Berkowitz David Berkowitz was adopted and lived in New York. He was rather intelligent but had a troubled child hood. He committed several murders throughout the years 1976-1977 and was deemed a serial killer. The specific murder that will be looked at is the Stacy Moskowitz and Robert Violante shooting and David shot them while they were parked in a car. Murderpedia.org mentions he used a .44 Caliber hand gun and was nicknamed “The .44 Caliber Killer and “Son of Sam” (web 1).
In New York in 1976 according to bjs.gov table of estimated crime of 1976, there was 10.9 Murders per 100,000 people with a violent crime rate of 868.1 per 100,000. In 1977, it was 10.7 murders with 831.8 violent crime rates per 100,000 (web 1). In 2012 the latest
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Berkowitz stabbed his first victims and later started using a gun for his killings. Murderpedia.org was able to give a lot of information on Berkowitz, from childhood, his killings, to him in jail and other information. As mentioned earlier in the paper, he was adopted but he was also a loner that did not social well with others. As a boy, he was hyperactive and a bully to other kids. His adoptive parents ended up having difficulty controlling him due to his hyperactivity. He went into a downward spiral after his adoptive mother died. The death hit him hard and he did not handle it well. Berkowitz had issues and believed demons were talking to him and as his isolation grew so did this fantasy. When the killings began, he targeted couples that were alone in their cars mostly. This is very possibly the reason why he targeted Stacy Moskowitz and Bobby Violante as they were near some woods alone in their car kissing. Stacy was worried that the Son of Sam would attack and unfortunately, she was right. They both took two bullets, the female died later but the male ended up surviving with little vision. This was the last couple Berkowitz killed before he was arrested and found guilty because he confessed. Berkowitz claimed that his neighbors’ dog was possessed by a demon and that he committed the killings for that …show more content…
Both the theories look at different aspects of the person, though development theories get more specific. The first theory looks at his connections to people, work, and school and other things to explain criminal behavior, where the second theories look at other behaviors that lead to criminal behavior. Which theory explains Berkowitzs’ actions better is hard to determine as they both have merit. Both theories work well together to explain his actions, but I would have to say development theories work the best. Development theory works best for Berkowitz because it shows how his actions as a kid lead him to do crime as an adult and how he grew out of it. It still accounts for his anti-social and lack of attachment and looks further into his childhood. The one thing it doesn’t do is look into how Berkowitz dealt with his moms’ death. His IQ is high but he did badly in school, so the IQ might be part of it, but also how they use that IQ. Low IQ may result in people doing criminal activities but someone with a good IQ and not applying it and doing poorly in school would also want to commit crimes. This is why both theories work well to explain this case. The social bond theory explains what the development theory does not and it works both ways. For the IQ portion, development theories says that his high IQ would have
David Berkowitz unleashed his random malicious scats during the summer of 1976. He is known today as one of New York’s most notorious serial killers. Berkowitz was born on June 1st, 1953 in New York, New York. He was adopted by the Berkowitz couple a few days after his birth. When Berkowitz was 18 the joined the U.S. Army. After the army, he got a job as a security officer and moved into an apartment in New York. No one even noticed the danger that slept next door.
Dennis Lynn Rader also known as the “BTK” killer; Blind, Torture, Kill. He is an American serial killer that murdered ten people in Sedgwick County, Kansas, USA in the year 1974 to 1991. Rader was born on March 9, 1945 in a place near Kansas, USA, and the oldest of four children. Rader grew up in Wichita, Kansas with an average family. His father was a former US Marine who then later worked for an electric company. He went to Riverview Elementary School. In an early age, Rader admitted that he have had developed sexual pleasures from killing. When Rader was a child, reports from Los Angeles Times stated that he used to do hanging of stray cats. Dennis Rader got married to her wife Paula in 1971 and had two kids. On January 15 of 1974, Rader committed his first murder; killing four members of the Ortero family in their own home which he says that these are his “projects”. After murdering and slaying numerous people, Rader would steal items as his reward or his souvenir. He also would leave semen at the scene due to having sexual pleasure from killing. The fifteen year old son of Joseph and Julie Ortero, Charlie, came home that day and shockingly discovered the bodies of his family. After a couple of months, in April 4, the next victim was Kathryn Bright. Rader murdered Kathryn by stabbing and strangling her. He also had tried killing her brother Kevin. Kevin was shot twice but survived the incident.
Dennis Rader also known as the BTK killer began his reign of terror in 1974. Rader developed a pattern for his murders after his first time. Wandering the city, Rader would find a potential victim, stalk the person until he knew the pattern of their lives, discover the best time to strike, and wait. Rader would even stalk multiple victims at the same time so that the hunt could go on if it doesn’t work out with the one.
However, in the months following the day that he shot and killed his wife, two children, mother-in-law and himself, investigators unravel a disturbing side of him that he apparently had been battling since childhood.
He killed women in several different states. The number of victims he had is still unknown to day but some believe it ranges from 30 to 100 women. Also, no one knows exactly why he began his killing. Psychologists have a few leads and theories of what may have set him off. They believe maybe it was because of the way he was raised and the environment he grew up in. Another, reason he could have become such a prominent murderer in the US is because of his broken relationship he had with a girl in college. The most possible motive he had may have been his obsession for
Berkowitz’s shootings appear to be acts out of impulse. Not targeting specific people though his prey of choice were single, young women with long dark hair (Bardsley, 1981). Before one of the violent shootings, witness Cacillia Davis saw a man removing a parking ticket from his yellow Ford Galaxy (Bardsley, 1981). Davis relays this message to NYPD who later determined it was in fact David Berkowitz who she had seen. At the time no suspicion rose from NYPD that Berkowitz was the Son of Sam killer, only that he was an important witness. NYPD eventually contacted Yonkers Police Department in order to track down Berkowitz for questioning. Where surprisingly to New York, Yonkers claimed Berkowitz might be the notorious serial killer they had been
"DAVID BERKOWITZ (SON OF SAM)." Crime and Investigation Network. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2014. .
Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960. He was the first born out of two. Growing up he did not get a lot of attention for his mother was an attention hog always wanting his dad’s attention, she even attempted suicide to make his father pay more attention to her. They also did fight a lot. When he was four his dad dug out old bones and ever since then he has had a fascination for bones. He would get dead animals off the road and dismember them and would keep their body parts in jars. When asked why he said it was because he was curious of how they fit together. He even put a dog’s head on a steak and put it in his backyard.
The Long Island Serial Killer is described to be a white male, in his mid twenties to late thirties. Someone who knows the areas very well. Someone
The person I chose to research was Gary Ridgway. He is also known as The Green River Killer. Gary was a serial killer in Washington. He has been convicted of murdering 49 women, he has confessed to around 60 killings, but is estimated to have killed closer to 80 women. All the women that he had killed were prostitutes that he had picked up, had sex with them, and then strangled them. He says that he never raped or tortured any of his victims, he just killed them. Gary started killing prostitutes in 1892 and is confirmed to have killed till 1998, but is thought that his last kill was around 2001. He was called the Green River Killer because his first victims’ bodies were found around the Green River.
When Berkowitz was born, he was immediately put up for adoption. His adoptive parents cared greatly for him but when he was still a teenager his adoptive mother died of cancer (“David Berkowitz (Son of Sam)”, 2014). Berkowitz throughout his life lacked a solid relationship with a mother figure. According to John Bowlby who proposed the theory in the 1950’s, the Attachment theory predicts that most delinquents are a result of abonnement at a young age and the children tend to lack empathetic understanding (Schmallegar, 2006). David fits this mold because just after birth he was essentially abandoned by his birth parents and given up for adoption. During his killing spree, it would have been difficult for the Son of Sam killer to feel empathy for his victims since he did not develop this understanding of empathy as a child. The absence of a mother figure throughout his life would also cause him to especially lack empathy for his women
Nature vs. nurture has been one of the oldest and most debated topics among psychologists over the years. This concept discusses whether a child is born into this world with their developmental work cut out for them or if a child is a “blank slate” and their experiences are what shape them into who they are. Over the years and plenty of research, psychologists have all mostly come to agree that it’s a little bit of both. Children are both born with some genetic predispositions while other aspects of the child’s development are strongly influenced by their surrounding environment. This plays into the criminal justice system when discussing where criminal behavior stems from. Is a criminal’s anti-social behavior just part of their DNA or is it a result of their upbringing? The answer to this question is not definite. Looking at research a strong argument can be made that criminals developed their anti-social patterns through the atmosphere in which they were raise, not their DNA.
They both agree that lack of self-control and impulsiveness have a lot to do with the biological aspects of the brain. The Reward Dominance Theory talks of the behavioral activating system, the behavioral inhibition system and the flight/fight system which, if balanced, helps individuals control and keep themselves from doing things that would put them in a bad predicament. Agnew had a similar statement, saying that "biological factors [ANS and brain chemistry] have a direct effect on irritability/self-control..." (Introduction to Criminology, 342). Both theories agree that the main cause of criminality have roots in biological factors and that impulsiveness and lack of self-control are largely genetic. However, this is where the similarities between the two theories ends. While the Reward Dominance Theory implies that the impulsiveness and lack of self-control that lead to criminality are strictly biological, Agnew argues that outside stimuli also have a fairly large, defining factor as to whether or not an individual results to criminal behavior. Simply being reckless and impulsive does not make one a criminal, rather, it requires other outside sources and strains for a person with low self-control and impulsiveness to resort to criminality. Agnew's Super Traits Theory can explain the effects that gender, race, and age have in criminality, as well as point out the differences between those who only committed offenses in their adolescence and individuals who continue their life of crime. When it comes to gender, Agnew found that males are at a greater risk to inherit low self-control compared to females. This could possibly be explained due to evolution, since aggressiveness has led to success in reproduction. Agnew goes on to argue that when it comes to race, African Americans have a higher probability of being poor and to be discriminated against, which can lead to negative
Intellectual deficit and addiction theory both believe that social and environmental factors play a part in offenders committing crimes. Intelligence looks at how social factors such unemployment and education failure can lead to criminal behaviour, and the environment that people grow up for example poverty, low class areas. Similarly, for addiction theories, an individual may grow up in a poor environment and might be exposed to alcohol or drugs which is a social factor and that opens the door for
An integrated theory is a combination of 2 or 3 theories that offers many explanations on why crime is occurring, compared to a traditional criminal theory that just focus on one type of aspect (Lilly et al.2010). The purpose of integrated theories is to help explain many aspects into what causes criminal behavior and why one becomes delinquent. From this an argument arises can integrated theories be used to explain all criminal behavior. Integrated theories are successful in explaining certain aspects of crime on what causes one to become deviant; however one theory alone cannot explain why an individual engages in crime. This paper will examine three integrated theories and look in-depth how these theories can explain different aspects on why criminal behavior occurs and the weakness of each theory. The three integrated theories that will be discussed in this paper are Cloward and Ohlin Differential Opportunity theory, Robert Agnew General Strain theory, and lastly Travis Hirschi’s Social Bond theory.