He ended up killing 13 non-White (mostly Black) people.
"Until a month ago, when he became a suspect in the slayings of black men in Buffalo and New York City, Joseph G. Christopher was unknown to the police who were hunting for the killer or killers of 10 black men, a black teen-ager and a dark-skinned Hispanic man in four cities last year.
Last Monday, however, the 25-year-old Army private, who is white, stood in a Buffalo courtroom to plead not guilty to the shooting deaths of the black teen-ager and two of the black men in Buffalo last September.
Despite the presence of two lawyers hired by his mother, Private Christopher said he would conduct his own defense. The private is also considered a prime suspect in the other murders in Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Rochester and is the subject of a grand jury inquiry into four stabbing deaths here last Dec. 22. Joined Service Last November
The indictment of Private Christopher following his supposed admissions to nurses at Fort Benning, Ga., where he was recovering from a self-inflicted wound after allegedly trying to stab a black soldier to death, has shocked and mystified the defendant's friends and neighbors in the Buffalo area, where he lived until joining the service last November.
''The Joe Christopher I'm reading and hearing about is not the Joe Christopher I knew,'' remarked a female secretary who had been very close to the young man for two years in the late 1970's.
The police, who reportedly found used cartridge casings in Private Christopher's Buffalo home whose markings ''conclusively'' matched the markings on casings found at the scene of the shootings last September, have uncovered no motive for the murders, according to law-enforcement sources. And the private's friends - blacks as well as whites - said in interviews that he had never showed any racial hostility."
Read more: BUFFALO SUSPECT'S FRIENDS ARE MYSTIFIED (Published 1981)
I found out about it when I was listening in on the C.O.W.S. book club:
"Until a month ago, when he became a suspect in the slayings of black men in Buffalo and New York City, Joseph G. Christopher was unknown to the police who were hunting for the killer or killers of 10 black men, a black teen-ager and a dark-skinned Hispanic man in four cities last year.
Last Monday, however, the 25-year-old Army private, who is white, stood in a Buffalo courtroom to plead not guilty to the shooting deaths of the black teen-ager and two of the black men in Buffalo last September.
Despite the presence of two lawyers hired by his mother, Private Christopher said he would conduct his own defense. The private is also considered a prime suspect in the other murders in Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Rochester and is the subject of a grand jury inquiry into four stabbing deaths here last Dec. 22. Joined Service Last November
The indictment of Private Christopher following his supposed admissions to nurses at Fort Benning, Ga., where he was recovering from a self-inflicted wound after allegedly trying to stab a black soldier to death, has shocked and mystified the defendant's friends and neighbors in the Buffalo area, where he lived until joining the service last November.
''The Joe Christopher I'm reading and hearing about is not the Joe Christopher I knew,'' remarked a female secretary who had been very close to the young man for two years in the late 1970's.
The police, who reportedly found used cartridge casings in Private Christopher's Buffalo home whose markings ''conclusively'' matched the markings on casings found at the scene of the shootings last September, have uncovered no motive for the murders, according to law-enforcement sources. And the private's friends - blacks as well as whites - said in interviews that he had never showed any racial hostility."
Read more: BUFFALO SUSPECT'S FRIENDS ARE MYSTIFIED (Published 1981)
I found out about it when I was listening in on the C.O.W.S. book club:
