Post by natalie on May 23, 2017 17:09:37 GMT -5
'Son of Sam' Sends Regards to Jimmy Breslin's Family
NEW YORK POST
By David K. Li May 23, 2017 | 2:44pm | Updated
Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz (left) offered his condolences to loved ones of the late Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Jimmy Breslin (left) — though he claims he can’t remember why he famously chose to write to the scribe in the first place.
Berkowitz – locked up for life at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility – recently wrote to Rochester Democrat and Chronicle columnist David Andreatta, who had asked the killer what moved him to write to Breslin back in 1977 and if he had any reaction to the writer’s March 19 death. “I wish to extend my condolences to his family at their loss,” Berkowitz told Andreatta in a typewritten letter dated April 22.
Berkowitz, now 63, wrote to Breslin in the midst of his killing spree in 1976-77. In one of the letters, he declared, “I am the Son of Sam. I’ve no idea or remembrance as to why I tried to contact him in the first place,” Berkowitz wrote to Andreatta. “It may have been something he wrote in one of his columns at the time the crime spree was occurring. But as time went on, and even for several decades since, I had forgotten about him.”
Berkowitz wrapped up his two-page letter decrying the proliferation of guns in American culture. He didn’t make any direct references to his use of a .44-caliber gun to kill six people in a murder spree that terrified New Yorkers like none other before or since. “I believe that when it comes to young people and guns, one bullet usually kills two people,” Berkowitz wrote. “There’s a whole culture that glorifies guns, drugs, gangs and violence.”
Andreatta, a former New York Post reporter, posted the letter from Berkowitz on his Facebook page on Tuesday.