He terrorized millions. Now the Son of Sam has confided in me… and has finally broken his silence on two terrifying crimes

‘Hello from the gutters of N.Y.C. which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood,’ began the letter from the self-styled Son of Sam.

It was the summer of 1977. A serial killer was prowling the streets of New York City after dark, stalking young women and couples sitting in their cars with his .44 caliber Bulldog revolver.

After goading police in a chilling letter left beside the bodies of two victims, he wrote another rambling note, this time to New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin.

‘Sam’s a thirsty lad and he won’t let me stop killing until he gets his fill of blood,’ it said.

A few months later, on August 10, the Son of Sam was captured and unmasked as David Berkowitz, a 24-year-old postal worker living in Yonkers.

Yet his correspondence with the media did not end with his arrest. In the years following his conviction, he continued to court the press, most notably investigative journalist Maury Terry, who became consumed by his theory that a broader Satanic cult was behind the shootings.

Today, almost five decades on, the man who once held the Big Apple in a chokehold of fear is living a quiet life behind bars inside Shawangunk Correctional Facility in upstate New York.

But now Berkowitz is writing to the press once again, corresponding with the Daily Mail in a series of jailhouse letters.

Their tone is starkly different from the messages that once spread fear across the five boroughs 50 years ago. They are polite and articulate and, rather than boasting about his murderous exploits, seek to diminish and minimize them.

In these rare, exclusive messages to this reporter, the 72-year-old has broken his silence about a shooting recently classed by the NYPD as his first known attack, as well as bombshell allegations that he might have murdered a teenage girl six years before the summers of Sam – insisting he is innocent of both.

‘As a man and as a Christian, I would’ve confessed,’ he wrote. ‘But I never brought harm to these two women. So how could I confess to something I didn’t do?

‘That would be doing a disservice because the real perpetrators would continue to escape justice.’

In 2024, Berkowitz was identified by the NYPD as the perpetrator of the near-fatal April 1976 shooting of Wendy Savino. Then, late last year, calls began growing for the department to reinvestigate the unsolved 1970 murder of Margaret Iglesias and explore possible ties to Berkowitz.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Berkowitz insisted that he was not responsible for either shooting, and claimed that he would come clean if he were.

‘I have deep sadness and remorse for my crimes, and I wish I could undo everything. I’ve been saying this for decades,’ he wrote.

‘And if I was the person who shot and injured Mrs. Savino, I would have manned up and admitted to it. Likewise, with precious Margaret Iglesias, that poor girl.’

Furiously dismissing the accusations as ‘preposterous’ and ‘ridiculous,’ Berkowitz also complained at length that he, the serial killer who confessed to six murders, is the victim of a ‘hate campaign’ that has inflicted ‘pain, loss, grief, shame, aggravation and heartache’ on him and has ‘exploited’ the victims.

It was six years before anyone had heard of the Son of Sam when a sniper using a .22 caliber rifle carried out a string of shootings on 169th Street between Morris and Grant Avenues in the South Bronx.

Over an eight-week period from August to October 1970, six people, including five females, were shot in nighttime attacks. Five survived. 

The last victim, 16-year-old Iglesias, died after being shot three times while walking home from a party at around 2am on October 18.

No arrests were ever made and the so-called Bronx Sniper shootings appeared to cease. Iglesias’s murder was never solved.

Now, Son of Sam researcher Manny Grossman and retired Yonkers detective Mike Lorenzo have theorized that Iglesias could be an early Son of Sam victim and are calling on the NYPD to reopen the investigation.

They suggested, in comments made to the New York Post in December, that the shootings matched Berkowitz’s modus operandi and noted he had worked at the time at his father’s business, Melrose Hardware, just a mile from where the attacks took place.

As with the Son of Sam shootings, the events appeared to be random. Berkowitz was 17. A few months later, in January 1971, he enlisted in the Army and was sent to South Korea.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Berkowitz dismissed the claim as ‘preposterous’ that Iglesias could be his first slain victim.

‘The site of the crime is NOT all that close to where my father’s hardware store was located,’ Berkowitz said.

‘The idea that I was roaming around in a fairly dangerous high crime neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning, and being miles from home, is illogical.

‘To get home I would have to take the subway line all the way into Manhattan to switch over and catch the train going to the opposite side of the Bronx. I wouldn’t get home until 3:30 or 4 o’clock in the morning. And get up for school the next day? Also, wouldn’t my dad be concerned that I was out and about at such an hour?’

At the time, Berkowitz and his adoptive father Nathan lived in the Co‐op City building in the Bronx, roughly a 30-minute drive from the shootings. His adoptive mother died when he was 14.

The serial killer claimed that he had never even heard of ‘the sad and tragic case of Margaret Iglesias’ before the claims of Grossman and Lorenzo went public and his ‘precious friends’ made him aware, posting old news articles to him in prison.

Having now researched the case, Berkowitz tore into the theory and accused Grossman of searching for cold cases to connect him to in order to seek ‘fame and notoriety.’

‘Mr. Grossman, who is a stranger to me, began about five years ago or thereabouts, to launch a hate campaign against me. Out of nothing but pure hatred, he began to slander and attack me via his podcasts,’ he said.

The serial killer bemoaned the researcher’s ‘long-standing pathological hatred for me’, and claiming that he was not out for justice for the victims but rather was ‘using’ them to cause Berkowitz harm.

‘As far as I know, I’ve never met or had any dealings with him. But as of today he is doing everything he can to cause me pain, loss, grief. shame, aggravation and heartache,’ he said. ‘Oh, and lots of stress, too!’ 

Berkowitz then offered his own theory about the identity of the Bronx Sniper.

‘In my opinion, and I’m no expert, because all six incidents occurred in a two month period in a two city block area, it was more than likely not an outsider,’ he told the Daily Mail.

‘Instead it was someone well familiar with the immediate area. He was comfortable in that setting. He knew the buildings both inside and out… how to use stairwells and roof tops, and fire escapes and rear alley ways – I’m assuming all this. And if he lived in the area, he knew how to get back to his apartment quickly and quietly, or where to go to hide, and even ditch his rifle.’

He even claimed he was reaching out to contacts in the south Bronx to try to organize what he described as ‘a workable outreach’ on the case.

Likewise, Berkowitz furiously denied shooting Savino, despite police confirmation.

It was April 9, 1976, when Savino, now 87, was sitting in her parked car behind Nina’s Restaurant in the Bronx after having dinner with her local Republican Party leader husband.

A man walked up and shot her five times, laughing as he unloaded his .32-caliber gun. Savino survived but lost an eye, though she was still able to describe her attacker enough for a composite sketch.

Two months later, the Son of Sam’s shooting rampage began. Over the next 13 months, six were killed and seven others wounded in eight attacks across Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.

When Berkowitz was arrested for the slayings, Savino recognized him as her attacker but he was never charged.

Years later, Grossman urged police to reexamine Savino’s case, presenting his research connecting the shooting to Berkowitz.

Police visited Berkowitz in prison where he denied responsibility for the attack – but reportedly tripped up in knowledgeable comments about the type of gun used in the crime.

In 2024, the NYPD publicly confirmed that Savino was the first known victim of Berkowitz. 

Due to the statute of limitations, he could not be charged with her attempted murder.

As with Iglesias’s death, Berkowitz told the Daily Mail that Savino’s case was new to him when it was ‘dropped in my lap’ by Grossman: ‘I had no idea.’

Around 10 days after a friend told him about the allegations, he said that four NYPD detectives turned up at the prison.

Berkowitz claimed to have sat down with the officers ‘eager to find out what was going on, and eager to put to rest what they were telling me.’ 

‘But much to my dismay, they discounted everything I said. All told, the NYPD believed the false narrative that had been given to them before we even met,’ he wrote.

Because he has not stood trial, Berkowitz complained that he has been unable to defend himself.

‘And without ever being charged with a crime in the Savino case, and without any solid forensic evidence, and not even being afforded a trial so I could defend myself, they found me guilty, despite my protests to the contrary. No trial. No solid evidence. Nothing!’ he wrote.

Berkowitz claimed that the officers ‘basically held court in the prison’s visiting room with no way for me to provide an alibi’.

He also took issue with the ages of the detectives interviewing him, saying that they ‘weren’t even born when the crime occurred.’

‘All said,’ he added, though, ‘I refuse to hold grudges.’

When asked if he had a message for Savino, Berkowitz, who claims to be a born-again Christian, said he wishes her ‘the best’ and would like to be able to meet her. 

‘I wish I could meet Mrs. Savino as well as the family of Margaret Iglesias. I know this would not be possible, and I’m sure they wouldn’t want anything to do with me, which is understandable,’ he wrote.

‘But if I could meet with them I would want to pray with each of them, and in some way try to bring them comfort. I wish them peace, and I pray the best for them.’

The Daily Mail has contacted the NYPD for comment about the two cases and any other cases being investigated for possible ties to Berkowitz.

If he did shoot Savino and Iglesias, this would not be the first time that Berkowitz has told contradictory stories about his crimes.

Following his arrest, he confessed to the Son of Sam shootings and claimed to have been driven to kill by a 6,000-year-old demon named Sam that spoke to him through his neighbor’s dog. He pleaded guilty to six counts of second-degree murder and seven counts of attempted second-degree murder and was handed multiple life sentences.

But soon after, he began to change his story and said that he wasn’t the only shooter.

Instead, Berkowitz claimed that he was part of a Satanic cult with his neighbors, the brothers John and Michael Carr, and other unnamed accomplices who together carried out the shootings.

The Carr brothers were real-life ‘Sons of Sam’ – their father was named Sam Carr – and it was their dog Harvey that Berkowitz claimed had compelled him to kill.

While he admitted being present for all eight shootings, Berkowitz said he did not always pull the trigger.

The shootings stopped after he was taken into custody and the Carr brothers were never charged. John moved to a remote town in North Dakota and was found dead from a gunshot wound six months after Berkowitz’s arrest. His death was officially ruled a suicide. Michael died in a single-vehicle crash along New York City’s West Side Highway the following year.

Berkowitz later found faith in prison, and sought to rebrand himself as the Son of Hope.

But he has still failed to put the speculation about his crimes to rest.

In a 2017 interview with CBS News, Berkowitz refused to give a straight answer when asked if he had accomplices. ‘Let’s put it this way, there were demons,’ he said.

In other messages to the Daily Mail last year, he continued to toy with the mystery saying that the findings of his ‘true friend’ Terry, who believed that Berkowitz was only one part of a broader Satanic cult of killers, were close to the truth about the case.

‘There were forces at work beyond the obvious… And unfortunately, although Mr. Terry saw deeper into the driving forces behind these crimes, he was still unable to identify what and who those forces were,’ he wrote.

‘And although I do not agree with all his findings, he was more spot on than anyone else.’

Police have always maintained that Berkowitz acted alone.

When the Daily Mail appealed to his faith to come clean once and for all, he cryptically described the shootings as the work of demons, claiming to have been a passive pawn.

‘The Son of Sam shootings was a demonically engineered and satanically driven event,’ he wrote. ‘It was the work of demons, and I was used.’

Whether or not Berkowitz was the killer who took the life of teenager Margaret Iglesias more than 55 years ago is not yet clear.

But his refusal to accept responsibility for Savino’s shooting – even after the NYPD confirmed his guilt – will no doubt be weighed when he is up for parole for the 13th time this May. When he appears before the board, questions about how much he has taken responsibility for his crimes will no doubt be front and center.