Shadow Mind: Jack Jones and the Son of Sam

A fascinating look at the life and crimes of notorious New York serial killer David Berkowitz, infamously known as “The Son of Sam,” with never-before-released interview transcripts from the archive of author and journalist Jack Jones.

In the late 1970s, New York was a city in flames. Bankrupt and crumbling, swaths of the city were left empty and decrepit by years of white flight. Blackouts plagued residents. Crime was ubiquitous. The Bronx was literally burning down. All the while, a spectacular killer terrorized the city, armed with a .44 Bulldog revolver.

He was called the Son of Sam. A name he gave himself in letters to the police that promised to commit further murders and mocked their failure to apprehend him. Ultimately, after more than two years of attacks that claimed the lives of six and injured an additional eleven, the Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, was captured.

While Berkowitz was incarcerated, young reporter Jack Jones with the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle pursued a series of interviews with the killer, hoping to shed light on the man’s mindset and motives, while also aspiring to make a name for himself.

Over several weeks, the interview would prove to be a reckoning for both men. Throughout his time with Berkowitz, Jones, a single father and toiling reporter, reflected on his own life tormented by trauma and loss, ultimately forced to confront the fact that his fate might have been alarmingly similar to that of the notorious killer if things had turned out just a little different.

With startling insight and energy, Shadow Mind provides a glimpse into the lives of two men, each lost in the turmoil of mid-twentieth-century America: One alone, weak, and convinced of his victimhood; the other, determined, desperate, and resolved to become a good man.