Son of Sam
by Lawrence D. Klausner
By the end of the 1970s, New York was the most dangerous city in America, if not the whole world. Adding to the climate of fear, violence and crime was a lone serial killer striking out at random times and random places. Police knew every time he struck because the bullets recovered from the scenes all came from the same gun a .44 caliber pistol that was a rare make and model with a powerful kick that could most likely only be handled by an experienced shooter. That man was later revealed to be David Berkozwitz. Lawrence B. Klausner, in Son of Sam, tells the story primarily from the police force’s point of view.
Roughly half the book is dedicated to telling the story of NYPD’s detective task force put together specifically to catch the elusive murderer. Klausner does this for good reason. His intention is to celebrate the heroic manhunt conducted by that crack team of investigators, called Operation Omega, without overly emphasizing the sick details of Berkowitz’s long term killing spree. But this approach only goes so far. A lot of Operation Omega’s work leads to dead ends and faulty conclusions that result in nothing but frustration. Actually it is the Yonkers police who do the most to put the pieces of the puzzle together when they begin noticing the strange behavior of Berkowitz who lives in a Yonker’s apartment building up until his capture. This may be an accurate way to portray police detective work, but you have to consider that most people don’t read this book for information on law enforcement procedures.
Klausner also makes a slight and similar lapse of judgment in his handling of the murder victims and their family’s reactions. He mostly handles this sensitive part of the story well and in good taste. It is obvious where his sympathies lie and he shows us how violent crime does not only effect the people who get shot, but also their families and the surrounding communities too. But Klausner goes a little too far with this. After the shooting of Berkowitz’s last victims, Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante who were out on their first date, the author tracks their families into the hospitals where they are taken. The problem is that this part of the book is overwrought and maudlin, descending into melodrama that over-sensationalizes and over-sentimentalizes the situation to the point where the author subverts his own intentions by trying too hard to show us the distress of the families. He wants us to see the gravity of the crimes, but turns it into a soap opera instead. We can forgive Klausner for this error simply because we know his good intentions, though.
And finally there is the story of David Berkowitz, the .44 Caliber Killer and the Son of Sam himself. Berkowitz is an adopted child who had trouble making and maintaining friendships during his childhood. Shy and awkward, he always fails to fit in even though people think he seems like a good guy, at least on the surface. He makes it through the military, becoming an expert sharpshooter, then returns to New York City, living alone and holding down various jobs. At some point in his life he begins hearing howling dogs that he believes to be the voices of demons telling him to kill so they can drink the victims’ blood. Only Berkowitz’s attempts at murder make the auditory hallucinations stop. And these hallucinations do stop anytime he goes to work. On the days he has off, the howling dogs start to harass him. Unable to sleep, he tucks his gun into his pants and goes out to kill in the outer boroughs of Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn.
Berkowitz writes letter to the police, some of which end up in the newspapers. With prose that sounds like something out of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, he gives details of his crimes and explains his situation. He believes his neighbor in Yonkers, a man named Sam Carr who owns a dog that barks at night, is actually Satan and Berkowitz believes that Sam is commanding him to kill in order to prevent bigger disasters like earthquakes or tornadoes from happening, hence the self-given name of Son of Sam. The letters at first appear to be taunting the police, but in a sense they may be Berkowitz’s way of saying he wants to be caught. After they do arrest him, Berkowitz expresses relief because he doesn’t like the job of killing and feels he has no choice but to obey the voices in his head. It becomes clear early on in the book that David Berkowitz suffers from schizophrenia, but a schizophrenia that is difficult for outsiders to detect because his episodes only happen when he is tormented by loneliness. The degree of his disordered thinking is easy to spot early on when he thinks that his fist murder victim will marry him after she dies. His thoughts become more nonsensical from there.
Son of Sam is an interesting book, even if it is a little clumsy, uneven, and amateurish. The over-emphasis of the police department’s manhunt takes a little too much focus off of David Berkowitz to really make the story work entirely. But the biggest flaw is that a more in-depth psychological profile of the killer is never given. We get the details of his crimes and his mental illness, but the deeper psychology of how Berkowitz’s mind drives him to do what he does and how he came to be a killer when he didn’t want to be is never explored. His mental illness is the most colorful and interesting part of his biography and without a bigger examination of his mental processes, this book ends up being simply just a combination of police thriller and slasher horror story. Still the descriptions and atmospherics are well-done, and we do get enough of a taste of Berkowitz’s psychology to keep the story interesting.
Son of Sam is worth reading if you simply want the story of David Berkowitz’s crimes. In the end you may even feel an ounce of sympathy for the man who struggles with uncontrolled mental illness that drives him to commit crimes he doesn’t want to commit. Mind you, an ounce of sympathy is not a large amount and it is obvious that the victims deserves infinitely more sympathy than he does. Klausner does an adequate job of making this obvious fact clear enough.
Since he pleaded guilty and got sentenced to life imprisonment, Berkowitz has become a model prisoner and, every time he goes up for parole, he says he doesn’t deserve to be released because his crimes were so terrible. The story of his redemption is not covered in this book, but it is almost as provocative as the story of his serial killing spree. Is Son of Sam the American version of Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment? That will be for future generations to decide. But there is no doubt, were Doestoevsky alive today, he would find David Berkowitz to be a fascinating character he could relate to.
Roughly half the book is dedicated to telling the story of NYPD’s detective task force put together specifically to catch the elusive murderer. Klausner does this for good reason. His intention is to celebrate the heroic manhunt conducted by that crack team of investigators, called Operation Omega, without overly emphasizing the sick details of Berkowitz’s long term killing spree. But this approach only goes so far. A lot of Operation Omega’s work leads to dead ends and faulty conclusions that result in nothing but frustration. Actually it is the Yonkers police who do the most to put the pieces of the puzzle together when they begin noticing the strange behavior of Berkowitz who lives in a Yonker’s apartment building up until his capture. This may be an accurate way to portray police detective work, but you have to consider that most people don’t read this book for information on law enforcement procedures.
Klausner also makes a slight and similar lapse of judgment in his handling of the murder victims and their family’s reactions. He mostly handles this sensitive part of the story well and in good taste. It is obvious where his sympathies lie and he shows us how violent crime does not only effect the people who get shot, but also their families and the surrounding communities too. But Klausner goes a little too far with this. After the shooting of Berkowitz’s last victims, Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante who were out on their first date, the author tracks their families into the hospitals where they are taken. The problem is that this part of the book is overwrought and maudlin, descending into melodrama that over-sensationalizes and over-sentimentalizes the situation to the point where the author subverts his own intentions by trying too hard to show us the distress of the families. He wants us to see the gravity of the crimes, but turns it into a soap opera instead. We can forgive Klausner for this error simply because we know his good intentions, though.
And finally there is the story of David Berkowitz, the .44 Caliber Killer and the Son of Sam himself. Berkowitz is an adopted child who had trouble making and maintaining friendships during his childhood. Shy and awkward, he always fails to fit in even though people think he seems like a good guy, at least on the surface. He makes it through the military, becoming an expert sharpshooter, then returns to New York City, living alone and holding down various jobs. At some point in his life he begins hearing howling dogs that he believes to be the voices of demons telling him to kill so they can drink the victims’ blood. Only Berkowitz’s attempts at murder make the auditory hallucinations stop. And these hallucinations do stop anytime he goes to work. On the days he has off, the howling dogs start to harass him. Unable to sleep, he tucks his gun into his pants and goes out to kill in the outer boroughs of Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn.
Berkowitz writes letter to the police, some of which end up in the newspapers. With prose that sounds like something out of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, he gives details of his crimes and explains his situation. He believes his neighbor in Yonkers, a man named Sam Carr who owns a dog that barks at night, is actually Satan and Berkowitz believes that Sam is commanding him to kill in order to prevent bigger disasters like earthquakes or tornadoes from happening, hence the self-given name of Son of Sam. The letters at first appear to be taunting the police, but in a sense they may be Berkowitz’s way of saying he wants to be caught. After they do arrest him, Berkowitz expresses relief because he doesn’t like the job of killing and feels he has no choice but to obey the voices in his head. It becomes clear early on in the book that David Berkowitz suffers from schizophrenia, but a schizophrenia that is difficult for outsiders to detect because his episodes only happen when he is tormented by loneliness. The degree of his disordered thinking is easy to spot early on when he thinks that his fist murder victim will marry him after she dies. His thoughts become more nonsensical from there.
Son of Sam is an interesting book, even if it is a little clumsy, uneven, and amateurish. The over-emphasis of the police department’s manhunt takes a little too much focus off of David Berkowitz to really make the story work entirely. But the biggest flaw is that a more in-depth psychological profile of the killer is never given. We get the details of his crimes and his mental illness, but the deeper psychology of how Berkowitz’s mind drives him to do what he does and how he came to be a killer when he didn’t want to be is never explored. His mental illness is the most colorful and interesting part of his biography and without a bigger examination of his mental processes, this book ends up being simply just a combination of police thriller and slasher horror story. Still the descriptions and atmospherics are well-done, and we do get enough of a taste of Berkowitz’s psychology to keep the story interesting.
Son of Sam is worth reading if you simply want the story of David Berkowitz’s crimes. In the end you may even feel an ounce of sympathy for the man who struggles with uncontrolled mental illness that drives him to commit crimes he doesn’t want to commit. Mind you, an ounce of sympathy is not a large amount and it is obvious that the victims deserves infinitely more sympathy than he does. Klausner does an adequate job of making this obvious fact clear enough.
Since he pleaded guilty and got sentenced to life imprisonment, Berkowitz has become a model prisoner and, every time he goes up for parole, he says he doesn’t deserve to be released because his crimes were so terrible. The story of his redemption is not covered in this book, but it is almost as provocative as the story of his serial killing spree. Is Son of Sam the American version of Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment? That will be for future generations to decide. But there is no doubt, were Doestoevsky alive today, he would find David Berkowitz to be a fascinating character he could relate to.
No comments:
Post a Comment