ferris City was a little less afraid.

Now they just had to put this guy behind bars. There was a little anxiety about doing that, about how long they were gonna be able to lock him up. Because investigators were not confident that he'd be found fit mentally to stand trial. But on May 8th, 1978, Berkowitz withdrew an insanity defense he was initially pursuing and was declared fit to stand trial

and he pled guilty to six murders. Berkowitz in fact appeared to enjoy the media attention in his case. He proceeded to sell his exclusive story rise to a publishing house, and that prompted New York State to adopt the first in a nationwide series of so-called son of Sam loss. To take proceeds, it criminal earns some selling their story and gives those proceeds to leave victims compensation fund, not to the perpetrator's bank account or their family's

bank account. Berkowitz was given six to 25 or six 25 years to life sentences for the crime, the maximum penalty allowed at the time. And as you heard at the beginning of the suck, he remains a prison New York state today. On December 1st, 1979, the Dubie Brothers released minute by minute by minute by minute by minute. I keep holding on. I keep holding on. The album spent 87 weeks on the chart and the spring of 1979

Minnabite Minute was the best-selling album in the United States for five non-consecutive weeks. It was certified three times platinum by the recording industry, the song What a Full Beliefs. Hit number one in the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1979 and became the band's biggest hit ever. What a fool, believe. You see, you see, a was made as a power. Ah, voice, this has two scratches. You get that 20 second Grammy Awards, the album won for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a duo or group. The single What a Fool believes are in three Grammys including song and record of the year.

What does this have to do with Son of Sam? Nothing! Has everything to do with pain? Michael mother fucking McDonald a little bit of goddamn respect. You just got McDonald if you're new to the show. February of 1979, Berkowitz hold depressed comfort states that his claims about the not demonic, excuse me possession, were all a hoax. Berkowitz is interviewed by FBI veteran Robert wrestler and Berkowitz admits that he invented the son of Sam Stories so that if he had caught he convinced the court he was insane. He said the real reason he killed was because he felt resentment towards his mom and his

failures with women. He found the killing of women to be sexually aroused and however, I'm now not so sure I buy this retraction. I mean, he ended up not pursuing the insanity plea. If that was all an act, it was one hell of an act. I don't know. May 20th, 1979, Berkowitz states to a court appointed psychiatrist, Dr. David Abramson, that he was lashing out an anger against a world he had rejected him.

He felt that he'd been particularly rejected by women, which could be one of the reasons that he specifically targeted attractive young women. And letter to this doctor, he wrote, yes, it was all the hoax. A silly hoax, well planned and thought out. I just never thought this demon story would carry out so much. At the time, I was committing the murders,

the sum of Sam shootings, I felt guilty unconsciously. Therefore, I needed to somehow justify everything in my mind, condone it, and somehow mentally convince myself that there was meaning, purpose, and justification for my acts. This is where the demon's story came into being. It gave me the mental motivation and the mental justification I needed at the time. However, deep down inside, I knew I was the real demon, so to speak. It was just me, myself, and I.

That is the reason I pled guilty because I was. And the going berserk in the courtroom was an act too. I was trying to convince people I was totally possessed. It was a desperate attempt. But it was just a case of pseudo possession, imaginary possession. Let's say I needed to be possessed. I wanted to be possessed. The ideas about demons came to me when I attended a Baptist church in Louisville, Kentucky,

when I was in the service. All the sermons were about demons, sin, hell, eternal damnation, etc. I believe this also had a bad effect on my mind and my life. In addition, I read numerous books such as Billy Graham's Angels, The Exorcist, The Omen, Rose Mary's Baby, Hostess to the Devil by Malachi Martin and many other religious books on the spirit world in the occult. After reading these books, I then knew that this would be a good excuse to commit serious crimes. So maybe he made it all up or maybe he wants us to think he's some kind of criminal mastermind After reading these books, I then knew that this would be a good excuse to commit serious crimes.

So maybe he made it all up or maybe he wants us to think he's some kind of criminal mastermind capable of making all that up or maybe he was just trying to get a gain favor from the parole board, get more attention. Who knows the light 10s 1979 David the murder almost murdered himself in prison. He was giving out water to other inmates when another inmate William, how's her attacking with the razor blade and slashed his throat The wound would require 60 stitches to close After this attempt on his life David would try and commit suicide several times

In 1987 David is incredibly already up for parole, which seems insane to me. He gets six life senses. You get fucking parole Less than two decades Luckily, he's an eye parole. He's been denied every time since. But seriously, why? Why? Why can these guys even get offered that? 1996, Yonkers Police reopened Berkowitz's case to investigate some of his claims about satanic cults. He started recently making claims about satanic cults around 96. They have they find nothing and the investigation is suspended. February, 2018, the New York Post reports the Berkowitz had a heart attack prior to his first surgery in December of 2017.

In late January 2018, he had undergo further treatment and was returned to the hospital for experiencing complications. David is now recovered and is now the 66 year old, as I said at the start of this episode who insists on being called the son of Hope, and he's working on his Christian ministry. And that is all for today's time suck timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely.

David Barkowitz, he killed six, attacked nine more. Claims he said over 1400 fires and would proclaim all of this to be the work of the demons. And then he'd say he made it all up and then he'd say later he was actually working with more people influenced by demons, a group of Satanists called the process church of final judgment. And this is the group that the yonkers investigators looked into. Berkowitz would claim years after being incarcerated, there were five other killers beside

himself, including two women. Said it was trick to take the fall for a plot to spread terror across the city by the process. Instead of Sam Karabin, a demonic agent, he was actually a satanic agent. As were his sons, Michael and John Kar, Berkowitz claims that Michael Kar was the one

who killed Sal and Judy. Berkowitz's satanic story, it's a dark one, includes connections to snuff films, ritual sacrifices of animals and humans, drug style and duty. Berkowitz, the satanic story, it's a dark one, includes connections to snuff films, ritual sacrifices of animals and humans, drug dealers and executions. He also claims the process killed more than just six people before he was charged with the murder of tea he was charged with,

claiming they killed at least 12 or 13 people before he was caught, and that the goal for the process was to kill 100 people, and that the group had clandestine financial support do i think this group the process church of final judgment is real uh... yeah i do because they were real group but not in the way david berkowitz claims you think that they uh... worse uh... some big satanic group i doubt it

but but you know who does the idiots of the internet idiots and the internet it. It is the end of that. All right. The video I looked at today was titled, Unvailing the Mysteries of the Processed Church of the Final Judgment. It's an hour's worth of vague, satanic secrets to society ramblings, a script read in a robot voice because the narrators worried that if he uses this real voice, the process

church is going to find him. He's going to kill him for sharing the group's deep dark secrets, even though no juicy secrets are actually shared or revealed. Let me be clear. The video mentions David Berkowitz pointing out to this group is a, you know, a real group. The process church of the final judgment was a small cult formed by two ding dong. So you got kicked out of Scientology and the UK in the mid 60s. The group was believed by many to be satanic.

They were kind of active in the US in the late 60s and 70s mainly in New Orleans, little bits in California and in urban folklore, they did become associated with ritual murders. There was a reason Berkowitz throughout this particular name. Charles Manson was actually believed for a time to have been associated with this group. Even the, you know, Bianca Tate murders were thought to be actually kind of carried out, you know, through Manson, but on behalf of the process, but this connection never been substantiated or substantiated in any way. And we can do a whole suck on the process. They were a weird little group. They're no longer around in any meaningful form. They did not kill a bunch of people for

Satan. They weren't even really Satanic. They were like a hybrid of Scientology. And they basically took some Judeo-Christian characters, including Satan, and kind of put them on this equal plane filled with God and Jesus. Like if you took Jesus, God and Satan, had them all living together like Greek gods on Mount Olympus, and then combined that with a bunch of kind of auditing Scientology stuff

you would get the process. And they were never seriously connected with any horrible crimes. Never had shit to do with David Berkowitz. So I'm not going to waste any more time explaining who they were kind of today. Let's get to the comments here because it's golden is here to it. A great big nuggets of idiot gold. First comment is from hijax TV who wrote three years ago, the process is the biggest, most serious satanic group

in the world. If I told you some of the members, you wouldn't believe me. First reply comes from now the band who wrote, I'm willing to believe you. Please tell me who some of the members are. Radio silence. Ha, three years of radio silence. Why maybe because there aren't no fucking names. I love when people try to get all mysterious like they do, Oh, if I told you, you wouldn't even believe me. Yeah, yeah,

what go ahead and say some names. No, you. It's too, too mysterious. You know, it's too dangerous. No, no, no, we're fine. There's no one else around. You can tell me. No, listen, uh, I gotta run. I gotta get out. I wasn't prepared for this to go this far. I just thought you would be kind of, you know, an aw, and you'd be like, no, no, I don't want to get killed. Don't scare me. I'd be like, yeah, you sure don't want to get killed because I know a lot of shit. You don't want to know.

And then you'd be like, God damn man. That's fucking crazy that you're in the middle circle like that. I know what is. And then you'd think, I was cool shit. And I would kind of get to continue leaving my life, you know, like that. And I wasn't prepared for questions. Lorenzo, Dave Monteclarell writes, this is what the Democratic Party is all about. This organized crime syndicate is just one of the branches of the deep state.

Easy Lorenzo. Enough with the Democrats or Satanic people narratives. It's so fucking stupid. You don't like Democratic Party values fine. Thinking they're Satanic, get out of here. It's paranoid and weird. Stop watching Alex Jones videos. Spend less time on YouTube, more time with the library.

Lorenzo does not do that though. He posts again, I heard that the process is involved in drug trafficking, prostitution, trafficking guns and bombs and terrorism. I also heard they're responsible for causing shooting sprees on gun-free zones across America. I do not doubt you heard all of that Lorenzo, but hear this.

Stop listing to whoever told you that. Find a new circle of friends. Find new sources of information on the web, find a new mentor, anyone else, fucking literally anyone else. Chevy dealer writes, I first heard of the process in 1998. This group is rather covert and also goes by other names, but is known best as the process. One person's self-development is to others, lines that you don't cross. I never met a single person, other person that told me they were aware of this group. I never could find a single book except for Helter Skelter, where the process was mentioned rather matter of faculty. Internet searches yield nothing.

These people are hidden for a reason, a sign that the judgment is coming soon. Wow, a nonsensical tirade that mentions the end times. Written in a confusing narrative structure with grammatical errors. Why is that always the case? I've seen a lot of the end times around the corner rants on YouTube. I'll start taking them a little more seriously when they start to feel like they're written by people with PhDs, which is fucking never the case. Chevy dealers not done.

He leaves about 20 more comments. Here's one more we'll end on. Their own recruitment material from the 60s shows a young man telling his boss he's quitting to go be an assassin and kidnapper all caps for this cult. That's the kind of person they were looking for. Someone who thinks that sounds cool. There's a reason for suspicion and David Berkowitz waited 20 years to tell about the process and the role they had in the son of Sam murders. 20 years in prison. He felt safe enough

to utter their name. I have no idea where Chevy dealer found this alleged recruitment video. I think he was hidden in his fucking ass because it doesn't appear to be on the web anywhere. Right? Because it's not real. A burka wits tried committed suicide multiple times in prison before coming up with this process confession. So was he really scared to be killed? I mean, if he was trying to end his own life, why was he worried that he might be murdered? I think I think he talked about the process when he did for much more selfish reasons. I think he waited 20 years because after two decades, no one gave a fuck about David Berkowitz anymore.

And he wanted more attention. This dude loves attention. He loves scare in the public, writing taunting letters. Loves feeling important, talking about nefarious forces and the devil, getting people riled up. There's a sad loser, you know, he couldn't get laid. So he started to kill pretty girls and young women. Now, he can't let that be the narrative.

Nah, he's the member of the very powerful secret organization and if you just listen to him come interview him hang on his every word all he'll tell you all about them day after day get some extra food gets a more uh... you know uh... accolades around prison this is what i think about all this the it's of the internet uh... strongly disagree it is

the internet the son of sam if you didn't know about him before. Now you know the gist of this guy's tale. A troubled sensitive, possibly chemically imbalanced kid who never seemed to psychologically recover from finding out his biological parents, especially his mom didn't want him. He was born or that his mom died when he was born. And I haven't been adopted. I don't know what it feels like. But I think it's a shame you couldn't appreciate how much his adopted parents did love him.

His father, Nat, would visit Birkowitz in prison regularly until Nat died in 1999. Never stop loving him, not even after the murder confessions. He never had a bad thing to say about his adoptive mother or father. By all accounts, they really truly loved and dogged on him. If he could have just understood that he had it in that regard better than a lot of kids raised by their biological parents, maybe he would have turned out differently.

Now his story makes me think at the beginning of that famous serenity prayer, sometimes called the recovery prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. David could never change the fact that his birth mother gave him up for adoption. And for reasons known, either only to him or to no one, he was never wise enough

to figure out that choosing to remain angry over that would never lead to anything good. Sad that he never was courageous enough to change what he could. And that would be his perspective. He could have let go of his desire for that birth mom and focused on the love he already had at home. He could have been courageous enough to really confront his birth mom about why she left him, doesn't sound like he did that. Could have tried to get closure instead of just telling her,

well, I'm sure you had your reasons, love you mom. Nah, instead he just pushed you down, pushed you down. Let the anger rise later in the form of demon dogs. And you know, all of that is easier for me to say, of course, and it was for him to do. But I bet he would have turned out a whole hell lot better if he would approach his life with a very different perspective. Same life, just different perspective. I think it's important for all of us to think about a lot of the time.

Time now for top five takeaways. Time, suck, top, right, take away. Number one, New York City was called the City of Fear. Fear city. I was wondered where all the bad New York City stereotypes came from. Turns out a lot of them came from the crime going around from 1955 to 1977. Glad that city is better now. It's a great place to visit.

Love New York City. Number two, this case required up to 200 to 300 law enforcement officers to finally solve. Teamwork makes the dream work. Had a lot of people not worked together, Berkowitz would have for sure killed more people. Number three, some good came from this horrible case. The son of Sam Loss, as they are called,

forbid the sales of books, movies, or other works based on and or written by convicted murders to go to the murders Murderers or their families Basically people can't profit off their stories of the kill folk The profits instead go to the victims families. There are 41 states that have laws like this. Thanks to this case Why are they're not 50? Number four, why did David actually kill? I keep going back and forth in this mental illness fast nation with the dark side of the occult Pisty just couldn't find Miss Chet in New York City who, you know, you didn't have to

pay to be intimate with him, mommy issues. I don't know. We may never really know. Number five, new info, David Berkowitz inspired a lot more pop culture interest in most serial killers. Many artists have gravitated towards this case for inspiration of some kind from authors to filmmakers and musicians. Spike Lee released a movie called Summer of Sam in 1999 based loosely on the story.

Songs inspired by these events include Son of Sam, by the Dead Boys in 78. Son of Sam by Chain Gang, looking down the barrel of a gun, 89 by the Beastie Boys. Guitarist Scott Putsky used the stage name Daisy Berkowitz while playing with Marilyn Manson in the 90s and the band's song Son of Man clearly describes Berkowitz. Also the talking head song Psycho Killer is often and wrongly attributed to being about Berkowitz. It's not. It's actually about the character Norman Bates from the Hitchcock movie Psycho and that character was based on a previous suck subject, Ed Gein. Another serial killer sucked. Glad is behind bars. Scared to think about what he represents,

right? That someone you've never met. Just walk up to you at random and just shoot you. For as crazy as a reason as they thought a demon dog told him to just end your life You know, maybe because they're mad about not being able to get later mom leaving him man Well the world always have people like that. I probably but I don't think it's ever gonna have a lot of them I think the world's most you full of good people. I believe that maybe maybe I don't believe it But I'm really tired of hunger you're cranky, but deep down believe it got some good people here in the suck dungeon Thanks to the time stock team queen to suck Lindsey, Lindsey Cummins, high priest to the suck harmony villa camp, Reverend Dr. Joe Horstcock, basically the producer, formerly known as Michael Pean.

Thanks to the Bidelixer app design crew, thanks to Kate and Logan at Spicy Club, formerly known as Axis Apparel, big thanks to the script keeper, Zach Flannery. Thanks to you, the meat sack community. Guys are awesome. Thanks to a private Facebook group called the Colt the Curious and a Discord group in this episode description. If you want to meet and converse with more time suckers, especially over the holidays.

Next up on Time Suck, we're gonna investigate the life of a man who went full on, fallen down with Michael Douglas mode. They call his tale Killdozer. In 2004, Colorado man named Marvin Hemeyer in an active his tale Killdozer in 2004, Colorado man, a Marvin Hemeyer in an active revenge against the city of Granby, Colorado, damaged more than a dozen buildings with his homemade tank. The tank, now known as a Killdozer, looked like something straight out of Mad Max, or the Walking Dead, and for his weirdly

destructive deeds, he became a bit of a folk hero. Although it's true that nobody other than Hemeyer was killed during the incident. Although it's true that nobody, other than he, my, was killed during the incident. The Sheriff's Department argued that the town was lucky that nobody was killed. I think we're going to score an interview with a member of that Sheriff's Department while they were working there. So it'll be a little different episode. We can't do those very often because of time,

but I think we're going to get the one this week. This next week, 11 of the 13 buildings that were damaged were occupied moments before they were destroyed by the killdozer. And all of this happened over a zoning dispute. Zoning dispute feels like Marvin may have been a bit of a loose cannon, a bit of a bit contancorous. We'll take you deep into this man's reasoning, if you can call it reasoning, and give

you the play by play of the strange but true modern legend of Killdozer after Thanksgiving. Now let's move on over to today's Times Sucker Updates. All right, first update is a quick little birthday shout out for a good mate sack. Tim Miller writes, greetings master Suck and senior read of Spook. Oh, this is written actually for um into uh, scared to death, but we're doing the update over here. Oh, this is written actually for, into a scared to death, but we're doing the update over here. Yes, our other podcast,

a paranormal and scared to death if you're new listener, where I try to scare Lindsay with stories. My name is Tim Miller. I'm a devout listener at both times, so I can hail both jangles and scared to death. This message is not about me though,

but is in reference to one of my best friends and quite honestly, one of the most admirable men I know. Alex Davia is also a devout listener to both podcasts. We listen every day to multiple episodes on our commute while working. Alex is unbelievably caring and hardworking. He has eight children with his wife Holly,

all between the ages of two months and 13. Wow. And that alone is enough to break any man, as well as scarier than any story that can be told. On top of that, he's always working, and when not working, he's working at home to create a better home, or helping out someone else on their house

with flooring, landscaping, et cetera. He will give the sheriff his back for even the most distant stranger. I write this because with your podcast being his outlet for relaxation, his birthdays coming up on November 27th, and it would make his year to hear his name thrown into a podcast. Preferably in the voice of Chica Tilo,

our favorite time sucks star, and I personally would love to see that reaction. I thought there might be no better gift for me to give him than acknowledgement from this king of the suck and the queen of the spoke. Well, the queen is not here. We don't do those on that show. Those updates, but I can do it. And he writes, thank you for keeping a sane, devotedly your minion Tim Miller, PS. We both agree that your scariest or today was the black eyed children. Well, thank you Tim. Appreciate the kind words. And happy birthday Alex.

How I find you to Russell. I give you some birthday styles, maybe some birthday hip thrust, maybe a jerk of soft shimcock, well you blow off the candles. Then you blow me, you copped with a little pig scum. Ratchet forever. Fuck you, fuck you Tim. There you go guys. Sorry with the list pig scum Rasta forever fuck you fuck you too There you go guys. Sorry about the language by the way. Oh my heck You could do those hard to rain in

Next up some trucker love and when I say that I want to put dot com with the end trucker love dot com Which is not a porn site. I did check This comes in from me to act Ron Ron writes a Ron Wrights, a trucker's thank you. Hey, Suck Master D in the Fabulous Crew. I wrote in a few times, just want to thank you for the laughs and knowledge you brought to my ear holes every week. Last week's episode on the happy face killer was probably one of my favorites, not because of serial killer, but because you gave a shout out to all of us truckers out here doing

a job, the most people probably think is easy. Just drive it and that's it. Not seeing all the traffic and wrecks, sitting and waiting in companies to deliver, missing home time with family and friends, holidays, birthdays, et cetera, you get the drift. I do get that on the travel end. Time suck STD in your station on Pandora.

Get me through my long days. I used to drive about 600 miles a day, so I've heard most of your standup and definitely caught up on the podcast. But I really do appreciate the shout out that you guys gave us and showing the support. Even though I know there's a small percentage of truckers out there that truly do suck at their job

and scare the living shit out of people. But most of us are professional drivers and are more concerned about the safety of traffic around us than ourselves. Thank you and thanks to the team once again. Humble and loyal meat sacked Ron. Well, thank you, Ron. Keep staying safe.

Thanks for doing an awesome job of keeping shit on the shelves for the rest of us. So glad you like the content. We love having you and the other truckers in the cult of the curious. Give that give that big horn a hawk for me. Next up, a man Leslie got a lot of shit from my Leslie man comments. They were well-deserved. Can't believe I forgot about Leslie Nielsen when I was saying I didn't know a male Leslie. Star of the naked gun. So many other favorite movies of mine from when I was a kid. Another Leslie and awesome meat sack for I. It's good morning, Lord.

It's sucking ton of this kingdom of chiquitillo and peanut but butter with which we may enjoy shamecox and pet head popsicles. Mother. I love that weird thing though, God. I was enjoying the entertainment that is your podcast right after verbally burading one of my co-workers during a stressful midnight shift

Working 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. at a high-demand hotel in weekends tends to do that and it hit me You're taken on men named Leslie is both on point and struck in the North and me My father named me Leslie and I've never forgiven him for it I had to endure being teased by classmates as a kid because of my name and have numerous teachers referred to me as Miz during roll calls early in the school year. As I grew up and met other men named Leslie, quite a few men actually, I saw recurring trend with them.

Self-esteem. Oh my god. Interverted. Tendency to enjoy to kill neighborhood pets. And strays randomly discipline kids with leather belts. I'm kidding about the pets and leather belts or am I. But after hearing about that piece of shit Keith Jesperson's dad Leslie, I wonder if that sadistic male Leslie Jean lingers inside of me and I've just managed to suppress it

for 30 years by the grace of Nimrod. Anyway, thanks for acknowledging the awkwardness of my name and thank you for providing all the free laughs on TimeSuck that many people seem to complain about on one's to refuse. I've been locked in since the TimeSuck Crime Sports' colligulate crossover episode. I've been looking forward to finding the perfect reason to email you, turns out my serial weirdo first name was the gateway for that. Who knew all the thanks, Leslie and Michigan.

Well, thank you, Leslie. Thank you. That was very entertaining. I'm glad you had a reason to write. You seem awesome. And yes, I now realize I got a lot of Leslie emails. I know there's way more Leslie than I ever thought about. And now a powerful, powerful message.

From a ginger meat sack and a dude I just saw on Michigan, Chuck. Chuck is a very, very great dude. And Chuck writes, subject, you were just another comedian on Pandora. Good evening, Kizash King or Kizash King. I know you're getting ready for the show tonight, but I haven't put this email off for far too long. After the loss of a woman I consider to mother this year,

I need to send it. I wanna thank you for everything you've done for me. I don't wanna waste your time, but I feel like you know the whole story. If you know the whole story, then you will know just how much you've done for me. You don't have to share it as I know it is long. Well, I am sharing it.

I mostly just wanted to let all you know the good you've done. When I got out of the army in 2012, I tried chasing feeling normal through anxiety medications and alcohol. As I chased my degree in criminal justice, I lost to, I was to all the meds, the VA put me on. I'm not sure why they did that, but I became a completely different person. I won't blame everything I've done on them, but I know they did more bad than good.

Those important to me suffered the most. In early 2015, I had entered corrections working for the state of Michigan in a prison, which working in law enforcement has been a dream of mine since a child. That was, this was quickly shattered as an attempt to escape by two inmates in November 2015, put a halt to any hope of moving up or being able to look at myself.

I was a new officer, it was only six months in and it hit me hard. On top of this, I was losing my longest relationship with the woman who loved me and stood by me. I worked so hard to make her hate me as much as I hated myself. Between the meds and the alcohol, I insured that at the very least, I would have her,

I wouldn't have her support anymore. Finally got my DUI in 2016. About a year after that, I lost a daughter. I never got to meet due to the mother moving to Florida. She accidentally smothered her while being drunk on meth coke, man. She also believes that she is innocent and tried to contact me to find out if any medical condition for my family could cause it. It's been two years, still nothing new to her case.

She's been uncharged. I wish I could say this was an employee to get you going, but sadly it's not. By this time I was so disgraced that I was drinking constant until one night I tried to get up the courage to get a firearm out of my safe and end the life I didn't feel like I was entitled to. I've never been suicidal. I thought I was for the week. I could not bring up the courage to do it. I kept drinking all night. All I could see was my brothers in the pain it would be that would be transferred to them. I knew it would be unfair so my life slipped into just trying to drink every day which caused me to see them less and become a shit

of your brother. Finally we saw you here in Grand Rapids in 2018. You mentioned the podcast. I put it off as I thought podcast was some kind of big, complex thing that took a science degree to figure out. A few months later, I have to leave in the prison. I stumbled upon the podcast on Google Play of all things.

So immediately started from the beginning. In the first few episodes, you had brought up your DUI. Some mistakes you made in early relationships was caused me to start crying. I started to think about all the bad shit I've done, my DUI in a better light. You had stated about how you may have done it, but you were human and you learned not only accepted

but to change to the better from it. It felt as if you were talking directly to me and you were the first person to tell me that it was gonna be all right. I'd hated myself so much over the past years, finally felt as if someone understood. That had been a few months ago today. I no longer drink every day. I've started to spend much more time with my brothers again without being hung over or leaving to party. I've reconnected with my father and sisters,

my best friend, and I also now go to many more comedy concerts and other events. Without you, I would have not started living my life as I have recently. I believe without you telling your story, my story would have been a lot more drinking and punishing everyone I care about. Thank you for everything. Hope this was not too terrible to read or bounce around. Keep up the amazing comedy podcast. Best of luck tonight.

I will see you there. Your ginger, spaceless, or chuck. Thank you, chuck. It was so great to meet you at the show. We had a little moment during the show. You're funny, dude. And thanks for sharing your story because now your story might connect with somebody else,

which is one of the reasons I like to read these. And I'm very, very happy that you're doing well. You seem like a really good dude. You seem like when I met you, you're looking a real good place. So fuck yeah, man. Hell, Nimrod to you. And we're gonna end on one final trucker shout out.

Meet Sack Brett, kill him rights. My dad is drove for over 20 years. He listens to the suck every fricking day. I let him listen to an episode, he was hooked. We talked to each other about the episodes and how funny Dankelman's is, how the master of the suck makes a lot of sense. How bad ass, that's price scary.

How bad ass Bojangles is. So I decided to follow my old man's footsteps and get my CDL, my commercial driver's license, start my orientation tomorrow. Missed a lot of episodes, doing everything to get to where I am. I hate that I missed this episode about the trucker shoutout. Just wanted to say thank you.

It means a whole hell of a lot because not a lot of people respect us or appreciate what we do. And I don't think they understand how much we do affects their lives. Thank you, master sucker. Keep on sucking, PS, I would love for you to do a suck on truck and would love for you to give my old man a shout out

his name is Brian Kellum. Thanks, man. Well, thank you, Brett, and thank you, Brian Kellum. You sound like an awesome trucker. Sound like an even better dad. Yay, good dad. World needs more good debts. So fuck yeah, honk that horn for me,

and I love getting the chance to say this because it's one of my favorite phrases. You keep on trucking! Thanks, time suckers. I need a net. We all did. Have a great week, meet Zach Sarvice, so it sounds a little rushed. I was trying not to rush too much, but I had some tech problems in the morning and I was

worried about getting a release on time. If a demon dog starts talking to you, do not listen. Nothing good comes from demon dogs. Now we know that thanks to a son of a Sam. And in addition to keeping on trucking, how about you keep on sucking? Oh! Red! The Mending! Hooray! 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc

1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc

1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% 1.5%

1.5% 1.5% 1.5% 1.5% I'm a preacher son, I'm a devil's lie, I'm a living in the darkness, but you try, I'm a lead you out, I'm a need you, I'm a leave you here Yeah, I'ma show you love, I'ma show you love I'm living in the darkness, won't you trust I'ma need you, I'm gonna leave you here We're going away And we call the pain

And we hold the hand that holds us down, down, down Come on I'm a devil, son, I'm a masochist, chasing shadows of the hopeless won't you witness, I'm gonna leave you here, yeah, I'm a future god, I'm a christian, I'm a Christian I'm a shard of the ancient internet Gonna show you love, gonna leave your head We're going away And we're going away And we're going home The land that holds us down, down, down

I'm gonna die! And die Oh, away And we grow away And we hold the hand that holds us down, down, down Your conscience trips away Your conscience trips away Your conscience trips away Your conscience trips away It's just a way Not just a way