We’ve officially reached the point in American decline where the New York State Legislature is looking at serial killers and cop murderers serving life sentences and thinking, “You know what these guys need? A second chance.” Two bills currently working their way through Albany — the Elder Parole Bill and the Fair and Timely Parole Bill — would open the prison gates for some of the most notorious monsters in American criminal history. Including David Berkowitz. The Son of Sam. The guy who terrorized New York City for two years, murdered six people, wounded seven others, and left taunting letters to police signed with a name he said came from a demon-possessed dog.
But sure, he’s 72 now, so let’s let him browse the farmers market in peace. Maybe he can get a booth next to the guy selling artisanal candles.
Here’s what we’re dealing with. The Elder Parole Bill, introduced by State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, would allow inmates aged 55 and older to apply for parole after serving just 15 years — regardless of what they did to get locked up. Murdered six strangers on the streets of New York? Fifteen years and a gray hair, and you’re eligible. Stalked and executed one of the most famous musicians in history outside his own apartment building? Same deal.
That brings us to Mark David Chapman, currently 70 years old, who shot John Lennon four times in the back on December 8, 1980, outside the Dakota apartment building in Manhattan. Chapman has been denied parole twelve times since 2000. Twelve. The parole board has looked at this man a dozen times and said “absolutely not.” But apparently the New York Legislature knows better than the people who’ve actually sat across the table from him.
The second bill is even worse. The Fair and Timely Parole Bill — and you’ve got to love the Orwellian naming here — would *require* the parole board to release inmates if it determines they’re no longer a danger to society. Not “allow.” Require. So now we’re not just giving serial killers a shot at parole, we’re putting the burden on the state to prove why they should stay locked up. The murderer doesn’t have to prove he’s reformed. The system has to prove he hasn’t.
And it’s not just Berkowitz and Chapman. Joel Rifkin — New York’s most prolific serial killer, convicted of murdering seventeen women — would be eligible. The Buffalo supermarket shooter Payton Gendron, who slaughtered ten Black shoppers in a racist rampage, would eventually qualify. Cop killers like David McClary, who snuck up behind 22-year-old rookie officer Edward Byrne sitting in his patrol car in 1988 and fired five bullets into the back of his head, would get their day before the board.
Thirty-two state senators — more than half the chamber — have signed onto the Elder Parole Bill. Let that sink in. A majority of New York’s upper chamber looked at a bill that could free Son of Sam and said, “Yeah, I’ll put my name on that.”
The Police Benevolent Association isn’t having it. PBA President Patrick Hendry put it plainly: “There is no age and no formula that can absolve cop-killers of their heinous crimes or entitle them to rejoin society.” That’s a union president talking about his members who were executed on duty. These aren’t abstract policy debates for the PBA. These are their brothers and sisters who got bullets in the head for wearing a badge.
But here’s what really gets me. The people pushing these bills live in the safest neighborhoods in New York. They have doormen. They have security. They’ll never run into David Berkowitz at the bodega. They’ll never share a subway car with a freed cop killer. This is ideology that costs them nothing — and could cost everyone else everything.
We already know what New York’s criminal justice “reforms” produce. We watched bail reform turn the city into a revolving door. We watched progressive DAs refuse to prosecute. We watched crime spike while politicians blamed everyone except themselves. And now — with all of that spectacular failure in the rearview mirror — they want to go bigger. They want to open the doors for the worst of the worst.
The families of Berkowitz’s victims — Stacy Moskowitz, shot dead at 20 years old while sitting in a car. Virginia Voskerichian, 19, shot walking home from college. These aren’t names to the New York Legislature. They’re inconveniences in the way of a social experiment.
Chapman told the parole board he knew murdering John Lennon was evil — his exact word — but he wanted the fame so badly he did it anyway. That’s not a man who made a mistake in the heat of the moment. That’s a man who calculated the murder of another human being for personal glory. And New York wants to mandate his release?
This is what happens when a political class runs out of real problems to solve and starts manufacturing moral superiority from the suffering of others. They’re not helping anyone. They’re not making society safer. They’re not even making the prisoners better people. They’re just signaling to each other that they’re more enlightened than the rest of us — the ones who still believe that if you murder six people on the streets of New York, you should die in a cell.
Call your legislators. Tell them Son of Sam stays where he is. Tell them John Lennon’s killer stays where he is. Tell them the rookie cop who took five bullets in the back of his head at 22 years old deserves better than watching his murderer walk free because some Albany progressive needed a legacy project.
Some sentences are supposed to be forever. That’s not cruelty. That’s justice.