Eugene Gold, a former tough-on-crime Brooklyn district attorney who in the late 1970s spearheaded the successful prosecution of David Berkowitz, the so-called Son of Sam serial killer, died on Aug. 5 at his home in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 100.

His son, Michael, confirmed the death, which a funeral home announced in August but which had not been reported elsewhere until this week.

After a 13-year tenure, Mr. Gold stepped down as district attorney in 1981, having gained further prominence as a leading voice in an international campaign to win emigration rights for Jews in what was then the Soviet Union. But his reputation also suffered two years later when he was charged with a sex offense involving a minor.

Mr. Gold was one of three district attorneys in New York City who sought to prosecute Mr. Berkowitz, but he was the first to proceed against him.

A 24-year-old postal clerk from Yonkers, N.Y., Mr. Berkowitz was arrested in August 1977 and charged with shootings that claimed the lives of six people, most of them young, and left seven others wounded in a yearlong series of nighttime attacks in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx that terrified New Yorkers. While he was at large, the news media called him “the .44-caliber killer.”