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Welcome to Season 3 of The Balanced Voice Podcast! If it is your first time joining us, we are so glad you are here! The Balanced Voice is a podcast powered by Crime Stoppers of Houston and hosted by our CEO, Rania Mankarious. We are a podcast for the community by the community and we have a mission to facilitate balanced conversations that offer real solutions about today's most pressing issues. Through these conversations, we aim to educate, empower, and equip our listeners to become active participants in local and national public safety initiatives.
At Crime Stoppers, our goal is always to be victim focused. Because of this, we want to first and foremost recognize the victims that were killed and injured due to the heinous crimes of David Berkowitz. We will never know the depth of the pain that was caused by Berkowitz to each of the victim's and their families, but we work every day to make sure their lives were not lost in vain. We will never forget you or your families:
Donna Lauria (deceased) & Jody Valenti (survived)
Carl Denaro (survived) & Rosemary Keenan (survived)
Donna Demasi (survived) & Joanne Lomino (paralized)
Christine Freund (deceased) & John Deil (survived)
Virginia Voskerichian (deceased)
Alexander Esau (deceased) & Valentina Suriani (deceased)
Saul Luo (survived) & Judy Placido (survived)
Stacy Moskowitz (deceased) & Robert Violante (lost left eye)
Crime Stoppers of Houston's Director of Victim Services, Andy Kahan has been corresponding with David Berkowtiz for over 20 years. Through their correspondence, Berkowitz has consistently sent Andy requests for memorabilia. Andy began calling this kind of memorabilia, "Murderabilia." The term can now be found and defined in Webster's Dictionary.
With the help of David Berkowitz, Andy has lead legislation in 8 states the prohibits profiting from the sale of murderabilia! This is a huge win for victims and we hope that this kind of legislation will continue to spread to other states in the years to come.
This is David Berkowitz first public interview in over 10 years. In this episode we are asking the hard questions:
What is just punishment?
Can criminals better society from their prison cells?
Is Berkowitz interested in parole and what will come of his parole hearing in 2022?
Thank you for following along with The Balanced Voice. The views expressed in each episode are those of the podcast guest and do not necessarily represent the views of The Balanced Voice or Crime Stoppers of Houston.