Berkowitz's Barnes Avenue apartment

This is one of David Berkowitz's former apartments.

It is located at 2161 Barnes Avenue in the Bronx, New York.

The serial killer lived here for approximately six months between 1975 and 1976, during which he worked as an unarmed guard for IBI Security.

In 1975, his father, Nathan, sold his hardware store and moved to Florida with his wife, Julia.

Consequently, Berkowitz was forced to find a place of his own.

He started renting a "drab" one-room apartment at this address in July or August of 1975. Following the move, he became more isolated and withdrawn.

One year prior, he had started lighting fires and making false alarms, all of which he meticulously cataloged in a personal diary.

This behavior became even more intense once he started living by himself.

In November 1975, Berkowitz wrote to his father in Florida and remarked that the world was "getting dark." In his letter, he said that people hated him and that they would spit and kick at him while he was walking down the street. He also claimed that young girls called him ugly and bothered him the most.

Berkowitz did not carry out any of the Son of Sam shootings while he was living at this location. However, he did commit his first known attack.

On the night of December 24th, 1975, he grabbed a hunting knife, got in his car, and drove to his former neighborhood in Co-op City.

There, he stabbed a woman and a teenage girl in two separate attacks. Fortunately, both of his targets survived, as he panicked when he realized that killing someone with a knife wasn't as simple as it seemed on television.

In January 1976, he left this building and moved to a two-family home in New Rochelle.

Following Berkowitz's arrest in August 1977, most of his former neighbors on Barnes Avenue struggled to remember much about him. By all accounts, he had largely kept to himself.

One neighbor who did remember him told the New York Times, "He enjoyed drinking beer. We used to joke about watching his waistline. He was always carrying six‐packs."