"Son of Sam" David Berkowitz, New York's infamous .44-caliber killer who taunted the public with letters to the legendary columnist Jimmy Breslin, says he no longer trusts the media 50 years after kicking off his killing spree.
Berkowitz's first victim, 18-year-old Donna Lauria, was shot and killed while getting out of an Oldsmobile in the Bronx on July 29, 1976.
Through an intermediary, "Lighter Side of True Crime" podcaster Keith Rovere, Berkowitz declined an interview request for this story.
"I don't trust the media," he wrote to Rovere in a letter shared with Fox News Digital. "They will twist and distort whatever I say. Even recently they twisted my words concerning some changes in New York's parole law which, in this instant, had nothing to do with me."
New York lawmakers are mulling over bills that would create an elder parole system and abolish life without parole.
"They riled up a victim with a false information and a distortion, thus creating the victim needless grief and pain, and more," he wrote. "This was not the first time. If the media wishes to know what I've been doing with my life, all they have to do is visit the website which has probably over a thousand pages of my prison writings and various videos, interviews and more, which viewers could easily access. Ariseandshine.org."
In May, Berkowitz skipped a parole hearing and wrote in a letter to FBI publication from July 1980, Berkowitz kept notes on hundreds of fires near New York City in the years before his arrest. Police found handwritten notes about 1,411 incidents, with details including the weather, street name and firefighters' response.
"He's one of the few serial killers that I know that I believe has completely changed his ways," said Rovere, a former prison pastor and the host of the "Lighter Side of True Crime" podcast who has been trading letters with Berkowitz for years.
Serving a life prison sentence, Berkowitz now claims to be a born-again Christian and calls himself the "Son of Hope." His letters are now signed "Bro[ther] David" or, occasionally, with his full name. Most are typed, no longer handwritten.
He spends some of his time producing illustrated religious pamphlets and posts content on his website and working on his prison ministry.