The reason “Son of Sam” serial killer David Berkowitz isn’t going to parole meetings is that the born-again Christian believes that “Jesus has forgiven him and set him free,” according to his lawyer.
The Post revealed that Berkowitz was denied parole last week at Sullivan Correctional Facility upstate. He was a no-show for the hearing, his seventh since he became parole-eligible in 2002.
Parole commissioners Milton Johnson and Lisa Elovich chastised Berkowitz, who will remain in prison for at least another two years, for not showing up.
Berkowitz fatally shot six young people in lover’s lanes and maimed seven others in a notorious 1976-77 rampage that terrorized the city. He wrote letters taunting police and detailing his escapades while dubbing himself the “Son of Sam,” and later claimed his neighbor’s dog, named Sam, had told him to carry out the shootings.
But his lawyer, Mark J. Heller, tells Page Six that during his incarceration, Berkowitz has become a born-again Jew for Jesus.
Heller said that Berkowitz was raised in the Jewish faith, but while behind bars, he joined Jews for Jesus, an evangelical organization that focuses on the conversion of Jews to Christianity, and has served at the Sullivan County prison as a minister’s assistant.
Heller told us, “David told me that the reason he has never sought freedom from the parole board by attending parole hearings is because ‘Jesus has already freed my heart, soul and mind and has forgiven me.’ ”
Berkowitz’s next parole hearing is scheduled for 2016.