A convicted killer who slashed the throat of “Son of Sam” David Berkowitz while they were imprisoned together nearly four decades ago will be cooling his heels behind bars for at least another year, a state parole board has ruled.
William E. Hauser, 63, was present for the parole hearing at his lockdown at Attica State Prison on Feb. 16 when the board rejected his application for freedom – citing his “blatant disregard for the law and welfare for others,” state records show.
The three-member panel also noted that Hauser “had limited insight into your criminal conduct and exhibited no remorse for the loss of life at your hands.”
The Feb. 16 hearing came about after Hauser won an appeal of his first meeting with the parole board in November 2014, which ended in a denial of 24 months. His next hearing is scheduled for November 2016.
Hauser is serving a 25-years-to life term for savagely beating a man with a rolling pin during a 1990 robbery in upstate New York.
He was unmasked by The Post last year as the inmate who nearly murdered the infamous “Son of Sam” serial killer with one swing of a razor blade at Attica on July 10, 1979.
Berkowitz had been serving his life sentence at Attica after being convicted for his 1976-77 rampage in which he fatally shot six people and wounded seven in the Big Apple.
Hauser, who was doing a stretch for first-degree assault, reached out of his cell with a razor and slashed Berkowitz’s throat as the notorious killer was dispensing hot water to fellow prisoners on his tier.
Berkowitz staggered over to a pair of unwitting prison guards and sputtered, “I’ve been cut,” showing them the “gaping hole” in his neck that required 60 stitches, said a source close to the matter.
Hauser, a career criminal, was never charged in the attack because Berkowitz — who was the only witness — was too terrified to squeal on him to authorities, derailing the police probe.
But former Attica superintendent James Conway, who was a correction officer at the time, believed the authorities had a strong circumstantial case against Hauser.
“Berkowitz’s blood was outside Hauser’s cell on the floor. And Berkowitz ceased his water dispensing after arriving at Hauser’s cell,” Conway noted.
Hauser was eventually moved to a higher tier on the same cellblock as Berkowitz, and the two never again made contact.