Joseph Kallinger

Joseph Kallinger died of heart failure on March 26, 1996, at SCI Cresson. He spent the last 11 years of his life on suicide watch.

Michael Korda, editor at Simon & Schuster, said that for many years he received a Christmas card from Kallinger from jail. Schreiber herself grew very close to Kallinger during the writing process, and the two exchanged regular letters and phone calls until Schreiber's death in 1988.

He was found sane and sentenced to life in prison on October 14, 1976. Michael, meanwhile, was judged to be under his father's control. He was sentenced to a reformatory. Upon his release at 21, he moved out of state and changed his name. While in prison, Kallinger made several suicide attempts, including attempting to set himself on fire. Because of his suicidal and violent behavior, he was transferred to a mental hospital in Trenton, New Jersey. He was then transferred to a mental hospital in Philadelphia on May 18, 1979.

Flora Rheta Schreiber, the author of the bestselling book Sybil, interviewed Kallinger in jail in 1976. The interview was the basis for a book on the case which was published by Simon & Schuster under the title, The Shoemaker: The Anatomy of a Psychotic in 1983. This book was later part of a Son of Sam lawsuit brought by one of the victim's families as Kallinger received royalties for the book. A judge awarded the family earnings from not only Kallinger, but Schreiber and Simon & Schuster as well, leaving Schreiber nearly $100,000 in personal debt due to expenses of the book's research, including phone calls to Kallinger in prison which totaled $1200 per month for several years. A later appellate panel awarded only Kallinger's royalties to the families.

Beginning in November 1974, Kallinger and his 12-year-old son Michael went on a crime spree spanning Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Jersey. Over the next six weeks, they robbed, assaulted, and sexually abused four families, gaining entrance to each house by pretending to be salesmen. On January 8, 1975, they continued their spree in Leonia, New Jersey. Using a pistol and a knife, they overpowered and tied up the three residents. Then, when others entered the home, they were forced to strip and were bound with cords from lamps and other appliances.

Kallinger was arrested and imprisoned in 1972 when his children went to the police. While in jail, he had scored 82 on an IQ test and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and state psychiatrists recommended that he be supervised with his family. The children later recanted their allegations.

She later left him because of the domestic violence she suffered at his hands. Kallinger was hospitalized at St. Mary's on September 4, 1957, due to severe headaches and loss of appetite which doctors believed was a result of stress surrounding his divorce. Kallinger remarried on April 20, 1958, and had five children with his second wife. He was extremely abusive towards his family, and often inflicted the same punishments on them that he had suffered from his adoptive parents.

Joseph Kallinger (born Joseph Lee Brenner III; December 11, 1935 – March 26, 1996) was an American serial killer who murdered three people, and tortured four families. He committed the later crimes with his 12-year-old son Michael.

Kallinger was born on December 11, 1935, as Joseph Lee Brenner III at the Northern Liberties Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Joseph Lee Brenner, Jr. and his wife Judith. In December 1937, the child was placed in foster care after his father had abandoned his mother. On October 15, 1939, he was adopted by Austrian immigrants Stephen and Anna Kallinger.