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Reason First: The .44 Caliber Killer- David Berkowitz

Did the Son of Sam have a point?

By Skyler SaundersPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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David Berkowitz appeared sane when he stood trial in the state of New York for killing six people and wounding seven others. Initially, he denied being in his right mind, and claimed a Satanic cult made him do it, and that a neighbor’s dog told him to kill. But Berkowitz demonstrated a better than average grasp on reality when questioned about the public’s fascination with killers such as himself. He said we all have the capacity to kill other human beings; anyone angry or frustrated enough had the potential to do “horrendous things,” he said. He said Western civilization was declining towards anarchy, and he was doing his victims a favor. Painting himself as their deliverer from a collapsing society, he argued he was sparing them the mayhem of the coming apocalypse. Whether he sincerely believed his dire predictions is irrelevant; no matter how justified his pessimism about the future might have been (especially in hindsight), he had no right to appoint himself “Angel of Mercy” for the people of New York.

Berkowitz was right about one thing though: good and evil do run through each of us, however, even he had to acknowledge serial killers are a “rarity,” and not just because surveillance cameras and advances in detection and evidence-gathering technology have made it more difficult to get away with these grisly crimes. Unlike Berkowitz, who confessed to fantasizing about the many different ways he could kill people in cold blood, most people use their rational minds well enough to at least respect that other human beings are, in fact, other human beings, not objects upon which we may satisfy our darkest curiosity.

Berkowitz became a born-again Christian and model inmate in prison, but after years of inventing stories about mystical forces ordering him to kill, it’s difficult to take his jailhouse conversion seriously. How can we know he hasn’t just flipped the mystical coin from evil to good so he can look forward to redemption rather than spend the rest of his life suffering remorse? How do we know it’s not just another cynical ploy to manipulate members of what he’s already identified as a society in moral decline?

This man killed, repeatedly, and with malice aforethought. Despite over thirty years of interviews and psychological analysis, we’ve learned nothing new that would lead us to believe he was anything other than a competent, irrationally angry, self-involved individual who enjoyed the feeling of power only a high caliber pistol, firing repeatedly into terrified human beings, could deliver. He knew perfectly well what he was doing was pure evil, but he enjoyed walking around knowing New Yorkers would feel terrified, especially when he caught them off-guard, with his gun in their faces. His hideous deeds serve as the pathway from neurosis to psychosis. The mental makeup of this brute should alarm any specialist in the field of behavioral sciences. Berkowitz, still breathing, has the opportunity to be rehabilitated physically but his mind must be receding rapidly. To plan and execute on a devious set of instructions he allegedly received from a dog is an abysmal excuse. The killer thought about it and did it.

It’s a shame he can only live one lifetime, because David Berkowitz deserves to serve every one of the 365 years sentence the court handed him. He killed, in cold blood, and remorselessly toyed with the police and press after the fact. His chances of getting out are about as slim as his victims being resurrected from the grave, but, given his propensity to excuse his own evil, it’s equally unlikely he’ll spend one minute of his time sorry for what he did.

guilty
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About the Creator

Skyler Saunders

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