‘The Sons of Sam’ Elevates an Unnecessary Hero and Skimps on Killer’s Christian Conversion

Photo courtesy of Netflix.

(REVIEW) Feeling a little low on cult conspiracy entertainment lately? Netflix’s “The Sons of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness” is the place to turn. 

The streaming platform’s latest stab at true crime content comes in a four-part documentary series about notorious New York serial killer David Berkowitz, known as “Son of Sam,” told from the perspective of a fanatic journalist who became obsessed with proving that the case was connected to an elaborate satanic cult. 

The documentary is difficult to watch, packed to the brim with convoluted tangents, cliché scares and an unsympathetic main character. Underneath that, it at least offers an interesting new angle on a familiar case. 

It begins with the year-long shooting spree of the Son of Sam, which resulted in the deaths of six. Seven others were injured. After Berkowitz had confessed to these crimes and was imprisoned in 1978, writer Maury Terry believed he saw clues the NYPD was missing — clues that pointed to the involvement of others in these murders. 

To be clear, there’s little doubt that others were involved. Berkowitz’s story has shifted some over the years — he initially claimed that his neighbors’ dog was possessed by Satan and commanded him to kill — but he’s admitted that he and others were involved in a satanic cult. His neighbors, John and Michael Carr, were suspected by Terry and implicated by Berkowitz, but both died before they were fully investigated. 

But Terry’s theory goes beyond that. He insisted that the satanism Berkowitz took part in linked him to pagan worshipers across the country, even claiming the Son of Sam murders were connected to Charles Manson and “The Family.”

His book “The Ultimate Evil,” published in 1988, describes all of his theories in full, hoping to expose an entire network of sexually deviant and criminal satanic cult worshipers. 

When he died in 2015, the documentary says, he was still hoping to expose the truth. 

The book may be a thrill to read — particularly as it fed into the “satanic panic” of the 1980s — but it’s ultimately convoluted and, for the most part, purely speculative. (Not to mention the fact that many claim Terry formed several of his theories on misinformation about satanism and The Process Church of the Final Judgement.) 

The documentary falls prey to the specific brand of cheap storytelling that has infiltrated true crime entertainment. It begins with an extremely reductionist scene-setting in 1970s New York, called “Fear City” for its crime rates and the possibility of looting or other danger. While it’s true that New York was in one of its most difficult eras, plagued by a recession, elevated crime and a blackout, it’s obviously more complex than just those things.

This period of time was also one of the greatest eras in New York City’s art and literature world, the home of Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag, Annie Leibovitz and others. This wasn’t a documentary about a city’s complex history, so it’s understandable they didn’t include the ways New York thrived. It just isn’t fair to the viewers to cherry-pick the scariest details from this time.

What’s more, this city-wide condition is smoothed away after the Son of Sam was arrested, as if the arrest of this one man solved most of the city’s problems. This type of entertainment fear mongering is meant to trick the viewer into being frightened, as though the story isn’t interesting enough on its own. It relies on these cheap tricks so heavily that it neglects the genuinely interesting parts of the story. 

One of the most notable things about Berkowitz is his conversion story. Ten years after being imprisoned, he became a Christian and has become an international evangelist from his cell. His website, Arise and Shine, contains a formal apology and testimony, plus other resources. He is now known by friends as “Son of Hope.” 

A great portion of Berkowitz’s contact with the outside world has been with other evangelical Christians, one of whom runs his website and others who have continued regular correspondence or ministry work with him. 

“I know that the Lord has completely forgiven me, even though I don't understand it,” Berkowitz said in a 2003 interview with the 700 Club. “I know that Christ has forgiven me. His arms of mercy have been outstretched. But my heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones. I pray for them all the time. And I know they will probably not forgive me, and never will. And I would do anything if I could go back and change things.”

His life has remained much the same in the two decades since then, and he still professes the same Christian faith. 

The documentary mentions very few of these things; it briefly notes Berkowitz’s conversion and that he became more eloquent by the time Terry spoke to him again. In fact, the documentary spends just as much time talking about Terry’s childhood faith. He grew up as an altar boy in the church near his family home. But that faith had no lasting impact on his life. It’s never mentioned again, and even his sister says he never liked to follow rules that were set for him. 

Offering the same screen time and discussion of the faith of these two men portrays Berkowitz and Terry as equally pious when that’s not at all true. 

The reality is that they had two very different and complex faith experiences that the documentary refuses to explore. Instead, it devotes more time to minor criminal details and an overabundance of theorizing.

This treatment of faith is part of the documentary’s insistence that Terry is an anti-hero who gloriously sacrificed himself in order to seek justice. 

It seems much more likely that Terry was guided by bitterness and blinding self-importance, a man who lost everything important in his life because he chose to bury himself in this mission.

Terry worked with dishonest editors early in his career and developed a distrust for media, his narrator once remarking that newspapers aren’t interested in printing facts; he went on to have a long and happy career with the New York Post, which was one of the only papers willing to publish his stories on Berkowitz and the surrounding web. A general dislike of media is evident in the documentary, subtly encouraging the viewer not to trust what they read. 

Similar is his distrust for any others who told him his claims were unfounded, including police, detectives, close friends and more. 

Terry has been explicitly disproven many times since his book was published. The Berkowitz case, reopened in 1996 to investigate some of these cult claims, remains suspended. But the documentary ends on an interesting note. 

The death of 19-year-old Arlis Perry in 1974 seemed to be connected to satanism; Terry, when he investigated it, believed the security guard guilty of her death. A lack of evidence kept the case unsolved for 40 years — until 2018, when police came to arrest that same security guard for her murder. He committed suicide before being arrested. Later, police found a copy of “The Ultimate Evil” in his home.   

Here, again, the documentary falls prey to cheap storytelling. The story seems very simple: a journalist got in too deep, threw his life away and, though he was right about some of his claims, got too caught up in the conspiracy to see the truth. But to “leave the viewer guessing,” the documentary inserts positive statements about Terry and an intentionally lacking explanation of Crawford’s arrest. 

It leaves “Sons of Sam” as little more than an adequate piece of true crime entertainment  — just be prepared to dig for meaning as deeply as Terry did if you hope to enjoy yourself. 

Jillian Cheney is a Poynter-Koch fellow for Religion Unplugged who loves consuming good culture and writing about it. She also reports on American Protestantism and evangelical Christianity. You can find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.