David Berkowitz's childhood home

This is David Berkowitz's childhood home.

It is located at 1105 Stratford Avenue in the Bronx, New York.

The serial killer, who murdered six people between 1976 and 1977, grew up on the top floor of this building with his adoptive parents, Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz.

Berkowitz said that his bedroom window (circled in red) faced the street corner, giving him an expansive view of his neighborhood, the Bronx, and the shoreline of Queens.

In one of his prison letters, the "Son of Sam" reminisced about how he spent a great deal of time in his childhood bedroom, gazing out at the city landscape around him.

He also recalled how he would sometimes poke his head out the window so that he could look south and watch traffic moving along the busy Bruckner Expressway.

Berkowitz was born Richard David Falco on June 1st, 1953. However, his biological mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Broder, quickly put him up for adoption.

His birth was the result of an extramarital affair between his single mother and a married businessman named Joseph Klineman. The surname Falco originated from Broder's estranged husband, who had left her for another woman 13 years prior.

Klineman denied being Richard's father and reportedly forced Broder to give him up for adoption.

A few days after his birth, "Baby Richard" was adopted by Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz, a middle-aged Jewish couple that owned a hardware store in the Bronx.

From that point on, he became formally known as David Berkowitz.

Growing up, Berkowitz was somewhat troubled, as he had a desire to steal things and start fires. He also reportedly poisoned his parents' parakeet because he felt jealous about the amount of attention it received.

In his prison journal, he admitted that he wasn't the best son.

Berkowitz was overprotective of his adoptive mother and would sometimes feign sickness so that he could stay home from school and spend more time in her company.

His personal issues worsened after she died from breast cancer when he was 14 years old. Pearl's death came as a huge shock to the teenager, as her illness had been kept a secret from him.

He had suddenly lost the one "stabilizer" in his life.

His mother's death was also extremely tough on his father. It appeared to age him overnight. Most evenings, he would return from working long shifts at the hardware store and fall asleep in a recliner chair. Berkowitz could see that his father was being eaten up by loneliness.

When the crime rate in their neighborhood became too much, the pair decided to get a fresh start by moving to an apartment building in Co-Op City.

Following the move, his father met a widow named Julia, whom he eventually went on to marry. Berkowitz did not like Julia, as he felt that she had taken his mother's place. Consequently, he started spending more time away from home.

Berkowitz was so eager to escape his new family setup that he immediately joined the US Army after he graduated from high school.

As a young adult, he struggled to establish relationships with members of the opposite sex. His first sexual encounter was with a sex worker, which occurred while he was in the military.

When he left the army in 1974, he felt hopeless and directionless, as he had no job, no relationship, and no solid plans for the future. Tracking down his biological mother and learning the true circumstances surrounding his birth compounded matters.

He grew up believing his biological mother had died during childbirth, a tragedy that he blamed on himself. However, he was now having to face the unfathomable truth that she didn't want him.

When Berkowitz met his birth mother in 1976, he found out that he was the result of an affair.

By the time Berkowitz reached his mid-twenties, his bitterness toward women and the world in general was beginning to consume him. Frustrated and angry, he began to lash out against society by lighting 1,400 separate fires, all of which he meticulously cataloged in a notebook.

However, burning things wasn't enough, and his destructive behavior soon escalated.

Although Berkowitz initially claimed that a demonic dog instructed him to kill people, he later admitted that he had concocted the story for his insanity defense.

In reality, his murders were the result of a bitter revenge fantasy that had been snowballing inside his head for a very long time.

This is evidenced by the fact that he stabbed his first victim roughly one month before he moved to Yonkers and met the supposed "demon dog."