Essay Database

David Berkowitz was born in 1953. Rejected and adopted as a child, he concealed his low self-esteem by compulsive lying and bragging. And his extreme shyness toward women by assailing them, starting when he was in his early twenties. His courage bolstered by several non-fatal stabbing attacks. Berkowitz bought a gun in 1976 and began a series of impulse killings that paralyzed New York City. Approaching male and female victims randomly selected as they sat on stoops …

…quiet, smiling man, who lived alone in a filthy apartment covered in trash and mad graftti. Berkowitz told police he had taken his alias not from his adopive father whom he hated, but from the owner or a Labrador dog whose barking kept him awake nights. Pleading insanity, he said he heard voices and that the dog had told him to kill. Judged sane he was convicted of murder and sentenced to 365 years in prison..