David Berkowitz

American homicide known as the Son of Sam, holding New York in terror in 1976-1977.

David's dad, Tony Falco, deserted the family eight years before he was born, the result of his mom's affair with a married businessman. His mom put him up for adoption and the baby was taken in by the Berkowitz family.

A sharpshooter in the U.S. Army from 1971-1974, he served in Korea, then worked in New York as a postal employee. He hated to be dirty and kept his body clean so that he "would not get sick," however his apartment was messy with left-over garbage and he went to the laundry only after he had no clean clothes left. Between on 28 September 1974 and on 23 December 1975, he set over 2,000 fires on city property.

On Christmas Eve, 1974, he made his first knife assault, stabbing a black woman in the Bronx, followed by five gunshot murders and six woundings of young couples. He was arrested on 10 August 1977. At his trial on 8 May 1978, he entered an insanity plea, claiming that God spoke to him through the neighbors' dog. He was given a sentence of 365 years.