"I Deserve to Be in Prison": David Berkowitz's Inside Edition Jailhouse Interview, 1999

Name: "I Deserve to Be in Prison": David Berkowitz's Inside Edition Jailhouse Interview, 1999
Uploaded: 2017-08-01T00:00:00Z
Duration: 30 min 57 s
Description: In 31 minutes of unedited 1999 footage, David Berkowitz talked about his prison ministry, denied the psychiatrist's theory about his birth mother, described occult rituals in his cell and said he deserves life in prison.

In 31 minutes of unedited 1999 footage, David Berkowitz talked about his prison ministry, denied the psychiatrist's theory about his birth mother, described occult rituals in his cell and said he deserves life in prison.

Subject: David Berkowitz
Recorded: about April 20, 1999
Runtime: 30:57

Content warning: Concerns the Son of Sam shootings, the occult, suicide and the Columbine school shooting; no graphic detail.

The Interview

In 1999 Inside Edition interviewed David Berkowitz in prison, twenty-two years after his arrest as the Son of Sam. In 2017, around the fortieth anniversary of the arrest, the programme posted this 31-minute recording of the session to its YouTube channel. It is raw footage: an off-camera interviewer, who is not named, asks most of the questions, a second interviewer addressed as "Lisa" asks some, and there is no narration. Berkowitz speaks for most of the recording. He talks about the letters he receives and answers as part of a prison ministry, about prison as a place of reflection, about his life before the crimes, about the psychiatrist who examined him, and about his religious faith.

Historical Context

Between July 1976 and July 1977 a gunman with a .44-caliber revolver shot young people in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, killing six (Donna Lauria, Christine Freund, Virginia Voskerichian, Alexander Esau, Valentina Suriani and Stacy Moskowitz) and wounding seven. Berkowitz, a postal worker from Yonkers, was arrested on August 10, 1977. He pleaded guilty in May 1978 and on June 12, 1978, was sentenced to 25 years to life for each of the six murders. He has said he became a Christian in prison in 1987. In 1993, in interviews with the journalist Maury Terry broadcast by Inside Edition, he claimed on television that he had not acted alone.

Circumstances of the Interview

The interview took place six years after those 1993 programmes. The interviewer knows the case well. He says they have discussed one subject "in the past", and he puts to Berkowitz the deaths of former associates since 1977. Berkowitz himself mentions the Carr brothers, the sons of Sam Carr, saying he has heard that they lost their lives but does not know what happened. The interviewer then lists others, including a man from Berkowitz's building who, he says, killed himself the previous Thanksgiving. A remark that the prison is in "the Catskills" suggests the interview was recorded at Sullivan Correctional Facility, where he was then held.

What the Interview Covers

Berkowitz describes a steady flow of letters from people seeking guidance and calls his replies "my way of saying that I'm sorry". He says that after leaving the army he had an apartment, a car, a job as a security guard and a place at Bronx Community College before he "fell into" what he calls a powerful influence. He rejects the view of the psychiatrist David Abrahamsen that meeting his birth mother in 1975 drove him to rage, says the relationship was good, and admits he had read a book on psychology so as to tell psychiatrists what they wanted to hear, which he links to his anger over a book deal between his lawyers and the author Lawrence Klausner. He says that when he first came to prison he performed occult rituals in his cell. He declines to discuss any romantic correspondence, gives his views on warning signs in troubled young people with reference to Columbine, and describes coming to forgive himself. He ends by saying that he committed serious crimes and deserves to be in prison for the rest of his life.

What Makes the Recording Significant

Television interviews with Berkowitz are mostly known from short broadcast excerpts. This is a long, unedited session, so his answers can be heard in full, together with the questions that prompted them. It records how he described himself in 1999, six years after the 1993 Inside Edition series, and his rejection of the birth-mother explanation that had become part of the case's public history.

Archival Importance

The footage shows how Berkowitz presented his conversion and ministry twelve years after he says it began, and it records his own account of the psychiatric evaluation and the book deal that followed his conviction. It also preserves an interviewer setting out, from his own research, the deaths of people linked to the case, a theme of the accomplice theories that the 2021 Netflix series *The Sons of Sam* later revisited.

Important Caveats

Everything Berkowitz says about being under "satanic control", about others being involved and about his own reasons for misleading psychiatrists is his claim. Police have maintained that he acted alone, and no one else has been charged. The deaths of about 21 associates are the interviewer's count, not verified here; the names he lists are not verified and should not be published from this recording. The interviewers are not named in the footage (only the first name "Lisa" is spoken). The upload appears to be assembled from the session tape: its opening question is heard again near the end. Inside Edition's own 2017 story quotes a 1999 remark by Berkowitz that is not in this upload, so the session was probably longer.

Interviewer: Now, you said that you believe that God has forgiven you.

David Berkowitz: Yes. [00:06 to 00:16: no speech in either machine source.]

Interviewer: Do you still keep in touch, uh, with your dad?

David Berkowitz: Yes.

Interviewer: Uh, without getting too personal, uh, how's he doing?

David Berkowitz: He's doing fine. But he asked me not to talk about him.

Interviewer: I understand.

David Berkowitz: That's what I [unclear: "said" / "safe part is"], safeguard his privacy and privacy of his family.

Interviewer: Okay. In terms of the correspondence you carry on with the different people and different ministry people and so on, so forth, what's your mail flow like around here? And I don't mean recently.

David Berkowitz: It's been a lot. Been a lot. Uh, I don't make a big deal of it. I just consider it as part of my life now, part of, in a sense, part of my ministry. Uh, I get letters from people from all walks of life. Most people are sincere. Some are having, you know, very serious problems. And for whatever reasons, God, I believe, leads them to me, and I'm able to minister to them and, uh, encourage them, share Christian gospel with them, even some teenagers. And so it's, uh, been good.

Interviewer: It's sort of ironic, isn't it? I mean, you're doing all this stuff through the mail these days. You keep the post office busy. What's that, a little nod of loyalty to your old employer?

David Berkowitz: You know, once a postman, always a postman.

Interviewer: Is this, does this, all this work that you're doing now, do you feel that this is helping you make up for some of the bad stuff that you were involved in? Do you feel like you're paying back a little bit?

David Berkowitz: Yeah, I, uh, these things, I, first of all, I want to be a good Christian because I want to please the Lord. But it's my way of saying that I'm sorry for the things that happened in the past, and, uh, I'm sorry for, uh, you know, being that bad person and being a fool. And, uh, this is my way of, if I could reach out to some young person, and through the videos and so forth that are going all over the place, in schools and churches, uh, youth facilities, prisons, I know that if I reach some of them with that warning, that you don't want to come to prison, that you don't want to throw your life away, that you could have a better life through Jesus Christ, if somehow I could touch some of them and get them to change their direction, then it would have served a purpose.

David Berkowitz: I really believe with all my heart that, uh, the message that I'm sharing today through the written pamphlets or through the videos have actually saved a lot of lives. And there's ministers to verify that, where they're kids or whatever who've heard that message and have, instead of going in the path that they were going, which may have led eventually to a graveyard, an early grave, they've given their life to Christ instead. And they're better people today because of it. And so I'm thankful for that. That's truly a blessing. And that's not me doing that. I believe it's God. God works through people, ordinary people.

Interviewer: Let me ask you something. [unclear: "Be" / "Beat"] prison, of course, is for punishment, but it's for something else, too. Rehabilitation. Is that correct? The purpose of prison, I mean, people get sent to prison for punishment. But isn't it a fact that prison systems also like to rehabilitate people if they can?

David Berkowitz: I guess you could say that. Yeah, certainly. Uh, you want, they want someone to learn their lesson, where they don't come back to a place like this and don't throw their life away and hurt some other lives and damage other people. You know, you would hope that someone would come to prison and, you know, if they do get out, they would learn their lesson. But I feel that for, what I see more than that, is prison is a place of reflection and self-examination, where a man is forced to come to terms with himself.

David Berkowitz: You know, you take a guy that's 30 years old, 40 years old, maybe he's got a couple of kids out there, maybe a wife, maybe he's with her, maybe he's not. But here's a guy that's an adult and he's in prison doing time, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years and more. There come, there has, you know, it's like a point of reality where you got to face yourself and say, "Man, what am I doing with my life? What am I doing? Where am I going? What's my goal? What's my direction?" And I think that, being in prison now 22 years, I've seen a lot of men, uh, come to terms with that, where they realize that they, at some certain point, they realize that they were doing, like, traveling a dead end, traveling a road to destruction. And that's where, like, in here, the chapel has been such a blessing, where we have a chaplain that, you know, ministers to the men, and we have a place where guys go for nurturing and encouragement.

Interviewer: To you, um, speaking of punishment, I mean, the death penalty wasn't in effect in New York when all of the .44 incidents went down. You know, if you, even for your role in it, um, how would you have felt if the death penalty was still around then, or was around then? Did you care at that point?

David Berkowitz: There was a time when I had given up hope. I was, I feel, so far under satanic power and satanic control that I didn't care. I was more like a robot than a person. There was a time in my life when I feel that I was just utterly under a powerful influence that was destructive, and I didn't care if I, it was a point where I didn't care if I lived or died.

Interviewer: How did these people get such control over you?

David Berkowitz: It was a process. It took, uh, time. It was like little by little. I mean, I'm telling you, I didn't know it was going to come this way. I mean, when I got out of the service, I wanted to make a life for myself. My dad was moving to Florida. Most of my friends had, I guess, all gone or all changed directions in their life. And I just wanted to make a life for myself. I got an apartment. I had saved up, when I was in the service, enough money to buy a used car, to rent an apartment. I got a job as a security guard. I enrolled in Bronx Community College. I wanted to have a future, you know, and I don't know, everything got turned upside down. It just, uh, I had good goals, and, uh, I just fell into some, under some kind of powerful influence. I mean...

Interviewer: You were a middle-class guy. Middle class. Family is middle class, you were middle class. Now, based on what I understand, there were some people involved in this circle, if you will. There were some money people, there were some influential people, high rollers. So you saw some of the high life, so to speak, right? I mean, you think that had some of it too? You say, "Wow, these rich people are out doing this, so it can't be all that bad."

David Berkowitz: I don't know. I just kind of fell into the flow of things, and, uh, I never really looked at it or analyzed that, their lifestyle.

Interviewer: Yeah. But you [unclear: "just accepted it" / "would've accepted it"].

David Berkowitz: I didn't really want that. See, to me, I was always content to, I, money or that kind of thing never really impressed me. I was just content to maybe have a job, raise a family, live in the suburbs one day. That was my goals in life. Wasn't to be a millionaire or big, ride around in a big car, and those material things just never really impressed me. There were people that had that, and, you know, I just didn't think one way or the other.

Interviewer: Okay, that's what I was getting at, because if I recall correctly, you were at parties in the Hamptons and in Greenwich, Connecticut, and some big places in Manhattan and Westchester County, and you saw some of these people with some bucks. I mean, I was trying to find out if that was part of the thing that helped entice you into this, saying, "Wow, these people are into this, and look at all they got."

David Berkowitz: No, I was just mainly a tag-along guy and just didn't really get impressed with that.

Interviewer: This is a very valid issue. This we've talked about in the past. And this is that there was a great deal made of the fact that, uh, around Mother's Day of 1975, you finally found your natural mother.

David Berkowitz: Yes.

Interviewer: And there was one psychiatrist in particular who would later say that this is what pushed Berkowitz over the edge. He was so filled with rage because he had met his natural mother and she was a disappointment, et cetera, et cetera. Would you respond to that?

David Berkowitz: Yeah, I did, um, find my natural mother. It was something that I just had in my heart to do. I had come across some literature from the Adoptees' Liberty Movement, and, uh, this was back in early '75, or somewhere around '74, and I just suddenly had this urge to go see if I can possibly find my, uh, natural parents, because I was always curious. It was always like a driving thing. And to make a long story short, I did meet, as you said, it was in '75, I even lost track of the time, I did meet my natural mother, and she turned out to be a very nice person. We got along really good. Typical Jewish mother. And I found out I had a half-sister, and we really kind of hit it off pretty good.

David Berkowitz: Uh, I started to go over to their house all the time. I was out in, uh, where my sister lived, in Queens. She's long since moved away. Uh, my mom had lived out in, uh, Brooklyn just briefly and then moved to Long Island, to Atlantic, uh, what's it, Long Beach. And I was over there at her house a number of times. We had a fine relationship, and she used to cook meals, and it was totally false that I had any rage or animosity towards her. Uh, that was, I feel that at that time, with that, uh, psychologist, he was mainly, and this is not a criticism, but, you know, just looking back, he was mainly interested in, um, fitting me into these different molds that he already had. You know, as a Freudian psychologist, he had these certain molds you have to go into. It always reverts back to the childhood, the mother, a bad relationship. But, uh, that was completely false.

Interviewer: Which brings something to mind. Somebody, not you, told me a long time ago that you had actually read a book called *The Murdering Mind*, to be familiar with some of the psychology of this kind of stuff, so that you could give the right answers to shrinks.

David Berkowitz: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's true. Yeah.

Interviewer: So are you saying you were just parroting back to them what you thought they wanted to hear?

David Berkowitz: Yeah. Yeah. But there was a whole reason for that, too. It's such a long story. It was that McGraw-Hill thing with Mr. Klausner and all the stuff that resulted from that. I had felt really betrayed by the attorneys, and it's no big deal. At that time, I was in a really depressed frame of mind, just coming into prison and, you know, just facing everything. It was just so overwhelming. And then when I found out that the attorneys that represented me had been working out a deal to write a book with this guy, and eventually a book was published, uh, by McGraw-Hill, which I think it didn't do well, it kind of bombed. But anyway, at that time, when I found out that was coming out, I contacted Mr. Abrahamsen, Dr. Abrahamsen, and kind of pretty much told him what he wanted to hear, you know. But that was foolish. I mean, at the time I was just handling everything the wrong way, and at that time I was, you know, depressed and suicidal in prison. And, you know, I just...

Interviewer: At that time, were you still, uh, involved in the occult?

David Berkowitz: I used to practice, in the very beginning, like, rituals in my cell and everything. It was stupid. It was stupid.

Interviewer: Yeah. We're talking about then, not now.

David Berkowitz: [unclear: "I know, but" / "But"] yeah, it was, yeah.

Interviewer: So when you first came to prison, and for a period of time, you were actually doing your own private rituals in your cell?

David Berkowitz: Briefly, yeah. Yeah. And, uh, I mean, I just, I was locked into a certain way of thinking. It's just impossible to explain, and I really hesitate to talk about it, because sometimes it's just so taken out of context and misunderstood. But I was just into a type of thinking which I believe that later on in life Christ had completely set me free from. And if it wasn't for, uh, my faith in Christ, if it wasn't for that other inmate reaching out to me one day and beginning to share his faith with me and bring me along that path, I probably would be just, uh, a miserable, lonely individual now, just caught up in my own world.

Interviewer: Or in the ground.

David Berkowitz: Or in the, yeah. I believe God spared my life. I don't know why. There's so many times, and I'm talking to the Lord when I say my prayers, say, "Why, God, why did you spare my life?" And, uh, he just keeps reassuring me that he loves me and that, uh, things are going to be okay.

Interviewer: Now, isn't it so that a substantial number of people whom you were associated with on the streets back in '76 and '77 are in the ground?

David Berkowitz: That's what I've heard. I, you know, I don't know how accurate all that is. I [unclear: "know" / "heard now"] that the Carr brothers and [unclear: "so forth" / "others"] lost their lives shortly after I was arrested. What exactly transpired, I don't know.

Interviewer: There's been a lot. Young girls like [unclear: "Dawn Coons"], and, uh, Frank, well, Frank [unclear: "Signorelli" / "Signarelli"] died in jail, and Joe [unclear: "Caroza" / "Krosza"], who had the yacht in New Rochelle, and so on and so forth. I mean, there's a laundry list of people who died violently: either murder, accidents, overdoses, suicides.

David Berkowitz: Yeah. That's, uh, what happens when, this is why I try so fervently to reach people with the gospel, because I know what Satan can do to a person. Uh, Satan can utterly destroy a life, a human life, and, uh, just as the Bible says that Satan comes to steal, kill and destroy, but that Christ comes to give an abundant life. And if people dabble in things, if they follow that path that I was on, eventually, uh, they can end up destroying themselves, because there are powers behind the scenes. I know the people, many people say, "Oh, bah humbug, I don't believe that stuff." Well, it's true whether people believe it or not. It's reality. There are powers, entities that people get involved with that could twist a person's mind, ultimately destroy that person's life.

Interviewer: Do you remember Jimmy [unclear: "Cahn" / "Khan"]? Not the actor.

David Berkowitz: Yes.

Interviewer: The one who lived in your building. After you got arrested, you know, [unclear: "Cahn" / "Khan"] went up to his job trying to get a gun, because he said people were now after him. Now, [unclear: "Cahn" / "Khan"] was involved in this case, at least in terms of Untermyer Park, not at crime scenes, and he drove the yellow VW once in a while. Well, [unclear: "Cahn" / "Khan"] is the latest one. I don't know if you're aware of this, but [unclear: "Cahn" / "Khan"] committed suicide, uh, around last Thanksgiving. So for the record, it's up to, that we know of, about 21 people, uh, who were associates of yours in one way or another, uh, on the wrong side of this case, have died since your arrest, and only one of them, uh, whose name we know, Mr. D, uh, died of natural causes, and he was elderly. All the others are young and, uh, unnatural causes. Does that say anything to you about, uh, about all this?

David Berkowitz: Yeah. That the devil means business. It doesn't play. That's what I've been sharing in my testimony, uh, time and time again, that the devil does not play. And, uh, a person follows him or serves him, uh, they're throwing their life away. They don't know what they're getting into. What could start out as dabbling could ultimately lead to total possession. I've seen it in the past. I know what happened to me, and I hesitate to share these things in the public, because it just sounds so unbelievable. People really can't accept that. They don't really understand, or my words get twisted. It's been a real uphill battle to even share.

David Berkowitz: Uh, but, uh, mainly today I just see that my calling in life, and I feel, is my calling, is to share the good news of Jesus Christ and to reach as many with that message of hope as possible. I mean, even in other countries today, you know, the videos are going into the Philippines, into Russia, translated in different languages, Romania, in Romania. And I mean, I have to look at that and say, well, I can't do anything about the past. I made wrong choices. I did foolish things. I threw my life away. I hurt other people and destroyed their lives, and I'm sorry for that. Uh, I can't change the past anymore. If I only knew what I was getting into at the beginning, as I said, I would have just ran away. But, uh...

Interviewer: Rejoin the army.

David Berkowitz: Yeah, that would have, even to that. As I said, when I left the service, I was all ready to begin a new life. I had bought a stereo, expensive stereo system, a Sansui stereo system, overseas, where the rates were cheap. I had it shipped to, you know, United States. I got my own apartment, my own car. I saved up money when I was in the service. I enrolled in the Bronx Community College. I got a part-time job. I was going to school under the GI Bill. I thought I had a future, you know, and then everything just flipped around. I didn't think I'd ever end up in a place like this.

Interviewer: It's the Catskills. What are the Jewish comedians going to be [unclear: "doing"]?

Interviewer: Why... I've got, I've just... Why do you think... Go ahead, Lisa.

Lisa: Um, in terms of, you know, you said you had a dream, you know, to have the typical, you know, somebody growing up in the '50s, the wife, the kids, the suburbs. Wondering if, more, have you had any kind of a romantic relationship with anyone, maybe somebody whose heart was drawn to you when they began writing to you? I know that happens.

David Berkowitz: That's an interesting human interest kind of question.

Lisa: Uh, some of, uh, let's say, female friends over the years, without names, just in general, who you've corresponded with, you know, just, you know... You've developed some female friends, is that correct?

David Berkowitz: Uh, well, I wouldn't say like that, like really romantic. I do have, but this is off the record, I think. I do have, because I want to protect the privacy. I've learned to, this is my life. This is going to be the rest of my life. And I, but it's hard to describe it. It doesn't bother me anymore, because God has given me peace about it, and, uh, I can accept, you know, this is kind of where I am, where I'll be.

Interviewer: People get married even with life, even with consecutive life.

David Berkowitz: Yeah, they do.

Interviewer: Eric Menendez got married behind bars. The, uh...

Interviewer: So no marriage plan at all?

David Berkowitz: No, no marriage plan. At least not at the moment. No.

Interviewer: You know, uh, if I can, let me see if I can get this idea right that Lisa had talked about before. It's the idea that there are as many, the authorities say that there are as many as perhaps 50 serial killers going around America at one time. And, um, I mean, from the point of view of somebody who had been involved in something like that, granted, not by yourself, I mean, is there something that the authorities should do, or people should be on the lookout for, as a way to help identify this kind of thing?

David Berkowitz: This kind of thing. You know, I'm not really an expert on that. People, those people come from all walks of life. There's a lot of, see, the way I look at it, I look at it from the eyes of a person like, who's like a minister today. And I see that there's just a lot of hurting people out there, a lot of confused, lonely, troubled people, and, uh, a lot of angry people, a lot of tormented people. And, uh, that's why, you know, as a Christian, I try to reach as many as I can, because I believe with all my heart that it's a personal relationship with God that can give a person hope, that can give a person meaning in life. I don't know what causes that kind of behavior. I really don't [unclear: "know what understand it" / "understand it"] at all.

Interviewer: So you're not auditioning for the job as host of *America's Most Wanted*.

David Berkowitz: No.

Interviewer: No, what I mean, I mean, it's more the concept in terms of how should a person know if there's someone who needs help so badly, who's so troubled, that they're going to cross that line and commit murder? What advice would you give to someone to look out for, so that maybe they could get someone to help them? Family members, friends.

David Berkowitz: Uh, wow. That's, uh...

Interviewer: 'Cause that's something you would know from ministering to people, 'cause you've seen the people who need the help so badly. What are those symptoms you could tell [unclear: "more" / "for it"]?

David Berkowitz: Uh, wow.

Interviewer: Take the time. You were one of them. You could reach into your own [unclear: "pastor" / probably "past"], or...

David Berkowitz: Yeah.

Interviewer: ...any other person that you've met in this environment, where I'm sure there were plenty.

David Berkowitz: Well, I think that, uh, what people need is closeness. In society today, people so far apart, and even in families. So many families are broken, broken homes. And I don't mean just the broken homes in the sense that maybe dad's in prison or mom and dad are separated or something like that. But sometimes the family could be, like, all under the same roof, mom and dad and the kids, and yet the home can still be broken, because people are not communicating there. There's no real bonding. There's no deeper love. Sometimes even in one's own home there could be strangers. Uh, I think it's so important for people to communicate and to spend time with one another in a family unit as much as possible.

David Berkowitz: I know that, for example, in the incident in Columbine, uh, those kids had parents, and they were from homes that, to all purposes, seemed to be stable and so forth. And yet, some ways you look at that, and yet there was, within the home, there was a broken relationship. And it seemed like those parents really didn't have an understanding of how far into, let's say, just use the word evil, those kids had fallen. And the parents seem to be, from what I understand, just kind of oblivious to that. My heart goes out to them, because I'm sure they must be struggling with that very much, asking themselves a lot of questions. Why? Why? But I can see that there's a need for people to be closer and, uh, to know one another better, and...

Interviewer: So, so what signs then would those parents have had to see, have seen? That's, you know, what is it that you would see in someone that would say to you, "Aha," the light bulb goes off on top of your head, "that person's about to blow up the high school," or "that person's about to, you know, shoot people"? What is it that you would recognize in another human being that would tip you off, so that you could say, "Jesus, I've got to help this person"? You know, that's the kind of thing I'm just curious about.

David Berkowitz: Okay. Okay. Well, I think that, uh, sometimes with, like, let's say, teenagers or young adults, there's an obsession with death. There is a, uh, a sense of loneliness, a sense of hopelessness, a sense of despair. I think that a person that's going through some kind of self-destructive or destructive thoughts kind of isolates themselves from others. And if a person's in a home with somebody, they see them becoming detached, remote, aloof, this may be a time to just kind of reach out there. It's like, "Hey, what's going on with your life? I see you're struggling with something. Uh, what's on your mind? Let's share. Let's open up a little bit."

David Berkowitz: A lot of times, uh, people just need someone to really talk to, someone to spend time with them, a friend or a family member that's going to stick close with them. And, uh, when these things are not there, people get into, it's so easy to get into their own frame of mind, and their world becomes real small, and they don't see the whole picture. They begin to just dwell on their own problems, their own anger, their own frustrations in life, and those things begin to percolate inside of a person, build up, and next thing you know, you have some kind of rage, anger, something like that.

David Berkowitz: Uh, I see that people need to know that there's a God, that there's a God that cares about them, that there's a God that has a place in life for them. I think in here, I know a lot of guys feel very, maybe, insignificant in the world or so forth, but, um, I don't see myself that way anymore. I see myself as a person who has, uh, a purpose in life. I get up in the morning with a sense of purpose as a Christian: well, I'm going to do the best I can to share with somebody today, to reach out to somebody today, to encourage them. Uh, you know, without those things, I just don't see how people can make it in this world. People try to lose themselves in all kinds of things. And when a person begins to become, uh, aloof, that's usually a sign that they're going through something.

Interviewer: Well, don't you think people withdraw, too? I mean, there's different forms of withdrawal. I mean, you can withdraw into TV, into the internet, into drugs, into alcohol.

Interviewer: I mean, not in here. Nobody here's on drugs, alcohol, or on the internet. And they're certainly not watching too much TV, I don't think.

Interviewer: It's just another one of the things of the case. You know how myths travel on and on about this brown-haired girls and all that. Was there anything to that?

David Berkowitz: No.

Lisa: Okay. And I just, you know, in terms of just reaching back to your lowest point, because you've come so far from so low, if you could try to talk a little bit of just comparing how you felt. If you could just reach into your heart and try to talk a little bit about feeling like you were in the depths of that moment, where suicide was clearly something that would have been an option. Right now it's the last thing that you would consider, because you have a purpose. And I'd love you to [unclear: "that" / "do that"].

Interviewer: Yeah, that's, I think that's a very reasonable question, too, Dave. That's one we tried earlier and you didn't want to talk about. I just asked you if you could contrast or compare the David Berkowitz of 1977 to the David Berkowitz today. The difference.

David Berkowitz: Uh, the David Berkowitz of the past was a very, uh, guy living without a lot of, without any hope, and, uh, was a very, uh, troubled and tormented person. I was a, I believe that I was demon-possessed. And the reason is because I allowed Satan to enter into me through rituals and incantations and other stupid things. I look back at that and say, man, that was garbage. I was an idiot to even do those things. But I didn't think it was going to end in destruction of others and even throwing my own life away.

David Berkowitz: But today, thanks to Christ, I mean, today I'm living with hope. I know that God has forgiven me, even though others may never forgive me. And I have peace with God. I have peace with myself. I have, uh, joy. I have a future. And, uh, I believe that Christ is coming soon, and one day I'm going to be with him one day. You know, that's one of the tenets of the Christian faith, is that Christ will come again. And when that happens, in the instant of an eye, I'll be up in heaven with him. And that's a hope that, uh, millions of Christians have. I live with that hope, and I face the future looking forward to being a good, being the best I can be as a person, and, uh, trying to touch as many lives as possible, trying to reach out to as many as possible in the time I have left, however long that may be.

Interviewer: Now, you said that you believe that God has forgiven you.

David Berkowitz: Yes.

Interviewer: But have you been able to forgive yourself, or is that something you'll never be able to do?

David Berkowitz: There was a long time of struggle where I couldn't forgive myself, and I went through a lot of pain, uh, during that time period. But one day a minister was preaching a sermon, uh, from the book of Micah, the prophet, and he talked about God taking all your sins and throwing them into the sea of forgetfulness, never to be remembered anymore. And as he was speaking, I felt like God's spirit, I know it's a hard thing to understand, but I kind of sensed God's spirit just kind of [unclear: "bloom in me" / "blooming me"] in that moment, where I felt God was reaching out to me and saying, "David, your sins are forgiven. David, I've completely forgiven you. I love you. I want you to know that." And right then and there, it's like a light went off inside me. And I knew from that moment that my sins were completely forgiven.

David Berkowitz: They were forgiven the moment I came to Christ, but it took me a number of years before I was finally able to realize the need to just forgive myself and to let go. And that's what I try to do today, is just let go of the past as much as possible. I hate talking about it. I hate dwelling on it. It's like another life that I don't even recognize anymore.

Interviewer: Now, you're talking about forgiveness in a spiritual sense.

David Berkowitz: Yes.

Interviewer: But I don't think that you're implying, or are you, that the rest of society should just say, "Okay, no harm, no foul."

David Berkowitz: No, not at all. I mean, I, uh, I committed serious crimes. I deserve to be in prison for the rest of my life. I recognize that. I know that people will never forgive me. That's okay. That's normal, you know. That's... But still, my life goes on. [30:52 to 30:57: music (captions); clip ends.] ---