David Berkowitz

David Richard Berkowitz , also known as the Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer convicted of a series of shooting attacks that began in New York City in the summer of 1976, perpetrated with a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver. He killed six victims and wounded seven others by July 1977. As the toll mounted, Berkowitz eluded a massive police manhunt while leaving brazen letters that mocked the police and promised further crimes, highly publicized in the press. He terrorized New York and achieved worldwide notoriety.

Berkowitzs mother, Betty Broder, grew up in an impoverished Jewish family and married Tony Falco, an ItalianAmerican Catholic, in 1936. After a marriage of less than four years, Falco left her for another woman. Roughly a decade passed before Broder took up with a new partner, a married man named Joseph Klineman, around 1950. Three years later she became pregnant with a child to whom she chose to give the surname FalcoRichard David Falco was born on June 1, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. Within a few days of his birth, she gave the child away. Although her reasons for doing so are unknown, later writers have surmised that Klineman threatened to abandon her if she kept the baby and used his name.

Source: Wikipedia