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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder the most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 5: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski. Good Evening, Absolute Madness
Speaker 5: tells the disturbing true story of Joseph Christopher, a white
Speaker 5: serial killer who targeted blackmails struck fear into the residence
Speaker 5: of Buffalo and New York City in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 5: Dubbed both the twenty two Caliber Killer and the Midtown Slasher,
Speaker 5: Christopher allegedly claimed eighteen victims during a savage four month
Speaker 5: spree across the state. The investigation, aided by famed FBI
Speaker 5: profiler John Douglas, drew national attention, in biting criticism from
Speaker 5: Jesse Jackson and other civil rights leaders. The killer, when
Speaker 5: at last he was unmasked, seemed an unlikely candidate to
Speaker 5: have held New York in a grip of terror. His
Speaker 5: capture was neither the end of the story nor the
Speaker 5: end of the racial strife which flared anew during circuitous
Speaker 5: prosecutions and judicial rulings that prompted cries of a double
Speaker 5: standard in the judicial system. Both a wrenching true crime
Speaker 5: story and an incisive portrait of dangerously discordant race relations
Speaker 5: in America, Absolute Madness also chronicles a lonely, vulnerable mins
Speaker 5: man's tragic descent into madness and the failure of the
Speaker 5: American mental health system that refused his pleas for help.
Speaker 5: The book that were featuring this evening is Absolute Madness,
Speaker 5: a true story of a serial killer, race and a
Speaker 5: city divided, with my special guest, journalist and author, Catherine
Speaker 5: Catherine Pellinaria. Welcome to the program, and thank you very
Speaker 5: much for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 6: Catherine Pelenara, Hi, good evening, Dan.
Speaker 2: This is Catherine Plenaro. It's very very nice to be
Speaker 2: speaking with you.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much. This is an incredible story. Like
Speaker 6: I had mentioned just previous to this, I had not
Speaker 6: heard of this and I can't believe what I just read.
Speaker 6: And this book is fantastic, and I'm sure the audience
Speaker 6: is going to be very very fascinated with his story.
Speaker 6: I mentioned. Thank you just ah you welcome. Let's talk
Speaker 6: about how you came to be the author of Absolute Madness.
Speaker 6: How did you come to be in a position? Why
Speaker 6: did you want to write this book? Tell us a
Speaker 6: little bit about that.
Speaker 2: Sure, well, my first true crime book was Kitty Genevie'z,
Speaker 2: which was published in twenty fourteen. And in May of
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, I was on my way to Buffalo, New York,
Speaker 2: which also happens to be my hometown, to do some
Speaker 2: publicity appearances for Kitty Genevie's and of course the question
Speaker 2: was coming up, well, what's your next book going to be?
Speaker 2: And I actually had no plans for another book. I
Speaker 2: had spent seven years altogether on the Kitty Geneviez story,
Speaker 2: and you know, another delving into another book was sort of,
Speaker 2: in a way, the last thing on my mind. But
Speaker 2: as I was on my way, i'm I was talking
Speaker 2: to my sister on the phone, one of my sisters,
Speaker 2: and she was telling me, you know, you should think
Speaker 2: about writing the story of the twenty two caliber killer.
Speaker 2: And I told her, you know, I don't really remember that.
Speaker 2: I mean, because it had happened in our hometown. Is
Speaker 2: the killings that started in Buffalo in nineteen eighty And
Speaker 2: you know, I was a kid at the time, and
Speaker 2: I remember, while I really remember it was the headlines,
Speaker 2: I really didn't know anything about the story. I remember
Speaker 2: the headlines about the twenty two caliber killer and something
Speaker 2: about two cab drivers being murdered and having their hearts
Speaker 2: cut out. But you know, I told her, I just
Speaker 2: don't remember anything about it. She said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: while you're there, look into it. It's a really really
Speaker 2: heartbreaking and compelling story. It's it's never been told, and
Speaker 2: you know, I really think you should look into it.
Speaker 2: So while I was there, I spoke to a friend
Speaker 2: of mine in the Erie County District Attorney's office, and
Speaker 2: you know, he did some checking for me, and he said,
Speaker 2: he came back and he said, well, you know, if
Speaker 2: you do decide to write about this case, we have
Speaker 2: all the original files. We have, you know, twenty two
Speaker 2: boxes of the original files and they're you know, you're
Speaker 2: welcome to them. Now. It turned out there was every
Speaker 2: more than twenty two boxes. But so that, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's certainly a great offer for crime author. And also
Speaker 2: my father, Salvator Pelenarrow was a Buffalo police officer for
Speaker 2: thirty four years, and he passed away in two thousand
Speaker 2: and five unfortunately. But of course he knew many, if
Speaker 2: not all, of the Buffalo police officers and some of
Speaker 2: the state police who had worked on the case. So
Speaker 2: my first thought was, well, maybe i'll, you know, I'll
Speaker 2: look into it because it were, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: maybe an excuse to spend a little time in the hometown.
Speaker 2: I thought maybe I'll write an article about it or something.
Speaker 2: But the more I started looking into the case, I
Speaker 2: went from a feeling of well, this might be interesting
Speaker 2: to oh, my god, I've got to tell the story
Speaker 2: because it was so different than anything I had heard. Now,
Speaker 2: even keeping mine, I only remembered the headlines, but I
Speaker 2: did go back and look up some of the archival
Speaker 2: news footage, and it was the storyline was always these
Speaker 2: were racially motivated attacks. It was this white serial killer,
Speaker 2: and nobody knows why he did this, but he went
Speaker 2: around and he started killing black men at random. So
Speaker 2: now when I write, my approach to nonfiction, and particularly
Speaker 2: to true crime, is I try to be as absolutely
Speaker 2: thorough as possible. I started out as a playwright. My
Speaker 2: background is in the theater, where the focus is completely
Speaker 2: on character, and I approach even real people the same way.
Speaker 2: In other words, I try to learn as much as
Speaker 2: I possibly can about them. So I started looking. I
Speaker 2: look into the case and the case file, and I
Speaker 2: start digging into the background of Joseph Christopher, whose name
Speaker 2: I didn't even know when I started working on this case.
Speaker 2: So I really, I really had no horse in the
Speaker 2: race as far as you know, I thought the story
Speaker 2: should be one thing or the other. I mean, I really,
Speaker 2: you know, really had no vested interest in it if
Speaker 2: if you know what I mean, whatever story was, that's
Speaker 2: what I was going to write. So as I started
Speaker 2: looking into it, this is a case where it always
Speaker 2: been advertised as this racist serial killer who went on
Speaker 2: a rampage and nobody seemed to know why. But then
Speaker 2: it became very obvious that there was something there's there
Speaker 2: was something that wasn't right about that, because I'm looking
Speaker 2: at the police reports, you know, the actual interviews that
Speaker 2: were done at the time when Christopher became a suspect,
Speaker 2: and every single one, I mean they interviewed former co
Speaker 2: workers of his and friends and and many friends who
Speaker 2: were who were black, who were African American, and they
Speaker 2: all said the same thing. You know, you know, you've
Speaker 2: got they told the police you've got the right You're
Speaker 2: looking at the wrong guy. Joe is my friend. He's
Speaker 2: never never a racist remark from him. You know, I've
Speaker 2: had have dinner with him, you know, we socialized together.
Speaker 2: So I thought, well, this is odd and and just
Speaker 2: to back up a little bit, Joseph Christopher was twenty
Speaker 2: five years old and had no criminal record, you know,
Speaker 2: was before of course he was. He became the light
Speaker 2: of the suspect in these crimes, so it was he
Speaker 2: was completely under the radar of the police. And when
Speaker 2: you did become a suspect, it became as a shock
Speaker 2: to everybody who knew him. I mean, there wasn't even
Speaker 2: anybody who could come forward and say, well, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes he would be violent. You know, there was really
Speaker 2: nothing like that. So the more I learned about that,
Speaker 2: you know, the more intrigued I became to find out, well,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, what happened. I mean, who wakes up
Speaker 2: at the age of twenty five and decides to go
Speaker 2: on a racist killing spree? That just you know, that
Speaker 2: just didn't sound right. You know, there has to be
Speaker 2: more to it. And I guess at the beginning I
Speaker 2: sort of path expected that I'll dig into his background
Speaker 2: more and I'm going to find out that maybe very
Speaker 2: few people knew it, but he was in some neo
Speaker 2: Nazi group there's something like that. But there was nothing
Speaker 2: like that. And I covered, I mean, I really covered
Speaker 2: my bases. I spoke to his third grade teacher. I
Speaker 2: spoke to guys who were in cub Scouts with him.
Speaker 2: I spoke to high school friends, to employers, to you know,
Speaker 2: girl who was a former girlfriend, and eventually to his
Speaker 2: you know, closer family members. And there was just nothing.
Speaker 2: And of course the more I find, the more I
Speaker 2: discovered that, you know, the question will be becomes, well
Speaker 2: what did happen then? And I'll stop there because I
Speaker 2: don't want to get ahead of myself. But that's really
Speaker 2: what got me into it. It was originally it was
Speaker 2: sort of that connection to the hometown, you know, the
Speaker 2: offer of here, you know, our files are open to
Speaker 2: you if you'd like to write about it, and you know,
Speaker 2: then just being completely sucked into the story and thinking,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I've got to tell the world about this.
Speaker 6: It's interesting how this interview is unfolded. So we won't
Speaker 6: go back to September twenty second, nineteen eighty as you
Speaker 6: do in your book. Let's talk about Christopher, his wife,
Speaker 6: his mother, Teres, and his father Nicholas, and of course
Speaker 6: talk about his early life as you do. And you
Speaker 6: researched to paint to pick sure of what seems to
Speaker 6: be fairly normal, and but then you went and dug
Speaker 6: much deeper. So let's talk about Joseph Christopher and the
Speaker 6: life he had with his parents and his siblings.
Speaker 2: Okay. Joseph Christopher was born July twenty sixth, nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 2: to a couple in Buffalo, New York, ordinary middle class home.
Speaker 2: He had two older sisters, and by all accounts it
Speaker 2: was it was a fairly uneventful childhood. You know. The
Speaker 2: parents lived in a what could be described as a
Speaker 2: you know, sort of an ordinary family oriented neighborhood. The
Speaker 2: only thing that was even remotely significant was that Joseph
Speaker 2: had a difficult time in school. He was not a
Speaker 2: good student academically, no behavior problems with him, but academically
Speaker 2: he didn't seem to be able to catch up with
Speaker 2: his class and I guess reading, especially with a problem well,
Speaker 2: and they could never figure out why because he was
Speaker 2: given an IQ test and he tested you know, at
Speaker 2: perfectly normal levels.
Speaker 7: Well, one thing that.
Speaker 2: I had discovered when I was doing this research that
Speaker 2: could have been the cause was I got his when
Speaker 2: he was in his twenties. He had joined the army,
Speaker 2: and I got his enlistment in medical records and his
Speaker 2: uncorrected vision, meaning his vision without glasses was twenty two hundred,
Speaker 2: which means that without glasses, he was legally blind. And
Speaker 2: to me, I thought, well, maybe that's the answer. I mean,
Speaker 2: we're talking about the nineteen sixties. This is an era
Speaker 2: when teachers taught on the blackboard, and he probably couldn't
Speaker 2: see and that was probably his you know, the difficulty.
Speaker 2: But I mentioned that because that did seem to be
Speaker 2: significant in Joseph's life. His older sisters were very good students.
Speaker 2: That apparently that did cause conflict and especially eventually with
Speaker 2: his father, who wanted him to stay in school and
Speaker 2: to excel, and Joe struggled with that. And then as
Speaker 2: he became a teen, Joe eventually dropped out of high
Speaker 2: school and that caused a big problem with his parents,
Speaker 2: his father especially who was very disappointed about that. But
Speaker 2: that early, you know, early experience in school with being
Speaker 2: behind the class and should also be mentioned when he
Speaker 2: was very young, he went to Catholic school, and we're
Speaker 2: talking about old school Catholic school, where if you weren't
Speaker 2: if your grades weren't good, the nuns would try maybe
Speaker 2: try to correct it with a ruler, if you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, rather than some extra help. So that
Speaker 2: does seem to have given him somewhat of an inscuriority complex.
Speaker 2: But other than that, really nothing out of the ordinary
Speaker 2: in that in his growing up years, you know, pretty
Speaker 2: you know, pretty traditional Italian Irish family, growing up on
Speaker 2: the East Coast, four kids altogether, he had a younger
Speaker 2: sister eventually, so you know, certainly nothing know, nothing that
Speaker 2: would really stand out. And it wasn't until nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: when Joe was twenty years old, his father passed away
Speaker 2: of heart disease, and that, of course was very difficult
Speaker 2: for him, as if this would be for pretty much anyone.
Speaker 2: But other than that, we're talking about what could be
Speaker 2: described as a fairly ordinary upbringing.
Speaker 6: You also talk about this, and I agree with you
Speaker 6: that it's a fairly normal upbringing. And however, everybody reacts
Speaker 6: to different stimulation differently. You also say that the at
Speaker 6: one point that they were definitely admiring of each other,
Speaker 6: father and son. But at some point that changed, and
Speaker 6: it changed radically. So you say that you do talk
Speaker 6: about how it that relationship changed and the particulars of
Speaker 6: or what that manifests itself in terms of dialogue between them.
Speaker 6: What would he do in public and what would he
Speaker 6: say about your son in private?
Speaker 2: Okay? What by all the According to all the people
Speaker 2: that I interviewed, and there there were many family members
Speaker 2: and friends and neighbors. Nicholas Christopher, Joseph's father was highly
Speaker 2: critical of him, and sometimes, you know, would embarrass him
Speaker 2: in front of people and you know, complain about all
Speaker 2: his you know, he didn't do this right, and uh,
Speaker 2: what it should be said. While I'm not defending that
Speaker 2: behavior by any means, it was not terribly atypical for
Speaker 2: the time for a father to be very harsh, you know,
Speaker 2: especially that Joe was just it was the only son.
Speaker 2: And but as he got older, it made uh unfortunately
Speaker 2: it's in Joseph's case, it seems to not have inspired him.
Speaker 2: You know, his father's constant criticism didn't inspire him and
Speaker 2: instead made him rather self conscious. So he would try
Speaker 2: to prove himself to his father, and he was all
Speaker 2: by pretty much all accounts, he was also afraid of
Speaker 2: his father. So and then when his father died when
Speaker 2: Joe was only twenty, as one of Joe's first cousins
Speaker 2: said to me, you know, perhaps Joe felt it all
Speaker 2: the more keenly because he felt he had never had
Speaker 2: a chance to prove himself to his father, because like
Speaker 2: most sons, he wanted his father's approval and respect and love.
Speaker 2: And you know, then his father dies rather suddenly and
Speaker 2: he never has the chance to you know, to to
Speaker 2: gain that, to prove himself to his father. So that
Speaker 2: was certainly, you know, there was something certainly significant, I
Speaker 2: think in his adolescence, especially because Joseph started to rebel
Speaker 2: and you know, in little ways, you know, and it's unfortunate,
Speaker 2: but again it should be said it wasn't a terribly
Speaker 2: atypical father son relationship for the time.
Speaker 6: You say that it really affected the entire family when
Speaker 6: Nicholas died, the father died, and it affected especially Joseph,
Speaker 6: and it continued to affect him, it seemed even more
Speaker 6: so at certain points. But you also talk about that
Speaker 6: his father had said something previous about military service, so
Speaker 6: tell us what happens at a certain point with Joseph
Speaker 6: and this idea that his father had said long before.
Speaker 2: Sure, well, Nicholas Christopher served in the infantry in World
Speaker 2: War Two, and when Joseph was in high school, his
Speaker 2: father had suggested to him that he might want to
Speaker 2: join the army after high school. And his father apparently
Speaker 2: thought of the discipline and the regiment would be very
Speaker 2: would be good for him, because apparently the father's opinion,
Speaker 2: he didn't think that Joe had a lot of direction
Speaker 2: in life. But that's a you know, and it's very
Speaker 2: hard to say. After the fact, their interest did seem
Speaker 2: to diverge, and perhaps that was part of the problem,
Speaker 2: because Christopher was a big outdoorsman and enjoyed hunting and whatnot,
Speaker 2: and so did Joe. But Joe also had an interest
Speaker 2: in cars, you know, he seemed to be interested in
Speaker 2: auto mechanics. So he had some interests that were separate
Speaker 2: from his father's. But anyway, this is a suggestion that
Speaker 2: his father had made him that he might want to
Speaker 2: join the military for a while. So the Nicholas dies
Speaker 2: and within a couple of years after that, Joe did
Speaker 2: try to enlist in the Army and he was rejected
Speaker 2: because he had a hernia. He actually scored very high
Speaker 2: on the Army entrance exams, but they, you know, couldn't
Speaker 2: take him because of the hernia. So he actually saved
Speaker 2: the money and for the surgery and had the hernia repaired.
Speaker 2: And then when he was twenty five, and this would
Speaker 2: be nineteen eighty, he went and he enlisted in the
Speaker 2: service again, and this time he was accepted. You know,
Speaker 2: he had the medical problem had been resolved.
Speaker 6: You talk also about his personality again. All kinds of
Speaker 6: people said that he was normally had friends, but you
Speaker 6: talk about that afterwards. People talked about a striking difference
Speaker 6: that occurred. What were some of the things that they
Speaker 6: noticed were different about Joe?
Speaker 2: Okay, when he was about twenty four years old. Something
Speaker 2: it seemed to come on gradually. To skip ahead, when
Speaker 2: Joe was in his early twenties, he meets a woman
Speaker 2: who I call Donovan Alden in the book, and they begin,
Speaker 2: you know, living together, and everything seems to be going
Speaker 2: fine for months and months, but then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: Joe seems very preoccupied and he stops talking to her
Speaker 2: and heart his behavior starts to become a little odd,
Speaker 2: like he'll go out at night and just walk all night,
Speaker 2: walk around the city at night, and as if he
Speaker 2: was and I think it was described as if he
Speaker 2: was trying to walk a walk out walk his problems.
Speaker 2: So of course Donna asked him, what's wrong? If you know,
Speaker 2: what's bothering you, and he would tell her Sometimes he
Speaker 2: would just say nothing, and other times he would say
Speaker 2: I don't know, but it was obvious that something was
Speaker 2: bothering him. So he rather abruptly one day breaks off
Speaker 2: his relationship with her and tells her I'm going to
Speaker 2: be moving home. And what was very unusual about this
Speaker 2: was that he just, you know, he's the one ending
Speaker 2: the relationship, and he just started sobbing as if this was,
Speaker 2: you know, very painful for him. So she didn't understand
Speaker 2: what was really going on. So he moves back in
Speaker 2: with his mother and his two sister. He had two
Speaker 2: sisters still living at home, and they begin to notice
Speaker 2: differences in him too, and they and eventually it becomes
Speaker 2: very stark. It started out with he was not socializing anymore.
Speaker 2: He seemed to be just kind of want to stay
Speaker 2: around the house and just would be quiet, not talk
Speaker 2: too much. Then all of a sudden, according to his
Speaker 2: younger sister, she said, to her, it seemed like it
Speaker 2: was overnight that one day he seemed like this normal
Speaker 2: guy in his early twenties, messy room, going out with friends.
Speaker 2: And then the next day she said, he's wearing you know,
Speaker 2: white button down shirts and coralraye pants and going to
Speaker 2: church with us with my mom every day. So and
Speaker 2: that was kind of stark. And his sister even said
Speaker 2: to him, you know, what the hell happened to you?
Speaker 2: What's going on? You know, and he would just tell
Speaker 2: to shut up, find your own business. And at the
Speaker 2: same time, he starts withdrawing from friends from you know,
Speaker 2: not just his girlfriend, but he had a best friend
Speaker 2: who I call Pewter Trementina in the book, and they
Speaker 2: used to spend all all kinds of time together. And
Speaker 2: Joe was just pulling back from everyone. And then it
Speaker 2: got to the point where Joe would he stopped working,
Speaker 2: and he really wasn't going out of the house much,
Speaker 2: and he would sort of stare out the windows, you know,
Speaker 2: as if he was suspicious that someone was trying to
Speaker 2: break in or something. And again, you know, his mother
Speaker 2: and his sister's theater are asking him what's going on?
Speaker 2: Are you are you okay? And you know, he really
Speaker 2: wouldn't answer them. He would he start to ask his
Speaker 2: mother very odd questions, you know, like tell her, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, ask her, well, what is the difference between
Speaker 2: right and wrong? And I mean, and this is a
Speaker 2: guy who's now twenty five years old. Now, his mother
Speaker 2: Teresa felt that he was depressed. She thought that, you know,
Speaker 2: as she said later, she thought that he was depressed.
Speaker 2: He was out of work, and she thought, you know,
Speaker 2: as soon as he gets back on his feet, things
Speaker 2: will be fine. But unfortunately that wasn't the case. And
Speaker 2: unbeknownst to her, I mean, he started sleeping with a
Speaker 2: shotgun in his bed because he became paranoid and he
Speaker 2: had this morbid fear of intruders, and he started doing
Speaker 2: very strange things, like he would take all the tuppleware
Speaker 2: from the kitchen and he would hide it around the house,
Speaker 2: or he would hide plastic forks. You know, they would
Speaker 2: find him in the couch and he was like hoarding
Speaker 2: them and hiding them, so really strange and bizarre behavior.
Speaker 2: And on the rare occasions when his friends did see him.
Speaker 2: They would report, you know, strange things like he wouldn't
Speaker 2: In one case, he didn't seem to recognize the person.
Speaker 2: In another case, Peter sees him in the summer on
Speaker 2: a hot summer day, and Joe is all bundled up
Speaker 2: in a winter coat and a hat. So it was
Speaker 2: really odd, odd things like that that came on. So
Speaker 2: by the early fall of nineteen eighty, Joe seemed like
Speaker 2: a very different person than most people had known, most
Speaker 2: people close to him had known, but nobody was quite
Speaker 2: sure what was going on, how much it was going
Speaker 2: to last, how long would last, And perhaps you know,
Speaker 2: just thought maybe that, well, the mother's right, he's depressed,
Speaker 2: you know, he's going through a bad time. He's depressed.
Speaker 2: But yes, there was a over about a year's period
Speaker 2: of time, there was a gradual but very stark difference
Speaker 2: in his behavior.
Speaker 6: You talk about that he was trying to get work.
Speaker 6: His mother knew that he even because of his religiosity,
Speaker 6: a sudden super religiosity. He even applied to a seminary,
Speaker 6: but they refused. So his next application was the military,
Speaker 6: and he was accepted. Tell Us about his stay, especially
Speaker 6: in the just tell us about the beginning of his
Speaker 6: stay in the military. Was it a good experience for
Speaker 6: him or not?
Speaker 2: Well, at the very beginning, it seems to I mean,
Speaker 2: there were problems from the very beginning, and whether or
Speaker 2: not it was a good experience from him, you know,
Speaker 2: at the at the very start, only he could say.
Speaker 2: I mean, judging by some of the letters that he
Speaker 2: wrote back home, it seemed like maybe the first couple
Speaker 2: of weeks that he was there in boot camp, you know,
Speaker 2: the letters seemed perfectly normal to his mother and his sisters.
Speaker 2: But then again, I mean I spoke to men who
Speaker 2: were actually who were inducted into the service when he was,
Speaker 2: and they said right from the get go that his
Speaker 2: behavior was very strange in a variety of ways. I mean,
Speaker 2: they were inducted, and they were leaving for boot camp
Speaker 2: in November, and this is in Buffalo, New York and
Speaker 2: Western New York. And heney wore sandals, you know, to
Speaker 2: the ceremony, which I mean completely inappropriate for the weather.
Speaker 2: And then one of the guys uh offered him a
Speaker 2: ride to the airport because somehow he found out that
Speaker 2: Joe did not have a ride to the airport, and
Speaker 2: they had a couple hours before they had to catch
Speaker 2: a plane, so he invites Joe to go home with him,
Speaker 2: and the family finds him a little strange because he
Speaker 2: doesn't really talk. I mean, he will answer if he's
Speaker 2: asked a question, but otherwise he doesn't really engage with them,
Speaker 2: which seems a little odd and the only thing. And
Speaker 2: he really won't answer any questions about himself. But on
Speaker 2: the way to boot camp, he does tell this this
Speaker 2: Spellow recruit that he's that he's married and he has
Speaker 2: a four year old daughter, which was completely untrue. You know.
Speaker 2: Then he when he asks Joseph about it later, he's
Speaker 2: just kind of vague and he won't answer questions other men.
Speaker 2: Once they get to boot camp, they notice him doing
Speaker 2: odds things like instead of when they get off the bus,
Speaker 2: instead of talking to his Spellow recruits or something, they
Speaker 2: saw him holding he was holding this blue Duffel bag
Speaker 2: that he would not let go of, and he was
Speaker 2: walking back and forth in front of the luggage, kind
Speaker 2: of just sort of smiling and staring off into space,
Speaker 2: you know, walking back and forth. So it was odd
Speaker 2: incidents like that. So they start boot camp and this
Speaker 2: is just November, and pretty quickly his fellow recruits find
Speaker 2: him to be an odd guy. This is an infantry division.
Speaker 2: For instance, he would get up in the barracks and
Speaker 2: he would wander around at night, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: not something you're not supposed to do. He wouldn't socialize
Speaker 2: with any of the guys. He wasn't building any relationships.
Speaker 2: And in one instance, he was in a training exercise
Speaker 2: with someone in his platoon and got completely carried away
Speaker 2: and started really attacking, and the drill sergeant he said
Speaker 2: to him, you know, he has called it off and said,
Speaker 2: what's wrong with you? So it was you know, odd things,
Speaker 2: very odd things like that that led that were leading
Speaker 2: up until Christmas of nineteen eighty and after the Christmas
Speaker 2: break when they come back in January of nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: I interviewed several of the guys who were in his platoon,
Speaker 2: and the one the chapter in the book where I
Speaker 2: really talk about this this time after Christmas. My primary
Speaker 2: interviewee was a man named Leonard Coles, and who figures
Speaker 2: very significantly in the story. Leonard Coles was in Christopher's
Speaker 2: platoon and one day in January of nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: Christopher the Seven was a Sunday morning and men are
Speaker 2: standing in the barracks and Joseph Christopher walks up and
Speaker 2: he stabs Leonard Coles twice in the chest. Leonard cold
Speaker 2: is standing in front of his locker. There's people all around,
Speaker 2: and for no reason that anyone could figure out, Christopher
Speaker 2: just walks up and stabs him. So Cole of course
Speaker 2: defends himself. He starts fighting back. Some other guys come
Speaker 2: and they break it up and Leonard Coles has been
Speaker 2: stabbed twice. He goes to the infirmary and the men
Speaker 2: who pulled Christopher off talk about how what a horrible
Speaker 2: experience it was, not just to see Coles get stabbed,
Speaker 2: but the way Christopher reacted. They were holding him to
Speaker 2: the ground and he was he was screaming and crying
Speaker 2: and didn't and several said he didn't seem to know
Speaker 2: where he was or what was going on. He didn't
Speaker 2: seem to recognize anyone, so it seemed like a complete
Speaker 2: mental breakdown. So Christopher is put into the into the stockade,
Speaker 2: which is the equivalent of jail in prison, and he
Speaker 2: will not speak to anyone, you know. Of course, he's asked, well,
Speaker 2: what happened? Were you? And Coles in a fight. Why
Speaker 2: did you stab him? And he will not speak at all.
Speaker 2: So Christopher, he arrived in November and by January he's
Speaker 2: in the stockade charged with attempted murder.
Speaker 6: Yes, do you also talk about he Well, you say
Speaker 6: that at first he does not want to talk to anybody,
Speaker 6: but there is afforded him, just like in regular prison,
Speaker 6: even though this is a military stockade, the same kind
Speaker 6: of defense. So there is a Major Morgan that comes
Speaker 6: is is in charge of being in his defense for
Speaker 6: these charges. So tell us how that proceeds in terms
Speaker 6: of those criminal military charges.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, Major Morgan is with JAG and he is
Speaker 2: a military attorney and he is assigned to be Christopher's
Speaker 2: defense attorney. And Major Morgan makes valiant efforts to try
Speaker 2: to get Joseph Christopher to speak to him and tell
Speaker 2: him about the incident, tell him what happened, and assure
Speaker 2: him of attorney clan privilege. You know, I'm your defense attorney.
Speaker 2: You know you have to talk to me, and I'm
Speaker 2: here to defend you against Carl Marshall. Christopher won't speak
Speaker 2: to him. He doesn't trust him, but he doesn't tell
Speaker 2: him that he just so there is just at the
Speaker 2: same time, Christopher starts writing letters home to tell his mother,
Speaker 2: you know, what is happened, and you know what that
Speaker 2: he's in the stockade and what he's done. And his
Speaker 2: letters to his mother are not only bizarre, but very heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: You know, you can really see the mental degeneration of
Speaker 2: you know, when he talks about he says, this might
Speaker 2: not make sense, but this play I'm paraphrasing here, but
Speaker 2: this place is turning and I'm getting beds feedbacks and
Speaker 2: you know, so he couldn't explain, but it was just
Speaker 2: the languages was that he's using is really bizarre. So
Speaker 2: there is one person down as this is it's Fort Benning, Georgia,
Speaker 2: that Christopher asked to speak to, and that is a
Speaker 2: priest who is assigned the chaplain who was assigned to
Speaker 2: Fort Benning. And Joseph does start speaking to him and
Speaker 2: you know, confiding in him a bit, really just telling
Speaker 2: him how distressed he was and how the guys in
Speaker 2: his platoon are picking on him. At the same time,
Speaker 2: Christopher goes back on the starts going back and forth
Speaker 2: between the psych the Army psych hospital, psychiatric hospital, and
Speaker 2: the stockade because he's in the stockade for a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks in January when he suddenly stops eating and
Speaker 2: he will not eat anything and he will not explain,
Speaker 2: so eventually they have to send him to the hospital
Speaker 2: and force feed him, and they put him up for
Speaker 2: psychiatric observation because that's I mean, he lost over thirty pounds.
Speaker 2: This is someone who was just not eating, just refused,
Speaker 2: so they restore him to health. At the same time,
Speaker 2: he gets sent back to the stock aide for no
Speaker 2: apparent reason. He attacks a man twice on two different occasions.
Speaker 2: This is a fellow recruit who was in the stockade,
Speaker 2: but a black soldier just on the blue just to
Speaker 2: attack him physically, you know, with his fists. So he
Speaker 2: disciplined for that. He will not listen to the guards
Speaker 2: and nobody can really communicate with Christopher. As the guys
Speaker 2: described it, it was very strange. You know, one minute he
Speaker 2: feels like a little guy, and then the next he
Speaker 2: just you know, he'll just go off flaff handle and
Speaker 2: attack someone for no reason, or they would they and
Speaker 2: he gets put in solitary and they hear him, you know,
Speaker 2: talking to himself, and or he'll just sit and stare
Speaker 2: at a white bulb for hours and hours. So once
Speaker 2: he's sent back to the stockade, he doesn't last there
Speaker 2: for terribly long because he injures himself. He somehow gets
Speaker 2: a hold of a razor blade and cuts his penis
Speaker 2: and puts a bad cut on the base of his penis.
Speaker 2: So he sent back to the hospital and back for
Speaker 2: psychiatric observation, because, of course, injuring one's genitals is considered
Speaker 2: a you know, very potentially serious sign of serious mental disturbance.
Speaker 2: And while he's there, he starts talking to a couple
Speaker 2: of the nurses just out of the blue, uh one
Speaker 2: he just the He says, you know, I killed some
Speaker 2: people in New York. And the nurse, of course, this
Speaker 2: is not what he's prepared to hear, and he says, well,
Speaker 2: and who are you? What are you talking about? And
Speaker 2: you know, Jess says, well, I'm not you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know their names, but I think I did this
Speaker 2: because somebody said my picture was in the newspaper. Now
Speaker 2: this is a psychiatric word. So the nurse isn't quite
Speaker 2: sure what to do about this, but he reports it
Speaker 2: to a supervisor. Well, there's another nurse that he speaks to,
Speaker 2: and he comes up and he asks to speak to her,
Speaker 2: and he says something very similar and he said, h
Speaker 2: He says, you know, I I killed some people in
Speaker 2: Buffalo and New York and she starts questioning him, but
Speaker 2: he doesn't really seem to know, you know, he doesn't
Speaker 2: have too much in the way of specifics. And she
Speaker 2: tells and she asks him, well, well, why did you
Speaker 2: do this? Why did you kill people? And he and
Speaker 2: he says, well, it was well I had to. It
Speaker 2: was it was something I had to do. And then
Speaker 2: the third person who speaks to in the army is
Speaker 2: a guard, a guard who was, as flyed to, used
Speaker 2: to watch over him, and he just wakes up one
Speaker 2: day after weeks of not speaking to this man at all,
Speaker 2: and says, did you know that I was a mass
Speaker 2: murderer in Buffalo? And of course the corporal just thinks
Speaker 2: this is you know this again, it's the psychiatric ward,
Speaker 2: you know. He just tells them, you know Eddie's who
Speaker 2: still they'll talk, and he said, no, no, it's true,
Speaker 2: I killed some people, you know, in Buffalo, New York City.
Speaker 2: So of course, these three individuals in the army, they
Speaker 2: report to their supervisors, who in turn report to CID,
Speaker 2: the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. Then they start looking into this.
Speaker 2: Now they're already trying to investigate the incident of why
Speaker 2: Joseph Christopher stabbed Leonard Coles because they have been able
Speaker 2: to come up with no reason. They've asked every person
Speaker 2: who was in the barracks, everyone in the platoon, was
Speaker 2: there any tension between them? And they keep getting the
Speaker 2: same answer no. So one of the men in the
Speaker 2: Army CID recalled a teletype that has just been transmitted
Speaker 2: again and it's an I guess you would call it
Speaker 2: an All Points bulletin, and it comes from Buffalo, New
Speaker 2: York and it describes a series of crimes that happened
Speaker 2: in from September to December, and it's a series of shootings,
Speaker 2: of shootings and stabbings of black males that seemed to
Speaker 2: you know, were unprovoked. They were blitz style attacks. And
Speaker 2: there is a similar teletype from New York City talking
Speaker 2: about about the same time period December of nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: You know, in one day, six black men are are
Speaker 2: attacked by a white man with a knife. So the
Speaker 2: CID starts looking into it and they realize that they
Speaker 2: that Joseph Christopher is from Buffalo, New York. That's what's
Speaker 2: listed as his hometown. And since he's been in the army,
Speaker 2: the gentleman he's he stabbed was named Leonard Coles, who
Speaker 2: was a black male. The man that he attacked and
Speaker 2: the stockade was also black. And they decide that, you know,
Speaker 2: it's worth alerting the authorities in Buffalo, New York City
Speaker 2: about this, just in case there's some sort of a connection.
Speaker 2: So they get this. They first called the Buffalo, New
Speaker 2: York Homicide Division, who immediately sends two detectives down to
Speaker 2: Fort Benning to do some investigating, and from there they
Speaker 2: are able to after you know, an investigation, Christopher will
Speaker 2: not speak to them. He doesn't believe that they're really
Speaker 2: police officers from Buffalo, but they are eventually able to
Speaker 2: get a search warrant for his home and for his
Speaker 2: mother's home actually, and they find some shellcasings which they
Speaker 2: believe matched the shellcasings that were found at the scene
Speaker 2: of the shootings in September in Buffalo, and he is
Speaker 2: That's how he is indicted and eventually extradited back to
Speaker 2: Buffalo to to stand trial. I charged with these with
Speaker 2: three murders.
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Speaker 6: fab fit FunBox. We were just talking about how everything
Speaker 6: was coming together in this investigation. While he's in the
Speaker 6: military stockade, not wanting to talk to anybody, not believing
Speaker 6: that the police officers are from Buffalo, He's climbing up.
Speaker 6: You take us In the book I Reversed the Order
Speaker 6: of Everything, But September twenty second, nineteen eighty and a
Speaker 6: witness named Barbara Wozniak and tell us about what she
Speaker 6: hears and what she sees. This is the first reported
Speaker 6: crime September twenty second, nineteen eighty tell us about what
Speaker 6: she sees and hears and does.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a Monday night, a rainy Monday night, and
Speaker 2: Barbara Rosnik and her brother are watching Monday Night football,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, she hears what she thinks
Speaker 2: are firecrackers outside. So she looks out the window and
Speaker 2: across the street from Barbara's house is a top supermarket
Speaker 2: and she's in the parking lot. She sees this person
Speaker 2: a hoodie running down the street, running out of the
Speaker 2: parking lot, and then running down the street, and she
Speaker 2: doesn't think too much of it. She thinks, I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe it's just some kid who set up firecrackers or
Speaker 2: something in the park. In the grocery store, parking lot,
Speaker 2: doesn't think too much of it, just goes back to
Speaker 2: watching Monday night football. Well, what actually happened was this
Speaker 2: was a shooting in the Tops parking lot. There was
Speaker 2: a young man, a fourteen year old named Glenn Dunn,
Speaker 2: who was sitting in a parked car and he had
Speaker 2: driven there with a friend of his name Larry, and
Speaker 2: Larry went into the store for a few minutes. Glad
Speaker 2: was waiting for him in the park car and as
Speaker 2: another witness said, a white man walked up to the
Speaker 2: car and shot him and shot the driver, fourteen year
Speaker 2: old Glendon, and then ran away. And the police, of course,
Speaker 2: are called to the scene. They pick up the shell casings,
Speaker 2: they see that they're from a twenty two caliber weapon,
Speaker 2: and they're asking well, was there an argument between them
Speaker 2: and anything like that. No, the just the man just
Speaker 2: walked up and shot him and then ran away. What's
Speaker 2: important to remember is this is nineteen eighty. This is
Speaker 2: only three years after the son of Sam Case David Berkowitz,
Speaker 2: who was a man who in the summer of nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy seven he was going around in New York City
Speaker 2: doing these blitz attacks on strangers. Just walk up and
Speaker 2: shoot strangers and then take off. So now, of course
Speaker 2: serial killer is not what comes to mind. When the
Speaker 2: police first go to investigate this. They discovered that the
Speaker 2: car that Glenn Dunn is in is a stolen car,
Speaker 2: so they start, you know, checking, thinking maybe this is
Speaker 2: related to I don't know, some kind of a car
Speaker 2: accept ring, something of that nature. But the next day,
Speaker 2: which is a Tuesday afternoon, they get a report from
Speaker 2: in a there's a first ring suburb of Buffalo called
Speaker 2: Cheeks to Waga, and there is a man, a black male,
Speaker 2: who is sitting in his car eating lunch at a
Speaker 2: Burger King parking lot and at the noon hour, and
Speaker 2: witnesses report that a white man walks up to his car,
Speaker 2: shoots Harold Green through his car window and then runs off.
Speaker 2: And now this this suburb, cheek Towoga, this is just
Speaker 2: a very not a long distance from where Glen Dunn
Speaker 2: was shot the night before. Police, you know, they're wondering
Speaker 2: to you know, they don't really think that at that
Speaker 2: point that it's related. But it's interesting that these two
Speaker 2: men were just shot in their cars. They're both black men.
Speaker 2: Other than that they have nothing in common. Harold Read
Speaker 2: is thirty two years old, he's an engineer. Well, on
Speaker 2: Tuesday night, about eleven o'clock, a man named Emmanuel Thomas,
Speaker 2: black man in his early thirties, married family man, is
Speaker 2: walking down the street, the street where he lives with
Speaker 2: a friend of his, and a white man walks up
Speaker 2: and shoots him, shoots at him and unfortunately hits him
Speaker 2: in the head and takes off. And Emmanuel Thomas guys
Speaker 2: at the scene. So now the police have these three killings,
Speaker 2: you know, shootings of black men that have all happened
Speaker 2: with a twenty two caliber weapon by what witness say,
Speaker 2: just a lone white male. And they're obviously going to
Speaker 2: run ballistic tests, ballistics tests to see if these are connected. Well,
Speaker 2: before the ballistics tests even come back Wednesday, Wednesday morning,
Speaker 2: there is a black man named Joseph McCoy who's walking
Speaker 2: down a street in Nagra Falls, New York, which of
Speaker 2: course close to Buffalo as well, and witnesses report a
Speaker 2: white man walks up to him on the street, grabs
Speaker 2: him around the neck and shoots him in the head
Speaker 2: and then takes off and also fibber slugs well. Very quickly,
Speaker 2: it's determined that these the twenty two caliber shell casings
Speaker 2: from these four shootings are connected. They have come from
Speaker 2: the same weapon. Now, the descriptions of the shooters very
Speaker 2: quite a bit except for the ones of the only
Speaker 2: commonality is they all the witnesses agree that it was
Speaker 2: a white male, but other than that, the descriptions are
Speaker 2: kind of all over the map as far as his
Speaker 2: age and height and things like that. But the police
Speaker 2: know that, okay, well, something's going on because they delve
Speaker 2: into the backgrounds of these victims. The four victims are
Speaker 2: not related, they don't know each other, there's nothing in common.
Speaker 2: So this causes a lot of fear and especially panic
Speaker 2: and particularly in the black community, thinking, you know, what's
Speaker 2: going on. We have this serial killer who's just killing
Speaker 2: black men at random. Definitely an atmosphere of fear, and
Speaker 2: the police really have no leads because these are blitz attacks.
Speaker 2: There's the only evidence left is the shellcasing. Well, about
Speaker 2: two weeks after these crimes, there are two absolutely horrific
Speaker 2: crimes that happen again in the first string suburbs of Buffalo.
Speaker 2: There is a man named Parlor Edwards who is a
Speaker 2: cab driver and he is found bludgeoned and horribly bludgeoned
Speaker 2: and with his heart cut out in the back of
Speaker 2: his taxicab. The following night, a taxicab driver named Ernest
Speaker 2: Jones is found similarly bludgeoned and with his heart cut
Speaker 2: out in a by a boat ramp. And again these
Speaker 2: at first glance, these are the only thing that these
Speaker 2: victims seem to have in common. Where were They were
Speaker 2: both cab drivers, and they were both black males. Now,
Speaker 2: these crimes are entirely different from the Blitz shooting, but
Speaker 2: of course, you know when it comes out in the
Speaker 2: press of what's happened, there's the fear like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: is the serial killer just upped his game, so to speak,
Speaker 2: and it's just gotten more brutal in his killing. So
Speaker 2: it really causes a lot of fear and panic, and
Speaker 2: unfortunately it causes a lot of racial tension, and there
Speaker 2: starts to be utiliation type crimes. There are now not
Speaker 2: a lot of them, but of course you know they
Speaker 2: get the negative attention. There are a couple of There
Speaker 2: was a black motorists who ran down to white men,
Speaker 2: you know, on the street. You know, that's at random.
Speaker 2: And then it with incidents like that, and many reports
Speaker 2: for a couple of nights in a row of black
Speaker 2: teenagers throwing rocks and bottles and whatnot at any white
Speaker 2: people that they saw in cars. You know. So, so
Speaker 2: a horrible situation has suddenly gotten much, much worse, and
Speaker 2: there's a lot of pressure on the police and unelected officials.
Speaker 2: You know, of course, of course catch the killer, which
Speaker 2: there always is in these situations. It's driven by fear,
Speaker 2: but in this case there are also the accusations of well,
Speaker 2: you know, the police aren't trying hard enough because the
Speaker 2: victims are all black. Now, of course that wasn't true,
Speaker 2: and if you look at the records, the police records
Speaker 2: and the files, they were trying very hard. I mean
Speaker 2: they were canvassing and recanvassing and you know, very early
Speaker 2: on involved the FBI, you know, trying to analyze their evidence.
Speaker 2: But in a case like this where there's just no
Speaker 2: these kind of random attacks, which fortunately are very are
Speaker 2: really very rare. Stranger around stranger violence is really relatively
Speaker 2: rare in cases like this where there is absolutely no
Speaker 2: connection between killer and victim and there is no evidence
Speaker 2: left behind because they only have sleeping contacts that we're
Speaker 2: not talking about fingerprints, you know, even today, there would
Speaker 2: have been no DNA because this is just the a
Speaker 2: brief encounter and there's no there was no direct contact
Speaker 2: between the victim and the killer, right, so it's a
Speaker 2: very very difficult case for the police. But of course,
Speaker 2: you know, the community's afraid and there's so it was.
Speaker 2: It was causing a lot of tension, a lot of
Speaker 2: ill will, and you know, just just spirit. It was
Speaker 2: really difficult time. And it's also worth mentioning that this
Speaker 2: was at a very this happened at a very difficult
Speaker 2: time economically. This is the late nineteen eighty and cities
Speaker 2: like Buffalo, New York are really suffering economically. This is
Speaker 2: the area that became known as the rough Belt because
Speaker 2: you know, this is you know, the factories had been
Speaker 2: closing and there's very high unemployment and I think at
Speaker 2: time like that really just exacerbates you know, when things
Speaker 2: are bad anyway, and people are filled with uncertainty and fear,
Speaker 2: and you know that constant economic struggle. I don't have
Speaker 2: something like this happened. I think it makes it all
Speaker 2: the more. It heightens things even more and frightens people
Speaker 2: all the more. So. Yeah, so that was the fall
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty, and then suddenly the killings stopped October.
Speaker 2: Early October was when the two cab drivers were murdered,
Speaker 2: and then there were no other killings that were either
Speaker 2: like the cab drivers or that could be connected to
Speaker 2: the shootings the twenty two caliber shootings, as they came
Speaker 2: to be called. All was quiet until December of nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: A couple months later, December twenty second, nineteen eighty, in
Speaker 2: New York City, which is about less than five hundred
Speaker 2: miles from Buffalo, single day, there are six black men
Speaker 2: attacked in Manhattan by a knife wielding white man who
Speaker 2: attacked them, mostly on the subways, and it has an
Speaker 2: eerie similarity to the shootings in the sense that these
Speaker 2: are unprovoked attacks. Two of the men survived. There are
Speaker 2: four of the men unfortunately die. Two of the men
Speaker 2: who were attacked survived and they report, I've never seen
Speaker 2: this man. It was just this short white guy and
Speaker 2: he just came up and he stabbed me and he
Speaker 2: ran away. So authorities in Buffalo hear about this, and
Speaker 2: they're wondering if this serial killer is back, because that's
Speaker 2: out even though these were knife attacks and they had
Speaker 2: been investigating twenty two caliber shootings. They're thinking there's an
Speaker 2: eerie similarity there. You know, the the weapon is different,
Speaker 2: but the emo is the same. It's the blitz style
Speaker 2: attack on a stranger from a white man who just
Speaker 2: runs away. Well, you know, they talk about a New
Speaker 2: York City detectives at the time are very skeptical to think, well,
Speaker 2: you know, who's going to travel, you know, almost five
Speaker 2: hundred miles for this killing screen. Well, they're skeptical for
Speaker 2: a couple of days, un until they have a similar
Speaker 2: string of stabbings and black men happen in Fullow and
Speaker 2: in Rochester and very similar to New York City of
Speaker 2: a man just standing on the street or mining his
Speaker 2: own business and a white man comes up and stands him.
Speaker 2: So now authority, especially the task force in Buffalo, they're
Speaker 2: convinced that he's back.
Speaker 5: This is the.
Speaker 2: Twenty two have the so called twenty two caliber killer,
Speaker 2: and he's just he's switched weapons. But this has got
Speaker 2: to be the same guy. Then once again in early January,
Speaker 2: it just stops. After the spate of attacks over a
Speaker 2: few days over the Christmas holidays, then it just stops,
Speaker 2: and we know in hindsight that was because Joseph Christopher
Speaker 2: returned to Fort Benning, Georgia. He returned to the army
Speaker 2: after his Christmas break he had been when the investigator started,
Speaker 2: when they were called the Fort Benning and they started investigating,
Speaker 2: they discovered that he was in New York City and
Speaker 2: then in Buffalo over the Christmas holidays, giving him opportunity
Speaker 2: to commit those crimes.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about how important it might be. Not important
Speaker 6: in the way people might have hoped, but the importance
Speaker 6: of composite drawings and the importance we'll see what we
Speaker 6: mean by that, the importance of the eyewitness testimony in
Speaker 6: creating those composites. You talked about a central figure in this,
Speaker 6: Detective John Reagan, was involved in the very first murder
Speaker 6: investigation and sort of a relentless reinterviewing technique of getting
Speaker 6: down to another central character, Kenny Paulson, which was a
Speaker 6: witness to the very first murder and the Joseph Christopher.
Speaker 6: But we won't get into that right now. Let's talk
Speaker 6: about just a little bit about that composite drawing and
Speaker 6: what was involved in that.
Speaker 2: Sure, well, after the first shootings in September of nineteen eighty,
Speaker 2: there were composite drawings made from eyewitness descriptions, and in
Speaker 2: fact they even had because of the possible civil rights
Speaker 2: violations with the black men being attacked, the FBI got
Speaker 2: involved in the case and they had an FBI artist
Speaker 2: actually meet with with several of the witnesses and put
Speaker 2: together a set of composite drawings. And then after the
Speaker 2: series of stabbings that happened in December, the same artists
Speaker 2: came up with what were supposedly perfected versions of these
Speaker 2: composite drawings, which really look identical to the first set
Speaker 2: that have been released in the fall. The composite drawings,
Speaker 2: actually there are absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to Joseph Christopher. Basically,
Speaker 2: the composites, both sets of composites show a man who
Speaker 2: is blonde, appears to be, you know, very fair skinned.
Speaker 2: The features are completely different, you know, rather thin lips.
Speaker 2: Joseph Christopher when he's arrested, he has very dark, curly hair,
Speaker 2: he has very prominent notes, he has very thick lips. Really,
Speaker 2: his photo is night and day to the point where
Speaker 2: it was actually those compositi venefectually parody in newspapers, you know,
Speaker 2: for their absolute lack of resemblance to the suspect who
Speaker 2: was eventually arrested.
Speaker 6: Now you talk about how we already mentioned that he
Speaker 6: was arrested and he was deported from Fort Benning, Georgia
Speaker 6: to buffaloed for this granted ganjury indictment. They were successful
Speaker 6: and indicted him. What about the idea of the psych evaluation.
Speaker 6: Tell us about how that proceeded and how the media
Speaker 6: were the media taking the facts and running with them
Speaker 6: or was there more to that in terms of the
Speaker 6: linkage between the Cabby killings and the what considered the
Speaker 6: twenty two caliber killings definitively.
Speaker 7: Okay, well, right away, the as soon as he's brought
Speaker 7: back to Buffalo, when he's when Christopher's extradited back to Buffalo,
Speaker 7: he's just his mother had.
Speaker 2: Had hired two excellent defense attorneys for him. Christopher will
Speaker 2: not speak to them, and right the way they realized, well,
Speaker 2: he needs a psychiatric evaluation. Just reading, I mean, this
Speaker 2: is someone who was in the psychiatric hospital in the
Speaker 2: Army and had cut himself and wouldn't eat, and his
Speaker 2: behavior is bizarre. And in fact, the Army had advised
Speaker 2: Buffalo Police when they gave them this tip that you
Speaker 2: know you might want to look at this guy, say,
Speaker 2: you know, he will more than likely never be never
Speaker 2: be court martialed in the army because of because he's psychotic.
Speaker 2: So then that starts a very very long round of
Speaker 2: psychiatric evaluations and examinations. And what was it play here
Speaker 2: was the defense attorneys almost immediately were able to determine
Speaker 2: that they have a client who is they're not doctors,
Speaker 2: they can't diagnose him, but as mental problems, serious mental problems.
Speaker 2: They can't communicate with him, and how are they supposed
Speaker 2: to defend him the state can't communicate At the same time,
Speaker 2: you know, when there's news finally news of an arrest
Speaker 2: of the twenty two caliber killer suspect, there is a
Speaker 2: you know, great pressure on the district attorney to prosecute,
Speaker 2: you know, and get this get this case prosecuted, and
Speaker 2: we need this wrapped up, and we need justice, justice, justice.
Speaker 7: So and as far as the.
Speaker 2: Media, of course, this is a huge story, you know,
Speaker 2: across New York State, and you know, the media really
Speaker 2: kind of runs with it, and there's all kinds of scalation. Well,
Speaker 2: is the twenty two caliber killer also responsible for the
Speaker 2: Cavvy killings. Now the police already had and the District
Speaker 2: Attorney's office already had the hands full, you know, just
Speaker 2: trying to build a case against Christopher for the three shootings.
Speaker 2: He was invited to the three for the first three
Speaker 2: twenty two caliber shootings. Because they it's diffic to make
Speaker 2: a case. They really don't have much in the way
Speaker 2: of evidence except for these shell case things, which you know,
Speaker 2: might prove that he may have had access to the weapons.
Speaker 2: But as I said, the witness descriptions are all over
Speaker 2: the place, and they they don't have anything else really
Speaker 2: in the way of direct physical evidence. They have Christopher's confessions,
Speaker 2: which were made in a psychiatric hospital after he had
Speaker 2: cut himself and wasn't eating, and so, you know, the confessions,
Speaker 2: you know, sketchy there, but there was because the Cavvy
Speaker 2: killings had been so they've been so horribly gruesome, and
Speaker 2: they had happened so soon after the shootings, there was
Speaker 2: maybe maybe it was kind of natural for the press
Speaker 2: to want to connect the dots, and of course they
Speaker 2: were asking the question, you know, is this did he
Speaker 2: also commit these these crimes? Now, of course he was
Speaker 2: not indicted for those cab driver murders and the task
Speaker 2: Force continued quietly to continue investigating the cab driver murders.
Speaker 2: Now it was becoming clear, it was pretty clear early
Speaker 2: on to the scientific and especially to the scientific investigative
Speaker 2: team that was on the task force, that these crimes
Speaker 2: were not related whatsoever. And in fact, Profiler John Douglas,
Speaker 2: when he back in October, even with the little information
Speaker 2: that he had about the cab drivers, said that it's
Speaker 2: not absolutely impossible that it's not the same offender, but unlikely,
Speaker 2: you know, he advised them, he said, you are more
Speaker 2: than likely looking for two separate offenders there.
Speaker 6: So now, despite that, you talk about the esteem John Douglas, profiler,
Speaker 6: and there was it was a good profile. But you
Speaker 6: talk about the prosecution, and they really liked their psychiatric witness,
Speaker 6: doctor Barton. How did Barton portray the other two murders,
Speaker 6: the cabby murders that again you say that were never proven.
Speaker 6: What was his approach in terms of for the prosecution,
Speaker 6: what was his tone approach?
Speaker 2: Okay, well, it's important to note that Christopher was doctor
Speaker 2: Barton was the prosecution psychiatrist for the second trial. Christopher
Speaker 2: was convicted of the three twenty two caliber shootings in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty of nineteen eighty one, but that conviction was
Speaker 2: later overturned by an appeals court that decided that his
Speaker 2: attorney should have been able to introduce more evidence of
Speaker 2: his psychiatric condition. Christopher was retried on the twenty two
Speaker 2: caliber shootings in nineteen eighty five, and that's when the
Speaker 2: psychiatrist named doctor Russell Barton was brought on board. And
Speaker 2: he was known as a psychiatrist who was very friendly
Speaker 2: to the prosecution, so much so that the districttorney in
Speaker 2: Rochester actually had him on retainer. And what how this
Speaker 2: all came about was Barton did a videotaped interview with
Speaker 2: Joseph Christopher in which Christopher and remember we're skipping ahead
Speaker 2: several you know, several years here after, you know, Christopher
Speaker 2: had been in prison and he was in and out
Speaker 2: of psychiatric hospital, you know, for for years in between.
Speaker 2: He conducts an interview with Christopher where Christopher is admitting
Speaker 2: to all kinds of things, now including the cab driver killings. Now,
Speaker 2: what Christopher tells doctor Barton is wrong, you know, his
Speaker 2: confession to the caby driver killings is absolutely wrong. But
Speaker 2: unfortunately this is used in court against him, even though
Speaker 2: he's not on trial for these crimes. The prosecutor seizes
Speaker 2: on that and you know, sort of uses it in
Speaker 2: his in his argument that because of this time around,
Speaker 2: they were trying to use a d advance of psychiatric
Speaker 2: defense for Christopher, and the prosecutor advances that the theory said, well,
Speaker 2: but look how viciss he is. You know, he killed
Speaker 2: these cab drivers and cut their hearts out, which was
Speaker 2: really great. You know, in retrospect, it's grossly unfair. I mean,
Speaker 2: it wasn't appropriate at the time because Christopher hadn't even
Speaker 2: been charged with these but particularly if you look at
Speaker 2: the evidence, it's abundantly clear that Joseph Christopher had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with those cab driver murders. You know, by
Speaker 2: that time, nineteen eighty five, his mental illness, his mental
Speaker 2: state had degenerated to the point where he would have
Speaker 2: confessed to the Lindberg Kip kidnapping essentially, you know, really
Speaker 2: too bad. And this is actually where where the title
Speaker 2: of the book came from, is absolute madness. Because what
Speaker 2: I discovered when I started really looking into the into
Speaker 2: the cases I mentioned earlier, you know, it just didn't
Speaker 2: make sense that Joseph Christopher, you know had committed these crimes.
Speaker 2: And in fact, when it was there's an article in
Speaker 2: the newspaper before my book came out, you know, talking
Speaker 2: about how I was writing the story, I had a
Speaker 2: couple of Joseph Christopher's black friends seek me out to
Speaker 2: tell me Joseph, Joe was not a racist. Joe was
Speaker 2: a good guy. I don't know what happened to him,
Speaker 2: but you know, he wasn't And what it was in
Speaker 2: the nutshell is very unfortunately, Joseph Christopher developed paradise schizophrenia
Speaker 2: and that was really the cause of his of you know,
Speaker 2: the crime speed X Free that he went on, the
Speaker 2: changes in his behavior, and what makes this doubly heartbreaking
Speaker 2: is that Joe realized at some point that his mind
Speaker 2: there was something wrong, and he you know, he tried
Speaker 2: to talk to you know, his former girlfriend and then
Speaker 2: his best friend, you know, Peter, but really couldn't even
Speaker 2: explain to them what was happening. Well, just days before
Speaker 2: the first shooting, which was the murder of Glen Dunn,
Speaker 2: Joseph Christopher went to the Buffaloe Chiatric Hospital and asked
Speaker 2: to be admitted. He actually sought help. He didn't know
Speaker 2: obviously he had no background in psychiatry. He didn't know
Speaker 2: what was wrong with him, but he knew something was wrong,
Speaker 2: and he asked to be admitted to the psychiatric hospital
Speaker 2: and he was turned away. It lasted about thirty minutes,
Speaker 2: and they suggested that he get counseling, and that that
Speaker 2: was especially jarring for me. I mean, the whole story
Speaker 2: is heartbreaking. Well, what's really disturbing is that we're still
Speaker 2: we still hear about incidents like that where someone who
Speaker 2: who needs mental health help. You know, they realize at
Speaker 2: some level that you know, it's something wrong and they
Speaker 2: need help, they seek to help, and they don't get it.
Speaker 2: They're turned away and then often with really tragic consequences.
Speaker 2: So that was something that really that really gripped me
Speaker 2: when it came to the story, because if you look
Speaker 2: at his history, if you look at Joe's history up
Speaker 2: until he became ill when he was about twenty four
Speaker 2: to twenty five, this was a good guy and his
Speaker 2: mind betrayed him. I mean, this is someone who became
Speaker 2: profoundly mentally ill through no fault of his own, and
Speaker 2: the consequences were beyond tragic.
Speaker 6: It certainly seems that they could have it seems unthinkable
Speaker 6: that the whole judicial system couldn't concur and sentence him
Speaker 6: to an indefinite term in a mental institution as punishment
Speaker 6: given the circumstances and everything that you reveal in this book,
Speaker 6: and it was evident to them as well, that seems
Speaker 6: to be an incredible chain. Not that I think that
Speaker 6: people should avoid punishment, but this man was clearly, clearly insane.
Speaker 2: Yes he was. And actually in the interviewed one of
Speaker 2: the prosecutors, the junior prosecutor on the second case, and
Speaker 2: you know they, yes, they realized that he was. This
Speaker 2: this was not a casable angering. This is someone who
Speaker 2: really was legitimately mentally ill and that's why he had
Speaker 2: committed his crimes. Uh. And you know, as you said
Speaker 2: to me, he wanted to offer him, you know, a please,
Speaker 2: so to speak, where it would have been a mental
Speaker 2: defect where and then that does not mean that he
Speaker 2: would have walked away. That means that he would have
Speaker 2: been sent to a mental institution rather than a state prison.
Speaker 2: What because and unfortunately it was because of the political
Speaker 2: aspects of it. In fact, there was a closed door
Speaker 2: meeting with the senior prosecutor and some of the the
Speaker 2: da and the black leaders in the community who you know,
Speaker 2: when the senior prosecutor, Albert Rainey came out, you know,
Speaker 2: he told Kamawano, who was the you know, the junior
Speaker 2: prosecutor on the case, he said, now he says, they
Speaker 2: want to they want to hang him. They're not going
Speaker 2: to give you know, because he was a white man
Speaker 2: who had killed black men, and there was sort of
Speaker 2: the political component to it, which is very unfortunate.
Speaker 6: M Well, you do write about the prosecutor portraying Joseph
Speaker 6: as a psychopath, and so you know, I mean when
Speaker 6: you get that strong portrayal of him enjoying cutting out
Speaker 6: the hearts of his victims, that will sway a jury,
Speaker 6: I would think, right.
Speaker 2: Which never happened, I know, which is it's terribly unfair
Speaker 2: because it never happened.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you really we really just touched on or
Speaker 6: really didn't touch on it. People are going to have
Speaker 6: to read the book to touch on to talk about
Speaker 6: the time with Jesse Jackson, Reverend Smith, Detective Reagan, jurisdictions
Speaker 6: that were more cooperative, some less cooperative eyewitness accounts, and
Speaker 6: then we have Kenny Paulson, the reluctant witness then the lineup.
Speaker 6: It is a truly fascinating case that we just really
Speaker 6: touched on the surface. I want to thank you very much,
Speaker 6: Catherine for coming on and talking about Absolute Madness, a
Speaker 6: true story of a serial killer, race and a city divided.
Speaker 6: It's been a pleasure for those that might want to
Speaker 6: look at other other material or do you have a
Speaker 6: Facebook page for this, tell us how they might look
Speaker 6: at other material or your website.
Speaker 2: Tell us, yes, yes, I do did. My website is
Speaker 2: My name is Katherine Plenarow dot net. And they can
Speaker 2: also find me on Facebook. I have an author page
Speaker 2: and also a page for the book Absolute Madness, So
Speaker 2: if they just put that in the search engine, it
Speaker 2: should come right up.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. You
Speaker 6: have a great evening.
Speaker 2: Thank you Dan. It's been a pleasure for me too.
Speaker 6: By bye, Allie.