Joseph Christopher

Joseph Gerard Christopher, also known as the ".22-Caliber Killer", and the "Midtown Slasher", was an American schizophrenic serial/spree killer who murdered at least twelve African-American men and one Hispanic, over a five-months span, between 1980 and 1981.

He acted in Buffalo and nearby communities in New York State, then moved to Manhattan, New York City, before returning to his original area of activity. Because of this, he was at first considered to be two separate killers, also due to the different modus operandi.

Background
Christopher was a Buffalo, New York, native. He grew up in a predominantly Italian neighborhood, the son of Nicholas and Therese (née Hurley). His father was a maintenance worker with the city's Sanitation Department until his death in 1976, while his mother was a registered nurse at Deaconess Hospital. Joseph also had three sisters, two of them older than him. As a youngster, he helped build a three-rooms cabin on a plot of land his father bought in Ellington, New York. Nicholas, whom Joseph adored, was an avid outdoorsman and hunter, who taught his son how to shoot and handle weapons. After attending parish classes at a Roman Catholic church, he enrolled in public schools and, in 1971, entered the automotive mechanics program at Burgard Vocational High School. He eventually dropped out in 1974, being remembered as a quiet, unassuming student.

Joseph began living of odd jobs he performed for his neighbors and for a furnace repairman. He also formed a small home-improvement business with a friend, which eventually turned unsuccessful. During this period, he tried enlisting in the Army but was rejected, apparently because he had hernia. In late 1977, he took a job as an unarmed security guard during a strike at Buffalo's American Brass Company. After that, in early 1978, he found work as a maintenance man at Canisius College, where he met and fell in love with a gun club instructor, eventually joining the club and applying for a National Rifle Association certificate as a pistol instructor himself. On one occasion, he was reprimanded by a college security guard for carrying a weapon. After putting an end to his relationship with the instructor in late 1978, he reportedly started acting weird, as if something was troubling him. He had an argument with a co-worker over a purported stolen knife, which Joseph eventually found under the seat of his own truck. In 1979, he was dismissed by Canisius for sleeping on the job. Afterwards, he returned to live with his parents, started drinking, and had his gun permit suspended for unknown reasons, after informing the police that he had lost a weapon.

In 1978, Joseph had noticed his mental health was slipping. In September 1980, he turned to the Buffalo Psychiatric Center to seek assistance, but was told that since he wasn't a danger to himself or others he could not be admitted. This was a common practice at the time, when such centers were being downsized. He was recommended counseling therapy instead. Fourteen days after he left the center, the ".22-Caliber Killings" began.

The .22-Caliber Killer
From September 22 to September 24, 1980, four black males ranging from 14 to 43 years of age were slain by a spree shooter who was described by witnesses as a "white youth". The first and third killings occurred in Buffalo, while the others took place in nearby Cheektowaga and Niagara Falls. Connecting the incidents, besides the victim's race, was the murder weapon, a .22-caliber sawed-off rifle, which prompted the press to nickname the attacker the ".22-Caliber Killer". The murders caused Buffalo's African-American community to complain about nonexistent police protection, and there were fears of an imminent campaign of genocide from some paramilitary white supremacist organization. Eventually, a task force was formed to deal with the case.

Things got even worse when the bodies of two African-American cab drivers, Parler Edwards and Ernest Jones, were found in Amherst and Tonawanda, on October 8 and 9. They had been beaten to death, and their hearts had been removed postmortem. On October 10, in Buffalo, Collin Cole, a hospitalized black man, was almost strangled by an unknown assailant who, according to witnesses, approximately matched the description of the ".22-Caliber Killer". The attempted strangler, before attacking Cole, reportedly said he hated black people. After these occurrences, the FBI was eventually involved, and profiler John Douglas travelled to Buffalo in order to assist the local authorities.

The Midtown Slasher
On November 13, 1980, Joseph Christopher finally managed to enlist the U.S. Army, being stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia. He was later given Christmas furlough, during the course of which he went to Manhattan, New York City, arriving there on December 20. Two days later, the murder spree attributed to the so-called "Midtown Slasher" began. Five African-American men and one Hispanic were attacked in as many stabbing attacks, over a twelve and a half-hours span. Only one of the latters survived his wounds.

Returning to Buffalo, Christopher knifed four more black men, from December 29 to January 1, 1981. Only one of them ended up being killed: Roger Adams. He later vehemently denied being responsible for a similar attack on a fifth man, one Albert Menefee, on December 31.

Arrest, Trial, and Death
Christopher was eventually arrested on January 18, 1981, after attacking a black fellow soldier with a knife in Fort Benning. He later attempted suicide with a razor, and revealed, during a subsequent psychiatric session, that he "had to kill blacks". This admission prompted the authorities to search his former residence, near Buffalo, were, among other things, quantities of .22-caliber ammunition, a gun barrel, and two sawed-off rifle stocks were recovered. In April 1981, he was indicted on charges of having committed the .22-caliber shootings, plus the stabbings occurred in Buffalo through December 29 and January 1. In New York City, he was also indicted on two of the knife attacks attributed to the "Midtown Slasher". On May 8, he was brought back to Buffalo for his trial.

In October, Christopher waived his right to a jury, and chose to represent himself. Two months later, he was found incompetent to stand trial, but the ruling was then overturned, bringing to his conviction on three charges of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 60 years of imprisonment to life. In July 1985, his conviction was overturned on grounds that the first judge had improperly barred testimony pointing toward mental incompetence. Three months later, in Manhattan, a jury rejected Christopher's insanity plea, convicting him of the two stabbings on which he was at first indicted in New York City. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and eventually died of male breast cancer in 1993, at Attica Correctional Facility.

Christopher admitted being responsible for at least thirteen murders out of seventeen attacks, implicitly including in the list the cab drivers' murders, although he never definitively confessed nor denied them. He, on the other hand, vehemently denied being responsible for the attempted strangulation on Collin Cole and the non-fatal stabbing of Albert Menefee.

Modus Operandi
In his exploits as the ".22-Caliber Killer", Christopher employed a .22 caliber sawed-off rifle to shot his victims at close range, with blitz attacks. When he supposedly killed the two cab drivers, he bludgeoned them to death, then removed their hearts postmortem. From the beginning of the Manhattan killing spree onward, he would attack and stab his victims to death with a knife.

Profile
The ".22-Caliber Killer" was profiled by John Douglas as a mission-oriented asocial loner with an assassin personality, who had, in the past, joined hate groups or even groups with positive goals or values, such as a church, and was now convinced that he was contributing to the cause. He had a gun fetish and military background, and would have been discharged out of psychological issues or failure to adjust to military life. He was also a rational and organized individual, with a "logical", although delusional, system of beliefs. While unsure as to whether the "Midtown Slasher" spree could have been attributed to the .22-caliber shooter, Douglas was nonetheless convinced that it was committed by the same type of individual: a racist who killed in a blitz-assassination style.

For what concerns the attacks and mutilations on the cab drivers, Douglas was prone to not attribute them to the .22-Caliber guy, though they were probably triggered by the latter. While the racial element still persisted, they were committed by a more disorganized, obsessive-compulsive, and possibly hallucinatory individual, who was, in all probability, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. The crime scenes reflected rage, overcontrol, and overkill. If the same individual had committed the shootings and the cab drivers' killings, that would have meant he suffered a severe personality disintegration between the two set of murders. Plus, in all likelihood, the heart remover's fantasies had been building for a long time, several years at least.

On Criminal Minds

 * Season Twelve:
 * "In the Dark" - Although yet to be directly referenced in the show, Christopher appears to have been an inspiration for the episode's unsub, Trey Gordon - Both were similarly named serial and spree killers who changed their modus operandi and areas of activity, being consequently deemed to be, at first, separate offenders (though Gordon did this because of his sleepwalking, while Christopher knowingly chose to do it). Both also employed shooting with rifles and stabbing as part of their different M.O., and had fathers who practiced hunting.