02-17-2002, 04:12 PM
Quote:Son of Sam
Will Go Up for Parole
Killer serving 6 life terms
A quarter century after terrifying New Yorkers with a random killing spree aimed at young women, David Berkowitz — the infamous Son of Sam killer — is set to go before the state Board of Parole in June for the first time.
State officials told the Daily News that if Berkowitz wins parole, he could walk out of prison as soon as Aug. 5. Some victims' relatives say they will fight to see that never happens.
"I think it's nuts he's even coming up for parole," said Rose Lauria of the Bronx, whose 18-year-old daughter, Donna Lauria, was shot dead by Berkowitz in front of her apartment on July 29, 1976, while talking to a friend named Jody Valenti. Valenti was wounded in the thigh.
'Protest Like Crazy'
Although she doubts Berkowitz will get paroled, Lauria said the approaching hearing makes her nervous.
"We are going to protest like crazy," she said.
Lauria and her husband, Michael Lauria, a retired bus driver, are in the local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children and have been activists for the rights of crime victims.
"Donna's name is on a brick at a victims memorial in Albany," Rose Lauria said. "I don't understand the system. He'll get out over my dead body. My religion says you have to forgive, but with him, no way, no how."
In the steamy summer of 1977, the chilling brutality of the Son of Sam killings overshadowed even the death of Elvis Presley.
Within that year, there had been a series of nighttime shootings targeting young couples and teenage girls. The killer used a .44-caliber revolver and taunted the city with letters to Jimmy Breslin, then a Daily News columnist.
Panicked couples avoided lovers' lanes, believing they were the killer's stalking grounds. Because the female victims tended to have long, dark hair, many women lightened theirs and wore it in a bun.
Before his capture on Aug. 10, 1977, Berkowitz killed six and wounded seven. The postal clerk said he was under orders of a dog owned by a next-door neighbor named Sam.
State Board of Parole spokesman Tom Grant would not assess Berkowitz's chances of gaining release, though he noted just 3% of parole-eligible inmates doing time for murder or attempted murder were released last year.
If the parole bid is rejected this time, Berkowitz, under the law, will get another crack at it in two years — and two years after that, and so on, as long as he remains alive and in prison.
However, even the staunchest advocates of inmates said Berkowitz, because of his notoriety, has virtually no chance of ever getting out.
Said Robert Gangi, director of the Correctional Association of New York, "If Jesus Christ himself came down and urged the governor to give Berkowitz parole, it wouldn't happen."
Model Inmate Since 1989
That opinion is shared by Sam Rivera, an ex-offender who serves as director of client training for the Fortune Society, a charity that assists parolees coming out of prison.
"I don't see him ever getting out," he said, noting that Spike Lee's 1999 film about the killings, "Summer of Sam," only reinforced the image of Berkowitz as a diabolical criminal. "If he is old and dying in prison, that is what people will want to see."
Berkowitz claimed that 'Sam' — a.k.a. black lab Harvey — made him kill.
At Sullivan, located 80 miles northwest of New York City in Fallsburg, Berkowitz works as a program aide, helping mental health unit prisoners. Known to the system as Inmate No. 78A1976, he has not been accused of violating jailhouse rules since 1989, when he was sanctioned for refusing a direct order, officials said.
The three-member parole panel that will evaluate Berkowitz will consider not only his prison record, but the impact of the crimes on families of victims as well as the effect on community safety if he is released.
Since being locked up, Berkowitz, who turns 49 on June 1, has insisted he had accomplices. Indeed, his claims have convinced the Laurias, and Neysa Moskowitz, the mother of murder victim Stacy Moskowitz, that the shootings were carried out by a satanic cult that included Berkowitz.
"Hating him only makes me sick," Moskowitz said when reached at her home in Florida. "And in my case, it's different. I know for a fact he did not kill Stacy. He told me he was there and he feels he could have stopped the killing, but he did not shoot the gun. He has written to me and apologized to me. But he has spent so many years in jail now, I don't think he could make it on the outside world."
She said she believes the theory advanced by Maury Terry, author of a Son of Sam book, "The Ultimate Evil," that Berkowitz carried out only two of the eight attacks but was blamed for all by city police, who were under political pressure to solve the case in a summer when then-Mayor Abe Beame faced reelection.
No Hope of Getting Out
Terry, who has visited Berkowitz some 90 times in the past nine years, said, "He insists to this minute that he was not the only one involved."
Berkowitz, he noted, has admitted to two shootings that left three dead, but claims to have been a bystander at the other six shootings.
Police have discounted the theory that Berkowitz had accomplices.
As for the parole hearing, Terry said: "He has no hope, no dream, of ever getting out," adding, "He has adjusted to it as best he can. He thinks he belongs there."
At the same time, he said, Berkowitz still plans to show up for his hearing. "'They'll just rubber-stamp this and back I go,'" Terry quoted Berkowitz as saying.
Berkowitz, raised Jewish, became a born-again Christian in prison in 1988. "He's been at it very fervently since then," Terry said. "But he doesn't wear it on his sleeve. He saves it for the chapel."
If Berkowitz wants forgiveness, he won't find any from Michael Lauria.
"In a lot of countries, he would have been dead a long time ago," the father said. "Donna was my only daughter. I never got to walk her down the aisle. He gets to see his family when they visit him in prison. I go to a grave to see my daughter."
See, and they say our juctice system is for the shits. Only in America can something this hideously stupid be considered. Why can't we just make the death pentaly retro active? This is the only famous fuck that went to my High School for christ's sake! And, in related news, I was an extra in this guy's crappy movie. Don't ask me why I just typed that for I have no clue. It just seemed related a second ago.
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