HE WANTS TO ROT IN PRISON? LET HIM!

Background of David Berkowitz--New York's Horror
during the summer of 1976

August 6, 2006 -- The Son of Sam says his lawyer got it all wrong - he doesn't want to get out of jail. Two weeks after lawyer Mark Jay Heller vowed to mount an all-out effort to spring the serial killer, David Berkowitz fired off a letter to the rep telling him he had no desire to leave prison.


"I humbly ask you to please cease and desist from any and all further efforts to seek to obtain parole for me," Berkowitz wrote to Heller on July 27. "Mark, I know you mean well and you want to help me. But I have always made it clear, and I have said it again and again throughout the years, that I am not seeking parole, nor do I wish to seek parole."

David Berkowitz in 2003

Berkowitz first retained Heller in order to halt publication of a book about him. The letter, a copy of which Berkowitz forwarded to a crime-victims advocate with whom he's corresponded for years, was fired off after Heller told The Post he planned to launch a campaign to free the murderer at his next parole hearing in 2008. But the killer himself insisted he hadn't "authorized you to seek parole for me." Berkowitz, who began his murderous spree 30 years ago, was denied parole July 18 for the third time. Berkowitz did not even show up for the latest parole hearing.


He'd attended the two previous hearings, in 2002 and 2004, "because they gave me the opportunity to personally take responsibility for my past criminal actions, as well as to apologize to my victims and to society," he wrote to Heller. After he was denied parole, a pal sent him a copy of The Post's article with Heller's comments, Berkowitz wrote. "May I add that when I saw the article I was shocked, confused and stunned," Berkowitz says in the letter to Heller.


In a separate letter he sent July 27 to Andy Kahan, the crime-victims advocate with whom he has corresponded, Berkowitz laments the parole talk, which creates "needless suffering and aggravation for the victims of my crimes," he wrote.