This is from Wikepedia...."David Berkowitz was born Richard David Falco on June 1, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York.[1] His mother, Betty (Broder), grew up in an impoverished Jewish family and later married Tony Falco, an Italian-American Catholic. The couple ran a fish market together. They separated before his birth: Falco left for another woman, and his mother later had an affair with a married real estate agent, Joseph Kleinman.[2] When she became pregnant, Kleinman threatened to abandon her if she kept the baby, so she put the child up for adoption and listed Falco as the father.[3] Within a few days of his birth, the infant boy was adopted by Pearl and Nathan Berkowitz of the Bronx.[4] The Jewish-American couple were hardware store retailers of modest means, and childless in middle age. They reversed the order of the boy's first and middle names and gave him their own surname, raising young David Richard Berkowitz as their only son."