The address no longer exists. After David Berkowitz's arrest on August 10, 1977, the building's management changed 35 Pine Street to 42 Pine Street, hoping a new number could erase what the old one had come to represent. It could not. For thirteen months, a gunman who called himself the Son of Sam had terrorized New York City, shooting young couples parked in cars and walking on sidewalks, killing six people and wounding seven others. The city that never sleeps had been afraid to go out at night. The arrest of a quiet, 24-year-old postal worker from Yonkers ended the terror, but the questions surrounding the case have never fully stopped.
New York in 1977 was already a city under siege -- reeling from near-bankruptcy, a crippling blackout, and rampant crime. The Son of Sam shootings, which had begun in July 1976, added a layer of dread that was both personal and citywide. Berkowitz targeted young women with long dark hair and the men beside them, attacking couples in parked cars with a .44-caliber Charter Arms Bulldog revolver. He left taunting letters for police and the press, one addressed to NYPD Captain Joseph Borrelli, another left at a crime scene near the body of his victims. The investigation became one of the largest in NYPD history, involving hundreds of detectives and thousands of leads. A parking ticket -- issued near the scene of the final shooting in Brooklyn -- ultimately led investigators to a cream-colored Ford Galaxie registered to David Berkowitz of Yonkers.
Berkowitz was arrested outside his Pine Street apartment and transported to the 60th Precinct in Coney Island, where the task force was based. Mayor Abraham Beame arrived personally at about 1:00 a.m. to see the suspect. During a thirty-minute interrogation in the early morning hours of August 11, Berkowitz confessed to all the shootings. His explanation was bizarre: he claimed his neighbor Sam Carr's black Labrador retriever was possessed by an ancient demon that commanded him to kill. The "Sam" in his letters, he said, was Carr himself. At a press conference in February 1979, Berkowitz declared these claims of demonic possession were a hoax. He later told court-appointed psychiatrist David Abrahamsen that he had long contemplated murder as revenge against a world he felt had rejected him. Three separate mental health evaluations found him competent to stand trial.
Defense attorneys urged an insanity plea, but Berkowitz refused. On May 8, 1978, he pleaded guilty to all the shootings. At sentencing two weeks later, he attempted to leap from a seventh-floor courtroom window, then chanted the name of his last victim while screaming that he would kill them all again. He was sent to Attica Correctional Facility. Over the following decades, Berkowitz's story continued to evolve. He also confessed to being the "Phantom of the Bronx," responsible for more than 2,000 arsons across the city throughout the 1970s. In prison, he underwent a religious conversion, graduated with honors from Sullivan Community College, and began writing essays on faith and repentance. Before his first parole hearing in 2002, he wrote to Governor George Pataki requesting it be canceled, stating, "I believe that I deserve to be in prison for the rest of my life." Parole was denied.
The case refused to stay closed. In 1993, Berkowitz claimed he had joined a Satanic cult in 1975 and that other shooters were involved in some of the attacks. He named John and Michael Carr -- sons of dog owner Sam Carr -- as fellow cult members. Both men were dead by then. Queens District Attorney John Santucci and NYPD investigator Mike Novotny independently expressed doubts that Berkowitz had acted alone, citing inconsistent witness descriptions of the shooter's height, build, and vehicles. The Yonkers police reopened the case in 1996 but filed no new charges. The investigation was suspended but technically remains open. Whether Berkowitz's cult claims represent truth, delusion, or manipulation remains a matter of debate among investigators and journalists who have spent decades examining the evidence.
The Son of Sam case left marks on New York that went beyond the crime scenes. New York State enacted the "Son of Sam" law, preventing criminals from profiting through book deals or media rights -- legislation that has since been adopted in 41 states and at the federal level. The victims' families carried grief that compounded over the years. Neysa Moskowitz, mother of final victim Stacy Moskowitz, lost all three of her children at young ages. Spike Lee's 1999 film Summer of Sam explored how the shootings fractured a Bronx neighborhood, while the 2021 Netflix documentary The Sons of Sam revisited the cult conspiracy theories. The apartment building in Yonkers still stands, though under its new address. The parking lots and quiet streets where the shootings occurred have long since returned to ordinary life. The fear has faded, but the name -- Son of Sam -- has not.
Located at 40.851°N, 73.833°W in the Parkchester/Pelham Bay area of the Bronx, near the Yonkers border where Berkowitz lived at the time of his arrest. From the air, the area is dense residential suburbia between the Bronx River Parkway and Hutchinson River Parkway. Nearest airports: LaGuardia (KLGA), approximately 6 nm south; Westchester County (KHPN), approximately 10 nm north. Best viewed at 2,000-3,000 ft AGL. The Cross County Parkway interchange is a useful visual reference.