Kriti Mehrotra
Netflix’s ‘Conversations With a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes’ is a documentary series that chronicles the tale of the titular serial killer, David Berkowitz, who terrorized New York in the 1970s. This original production actually spans not only his horrific crimes but also his personal life and past troubles to really shine a light upon who he was as well as why he did what he did. Thus, of course, his being adopted takes up a significant portion of the series, making us wonder more about his biological mother, Betty Falco, and the relationship they shared.
Betty Falco Reportedly Gave Up Her Son for Adoption
It was reportedly in the 1910s that Elizabeth “Betty” Broder was born to Gussie Kovolsky Broder and William Broder as one of their 5 children in the heart of Brooklyn, New York. She was hence raised at a time of rapid internal growth and the significant transformation of the city, enabling her to dream big, explore, and lead a comfortable life. She eventually tied the knot with an Italian-American man named Tony Falco in 1936. They settled down in the same area and began a life together, even welcoming a daughter named Roslyn into the world within a few years.
Unfortunately, Betty and Tony’s relationship crumbled apart not long after, and he left her for another woman by the time 1940 rolled around. The matriarch subsequently did her best to provide for her family, but things changed when she fell pregnant again. After all, this baby was conceived from an affair she was having with a married Jewish businessman named Joseph Kleinman, who did not want the child. So, three days after Richard David Falco was born on June 1, 1953, she gave him up for adoption. He went on to be adopted by Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz of the Bronx and became David Berkowitz, with all of them unaware of the fact that he would go on to become a serial killer.
Betty Falco and Her Son Didn’t Share a Great Relationship
David was reportedly just a young man when he was told by Nathan that he was adopted, before also being told that his mother had died during childbirth and that his father had given him up. Therefore, he reportedly grew up feeling guilty, feeling as if he killed his mother and was hated by his father, resulting in him also having nightmares about his biological father wanting to kill him for revenge. Things only became worse for him when his adoptive mother passed away from cancer when he was merely 14 years old, because he genuinely loved her despite his troubled behaviors. However, when he grew up and his father remarried and settled in Florida, he decided to find his birth family.
It was in 1975 that David decided to search for his birth family, only to realize during a meeting of the Adoptees’ Liberty Movement Association (ALMA) that he could have been lied to about his birth parents. He hence searched public libraries and found his birth certificate, through which he was able to locate his birth mother, Betty, after looking through phone books and cross-referencing several records. He left her a letter in a mailbox explaining who he was, and she called him a few days later. They agreed to meet, and that’s when he learned he also has a half-sister. But alas, the reality of their first meeting was far different from what David had imagined. “When I first met (my biological mother, Betty), she was a short, fat woman, you know, with this stringy hair and all this ruined makeup from like 20 years ago, sitting there in this homely dress, ill-fitting dress.”
David continued, “I was kind of confused. It wasn’t what I had pictured. I was hoping for maybe a more attractive mother, you know?… I don’t know, she impressed me as kind of just phony… Homely on the outside, but inside she was very, I don’t know, she wanted something.” Therefore, when Betty revealed the details of his parentage to him after a few visits – the fact he was born out of wedlock and from an affair – he was greatly disturbed and “disgusted.” In fact, he reportedly wrote her off as a horrible woman. This is one of the primary reasons that when he started his crime spree, he primarily attacked young couples in their cars late at night. “It brings me back to the idea of women, young girls having sex in cars with guys. Carelessness. It’s kinda degrading to me to know that I was an accident, you see?… So now, anger took over to replace the guilt. It’s something that built up.”
Betty Falco Has Reportedly Passed Away
When David was arrested on 6 counts of murder and 7 counts of attempted murder in August 1977, Betty was left shocked to the very core. Nevertheless, she wanted to have a relationship with him, so she did her best to convince him to let her visit. According to records, he did not want her to, but he eventually relented after being urged by his half-sister and one of his lawyers. They met in October 1977 while he was detained at Kings County Hospital, and she also took some books along with her for him. By this point, Roslyn went by Roslyn Rothenberg since she had moved on, gotten married, and started a family of her own. Following this, though, both Betty and Roslyn kept a low profile, meaning they chose to deal with her personal relationships and David’s conviction as well as incarceration well away from the limelight. From what we can tell, Betty passed away a few years later while she was in her 70s, but her cause of death is not publicly available.
Read More: Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz: What Happened to Son of Sam’s Adoptive Parents?
