This story was initially posted in Aug. 11, 2017. It was up to date on Aug. 2, 2025.
Shayna Glassman is aware of her household doesn’t need her to jot down and go to with David Berkowitz, the notorious “Son of Sam” serial killer. “My household informed me, ‘Shayna — do not pursue this,'” she mentioned.
And he or she definitely is aware of how her deceased father would really feel. “A relative informed me, ‘Your dad could be so mad at you,'” Shayna Glassman mentioned.
However greater than something, she is painfully conscious that she’s Berkowitz’ “kind.”
“I’d have been his prime goal,” she informed CBS Information in 2017. “I am a younger, engaging long-haired feminine and I am the daughter of the individual he thought was the satan. There’s gotta be some deep psychological factor occurring between us.”
Shayna Glassman
Nonetheless, none of that stops Shayna Glassman from writing and visiting Berkowitz, an inmate at a most safety jail in upstate New York. He is been incarcerated for practically 50 years for taking pictures and killing six New Yorkers and wounding seven others in a murderous spree that is terrorized the town in 1976 and 1977.
“There was one thing deeper I wanted to get,” Shayna Glassman defined. “It is my method of being with my father. The one factor he left me was this story.”
In 1977, Shayna’s father, Craig Glassman, lived in house 6E at 35 Pine Avenue in Yonkers. His direct upstairs neighbor was Berkowitz, then a younger postal employee.
Craig Glassman was a nursing scholar and a volunteer deputy sheriff with the Westchester County Sheriff’s Workplace. He usually wore his police uniform which is why Shayna Glassman believed Berkowitz targeted on him and got here to hate him.
Craig Glassman’s full story was informed in a 1990 now-out-of-print ebook titled “Off The Wall.” A part of the explanation for the title are the writings police discovered on Berkowitz’ house partitions, a few of them referencing “Craig.” The “Son of Sam” additionally talked about “Craig” in a letter to police when he wrote: “As a result of Craig is Craig so should the streets be stuffed with Craig (loss of life).”
It was again in the summertime of ’77 — identified domestically because the Summer time of Sam — when Craig Glassman started to get threatening letters. They have been written in script and didn’t seem much like the printed letters Berkowitz despatched to the police and New York Day by day Information columnist Jimmy Breslin.
Shayna Glassman 
“One in every of them had a drawing of a volcano,” Shayna Glassman mentioned. The entire letters have been taken by New York Metropolis police after Berkowitz was arrested.
On the time, Craig Glassman didn’t know who was sending the letters however he suspected Berkowitz as a result of he usually heard his upstairs neighbor pacing and one time obtained an indignant cellphone name to close off his tv.
Essentially the most severe incident occurred on Aug. 6, 1977, when somebody left a bucket stuffed with gunpowder and .22 caliber bullets exterior Craig Glassman’s door and set it on fireplace. “Dad heard the flames and thought the constructing was on fireplace,” Shayna Glassman mentioned. “He known as out to neighbors who known as the fireplace division.”
The bullets by no means exploded however Craig Glassman filed a harassment criticism in opposition to Berkowitz and Shayna Glassman mentioned. he informed buddies on the pressure that he thought his loopy upstairs neighbor may very well be the “Son of Sam.” After all, lots of people that yr felt somebody they knew could be the killer; police have been inundated with ideas and leads.
Days later, NYPD detectives appeared at 35 Pine Avenue and requested a shocked Craig Glassman if he was David Berkowitz. It was the pre-internet, pre-Fb period. Police had gotten Berkowitz’ title and handle from a parking ticket on the scene of the final taking pictures, however had no thought what he regarded like.
“Dad mentioned, ‘I can present you who he’s,'” Shayna Glassman recalled. “He was sitting with them ready for Berkowitz to come back out and when he did, my father pulled his gun out and mentioned, ‘Freeze — put your arms up.’ He rode with them in automobile with Berkowitz and he mentioned, ‘You are Craig Glassman.'”
Whereas Craig Glassman was selling his ebook in 1990, he died and left behind a suitcase with the knowledge he’d collected on “Son of Sam.” Shayna Glassman was then solely 4, however she says she all the time took a eager curiosity within the killer.
“It is my method of being with my father,” she informed CBS Information. “The one factor he left me was this story.”
In December 2016, Shayna Glassman started writing to Berkowitz and finally confirmed as much as go to him unannounced. She was allowed in and, when he walked to a seat two toes away from her, not separated by glass, she launched herself. “He mentioned ‘Shayna so good to see you,'” she mentioned. “‘So sorry to listen to about your dad.'”
Shayna Glassman 
They spoke for greater than two hours, she mentioned, and, since then, she’s visited him three extra instances. She even purchased a handbook typewriter to jot down letters to him “as a result of I wished to get into his thoughts.”
Requested if there was something romantic between them, Shayna Glassman mentioned, “I am unsure what phrase to make use of to explain our relationship. There is not any romance, nevertheless it’s romantic as a result of I used to be doing ebook reviews about him since eighth grade. He was all the time a part of my consciousness.”
She mentioned she’s been by way of some exhausting instances and melancholy and has a really feel for what Berkowitz might have gone by way of when he was solely 24 years outdated.
Berkowitz, she mentioned, appears to be doing simply advantageous after many years in captivity: “He is nonetheless a human and he is completely satisfied. He has an incredible humorousness. Sure, he killed folks, that is not one thing to be taken calmly, however within the deepest depths there’s all the time a lightweight that may be offered.”
