Yep we where all shocked!
He was adopted. Really was Italian)and converted to Christiantiy while serving with the army - Subscribed My family with “Sword of the Lord” and converted back
I do believe he is devoted
Violent -Nope
Unstable- uh no not really a little strange, used to disappear and not explain where he went- The old neighborhood was what he said
As for the night of his arrest
I had just went to bed and got a call from a friend(a cop) who said Guess what they just locked up Son of Sam I said great but why call at this Time to tell me! He said it was dave Berkowitz and my answer was there has to hundreds by that name.
Well I put on the radio and heard-
Went to Chris Columbus HS
Joined the Army
Went to Korea
was a postal worker
Oh crap Its him!!
was on the phone all night with friends
That’s the danger of true believers, of anything. Sometimes they believe that their actions are acceptable because they’re privy to a higher calling that goes beyond morality or laws.
After he was captured, Berkowitz said
He’s even quoted as saying that he “felt good after [he] did it”.
In his mind, they weren’t innocent and what he was doing was necessary. I don’t think that, in his own mind, it conflicted at all with his religious beliefs.
I lived two blocks from Patrick Henry Sherrill, who killed 14 people at the Edmond, OK Post Office in 1986.
And my former wife’s cousin is John Hinkley, who shot Ronald Reagan. I met his mother and sister once several years before the shooting when they came to visit my wife’s family. They were very nice, sweet people. It’s a shame what they’ve been through.
Berkowitz lived at 35 Pine Street, and I was in a duplex diagonally across the street. There was a day when I was tossing a football in the street with my son, and an errant throw bounced the ball off the trunk of a car. The owner of the car was ‘guess who’. We exchanged ‘sorry’ and ‘no problem’, and the next time I saw him was at the bust.
The owners of 35 Pine Street (a 6 or 8 story apartment building) changed the number of the building due to gawkers and notoriety. Heh, as if that changed anything. It was the only apartment building on the street.
Someone I knew fairly well when we were in elementary school together (but whom I had not seen since we graduated from high school as classmates) murdered his wife and children in a shopping mall parking lot. He then fatally turned the gun on himself. Apparently he was despondent about his tenuous employment situation and consequent inability to provide for his family. The story made the local (Cleveland-area) papers, but a few years before the Internet took off – Googling his name brings up no relevant sites.
Growing up, I was really good friends with the son of one of the victims from that fire. I always hated Orr on his behalf, not only because he lost his mother, but because he ended up with a real witch of a stepmother when his father eventually remarried…
I’ve been wanting to tell this story for awhile, and this seems like as good a time as any.
Circa 1987 during the U of Texas vs Texas A&M game, a young woman was brutally murdered in her sorority house. My friends and I were at the game, and afterwards decided to meet at “Terry”’s apartment, which happened to be directly behind the sorority house (we didn’t know about the murder at the time). “Mike” arrived at the apartment first. He had a key and decided to play a practical joke: he let himself in and hid in the the shower, planning to scare the hell out of the next person to enter the bathroom.
Just as Terry and others arrived at the apartment, they were greeted by police who wanted to search the apartment. When the officer assigned to search the bathroom pulled back the shower curtain, Mike jumped out and yelled “BOO!” Mike was met with a speedily drawn revolver. There was some ‘splainin’ to do, but it all got sorted out.
The murder appeared to be the work of a transient. There were few clues, and the case was not solved during the time I remained in Austin.
Recently I saw a case on Court TV about a serial killer whose M.O., time line, and geographical range made it seem likely to me that he was the killer.
My son,(same kid who threw the football at the Son of Sam) went to high school with Kendall Francois.
Who, you say? He murdered 8 prostitutes, and buried many of them in his basement. And, his parents never knew it!
He kept inviteing me over to his apartment for a visit but never found the time.
After his arrest and they showed the pictures of the holes in the wall and the writing over them .I am so glad I didnt go!
I’m related to someone who taught John Glover’s children and who had spoken to him on several Parent-Teacher nights.
John Glover was dubbed “the Granny Killer” because he murdered several old ladies and assaulted quite a few others in a “safe, middle-class” area of Sydney.