Title: Conversations with a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes
Cast: Jack Jones, Mary Murphy, Joseph Borrelli, Lawrence Klausner, Manny Grossman, Marlin Hopkins, Richard Edmonds, John Comparetto, Rick Bellsky, William Gardella
Director: Joe Berlinger
Rating: 3.5 stars
Runtime: 3 eps /60 min each
This 4th entry in the Conversations with a Killer documentary series on Netflix is a focused 3 episode series of roughly an hour each, about serial killer Berkowitz’s life. It tells the story of how David Berkowitz scared New York city residents for nearly a whole year in the 1970’s.
The series begins with Jack Jones, a prison reporter who has interviewed many murderers, receiving a letter from David Berkowitz. David was a murderer known for targeting women and not much was known about him or his modus operandi. Jones knew he had the opportunity to break the most sensational story of the time and he took it.
David Berkowitz was interviewed during his imprisonment in Attica and the three episodes encompass taped interviews with the killer describing his acts of violence and his motivations thereof.
Jones’ interview tapes expose the psyche of a killer who is reported to have murdered countless women. Berkowitz was adopted as a baby by a Jewish couple who raised him as their own. His adoptive mother, who he was quite attached to, passed away from Breast cancer when he was 14. He continued to live with his father and became attracted to women who looked like his mother. After many failed relationships he came to the conclusion that women were not to be trusted and began hating them ever since. The murders began in 1976.
Some of Berkowitz’s actions stemmed from deep-seated trauma, anger, and hatred and at other times they felt spontaneous and attention-seeking. He seemed to desire notoriety. We get to see how, even out of a cell, Berkowitz was trying to control the narrative. Through Jack Jones’s recordings we get acquainted with a player who was highly manipulative, flippant and calculative and could summon emotions to suit his audience.
When the killings began, the city seemed to be unravelling. Fiscal catastrophe was knocking on its doors, crime was out of control, the general public lost faith in the police. The docuseries puts forward David Berkowitz’s killings into this context of chaos. The case of course became a media sensation.
His first victims were two girls: Donna Lauria and Jody Valente who were sitting in their car. Donna succumbed but Jody survived, and was able to give a brief description of the killer. Unfortunately the composite wasn’t conclusive and suspicion fell on Donna’s ex Vinny. David continued on his killing spree after that reprieve. He began stalking young, unmarried couples. Most of the women he killed had short, shoulder-length hair. This documentary shows representative enactments of his murders alongside interviews with the victims` families.
We also get to see pictures of all the women he killed. The interview with Jones was an effort to gain sympathy for his mental condition but his dreadful acts were so unpardonable that it couldn’t go unpunished. The documentary flags inconsistencies in his confession without trying to resolve every glaring loophole in his story.
The narrative is layered, intercutting between reenactments, archival footage, dramatised séance scenes, grainy newspaper clippings, black and white photographs and interviews with the relatives of the victims inset into raw footage of 1970’s New York.
Berlinger manages to instill a sense of foreboding in this chillingly terrifying dramatization of true crimes. At the same time he manages to handle the murders with a certain degree of sensitivity.
The representative images, the archival footage, family interviews, psychological profile all painted a picture of a truly frightening monster without any remorse. The newspaper clippings along with the interviews create a portrait of inhumanity that is pretty hard to stomach. This is a superbly documented true crime series that is graphic, detailed and very disturbing – among the best you’ll see.