"I Want Him Dead"

Will Son of Sam be paroled?

Q. "Did you take the plea by yourself, or did the demons force you ?"

A. "I took the plea, but that is what they wanted."

The defendant was David Berkowitz, 25, the notorious Son of Sam, who had killed five women and one man in a spree that terrorized New York City for more than a year. Two psychiatric panels had already declared him sane enough to be tried. But last week, Bronx Supreme Court Justice William Kapelman wanted to be sure that Berkowitz was legally capable of pleading guilty and receiving criminal punishment. "Notwithstanding any influence the demons might have had," he finally declared, "I hold you competent to be sentenced."

The sentence, imposed by judges from three local jurisdictions, was an apparently sufficient array of 27 prison terms totaling 547 years. It included six murder sentences of from 25 years to life, the maximum penalty allowed in New York State. Concluded Justice Kapelman: "It is this court's fervent wish that this defendant be imprisoned until the day of his death."

Unfortunately, as most New Yorkers see it, Kapelman may not get his wish. Berkowitz will be eligible to apply for parole in the year 2002, after serving only 25 years. New York's penal law, like many other state penalty statutes, provides for parole eligibility after a prisoner has served his minimum term, or, in cases which carry several sentences, after the single stiffest minimum has been served. The law was designed in 1965 to give courts and parole boards the capability of being lenient. But it also raises, at least remotely, the possibility that a deranged killer like Berkowitz could some day be returned to the streets. His case gives new ammunition to proponents of capital punishment in New York, where the death sentence is usually restricted to killers of law-enforcement officers (34 states now permit the death penalty).

Neyda Moscowitz, whose daughter Stacy, 20, was David Berkowitz's last victim, announced that she would meet with candidates in New York's gubernatorial primary to press for restoration of capital punishment. "I want him dead, dead, dead," she told reporters. Berkowitz's judges recommended that he never be paroled, but their counsel is in no way binding on future parole-board decisions. Said Queens District Attorney John Santucci: "The big fear is that those who follow us will forget what we went through."

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