FALLS REIGN OF TERROR FED ON RACE HATRED, BIGOTRY, VIOLENCE
by Niagara Falls Reporter
FALLS REIGN OF TERROR FED ON RACE HATRED, BIGOTRY, VIOLENCE
By Mike Hudson
Sept. 24, 1980. It was a day when evil of the most vile and unspeakable nature roamed the streets of Niagara Falls. And before it was over an innocent man lay dead in a pool of his own blood, the victim of a madman whose hatred would ultimately drive him to kill as many as 13 people.
Of all the "unsolved" homicides languishing in the cold case files of the Niagara Falls Police Department, the murder of Joseph Louis McCoy that warm September morning is unique, not only because the killer's identity is widely known, but because it was part of a racist rampage so shockingly violent it made headlines around the world.
By all accounts, Joe McCoy, 43, was an easy-going man, well liked in his Pierce Avenue neighborhood. Born in Evalda, Ga., he moved with his family to Niagara Falls in 1943 and attended school here. After a stint in the Air Force, he got a job as a custodian at the Niagara Community Center and attended church at St. John's AME.
Sandy Perry, then director of the community center, described him as a "gentle person, a former boxer and the kids respected him for the help he gave them."
"Joe don't bother no one," said one female neighbor, in shock following his senseless murder.
A black man, McCoy, like many others, had been following with uneasy interest a series of killings that had begun in Buffalo a couple of days earlier.
On Monday, Sept. 22, 14-year-old Glenn Dunn was sitting in a stolen car outside a Buffalo supermarket when he was approached by a young white man, who produced a gun and shot him in the head. Buffalo police chalked the killing up to an incident of gang violence for all of 24 hours until the next attack, on Tuesday, Sept. 23. In a near carbon copy of the Dunn slaying, 32-year-old Harold Green was shot in the head while eating his lunch in a car at a fast-food restaurant in Cheektowaga.
The case was big news in Niagara Falls, as Green's sister, Mary Tucker, was a longtime area resident who worked at the Community Mental Health Center at Memorial Medical Center. Green would linger in the hospital without regaining consciousness until he died the following Sunday.
Again, the shooter was described as a young white man.
The killer didn't wait long to claim his next victim. That very night, just hours after the Green shooting, Emanuel Thomas, 31, of Buffalo was killed by three shots to the head as he was crossing the street near his home.
Spent shell casings found at the scenes of all three murders showed that the same weapon, a .22-caliber semi-automatic, had been used in each. In each case the victim was black, and in each case the killer was white.
All this must have been on Joe McCoy's mind that morning as he walked north on 11th Street. As he approached Cleveland Avenue, a young white man with longish blond hair and carrying a brown paper bag "came out of nowhere," according to one witness. The bag contained a .22 semi-automatic. McCoy took two shots to the head and never knew what hit him.
One witness, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he was walking about a half block away from the scene at the time. A close friend of McCoy, he told reporters, "As I got closer, I knew who he (McCoy) was and I couldn't cross the street."
The suspect fled east on Cleveland Avenue on foot, the witness added.
NFPD Officer Ward Drew was the first policeman on the scene. He had been driving down Cleveland Avenue when he was flagged down by a passer-by.
"I just missed him," Drew told a reporter.
Four men had been fatally shot in a little more than 36 hours and tensions rose in the black communities of Niagara Falls and Buffalo. The hysterical press dubbed the maniac the ".22-Caliber Killer." Fear escalated on the night of McCoy's murder when the body of a young black man was found in the Lower Niagara River, and Niagara County Coroner James Joyce immediately released a statement that the body was X-rayed "from head to toe," and no bullets or bullet fragments were found.
Niagara Falls Police Chief Anthony Fera Sr. urged residents to "remain calm," while at the same time acknowledging that fear was rising in the black community. City police detectives reported numerous calls from people who said they were afraid to leave their homes.
James Caldwell, a Cleveland Avenue resident, told reporters of an incident that occurred at the Airco Speer factory, where he had worked as a crane operator for eight years.
"They think they're funny," he said. "Walking around with their hand in a brown paper bag. They're just horsing around, but I'm real afraid some innocent person is going to get hurt. I see somebody come at me like that, I just might do something back. I might go to jail for hurting somebody, and all for nothing."
Bloneva Bond, a member of the Niagara Falls Board of Education, said it was the first time she'd ever been afraid in her own neighborhood.
"You can't help it," she said. "You think, who's next?"
A young black man showed up at the offices of the old Niagara Falls Gazette and left a note with the switchboard operator downstairs. The note was signed "Black People" and contained a warning.
"To this so-called cousin of Sam. You have killed enough of our Blackmen. We are seeking you out and will find you. And we will not be fair to you, either."
The "Sam" referred to was David Berkowitz, the convicted "Son of Sam" killer who terrorized New York City in 1977.
Community Center Director Sandy Perry said he believed the killings were racially motivated. "I think they're related to the rising economic problems in Western New York," he said. "In bad times, racist propaganda affects the least stable people. If the killer is caught before he does more damage, we may be able to contain the community. If not, I'm afraid we're going to have racial tension."
Niagara Falls police reported having to "rescue" a white man walking downtown carrying a brown paper bag with a handle sticking out of it. He had just purchased a hacksaw from a local hardware store when he was set upon by a number of black men, police said.
Black leaders publicly accused area police agencies of not doing all they could to bring the killer to justice.
It was only going to get worse.
On Oct. 8, a black taxi driver, 71-year-old Parler Edwards, was found in the trunk of his car, parked in Amherst. His heart had been cut out and carried from the scene.
The next day, another black cabbie, 40-year-old Ernest Jones, was found beside the Niagara River in Tonawanda, his heart ripped from his chest. His blood-soaked cab was found later by police, three miles away in Buffalo.
Perhaps unwisely, police began to speculate in the media that the killings were being done by a group of individuals. One did the stabbings, and two or more others did the shootings with the same gun, they guessed. In one public brouhaha, police in Niagara Falls clashed with those in Cheektowaga over a proposal to hypnotize witnesses in the case.
Another attack occurred on Oct. 10 at a Buffalo hospital. A black patient, Colin Cole, was recuperating from an illness when a white stranger approached his bedside and snarled, "I hate ******s."
The arrival of a nurse saved Cole from death by strangulation, but his windpipe had been broken and the description of the assailant matched that of the ".22-Caliber Killer."
Then things got quiet.
For the time being, no more incidents presented themselves here. But as far away as Cleveland and Rochester, the shooting deaths of black men were examined to see whether they were part of the pattern.
People questioned whether the shooting that year of National Urban League President Vernon Jordan in Fort Wayne, Ind., was connected. And, at the same time, the nation was riveted by the news of the killings of 28 black children in Atlanta, Ga.
But no one was prepared for the horror to come.
On Dec. 22, in midtown Manhattan, four blacks and one Hispanic were stabbed in broad daylight on crowded city streets in less than 13 hours. All but one would die of his wounds.
Again, the killer was described by eyewitnesses as a young white man.
The horror then shifted back to western New York. On Dec. 29, when Wendell Barnes was fatally stabbed in Rochester near the bus terminal, authorities saw a connection to the Manhattan slayings.
The next day in Buffalo, Albert Menefee survived a stab wound that nicked his heart and, on Jan. 1, 1981, Larry Little and Calvin Crippen survived separate attacks on the streets of Buffalo. All three men would later be able to identify their attacker.
On Jan.18, 1981 -- 21 years ago this week -- a young white soldier named Joseph Christopher was arrested at Fort Benning, Ga., and charged with the slashing and stabbing of a black GI there.
A search of a hunting camp his family owned in the Southern Tier of New York State turned up a sawed-off barrel and stock from a Ruger .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle, as well as quantities of .22-caliber ammunition. The murder weapon itself was never found.
A check of Christopher's whereabouts the previous autumn showed he had enlisted in the Army at Buffalo on Nov. 13, arrived at Fort Benning six days later, and taken a leave on Dec. 19, returning Jan. 4. Cops also found a bus ticket recording his arrival in Manhattan Dec. 20. Christopher was charged in Buffalo with the Dunn, Green and Thomas murders.
In New York City, indictments were returned in two of the five stabbings.
In Niagara Falls, he wasn't charged in the murder of Joseph McCoy, despite overwhelming evidence against him. Law enforcement officials will tell you today that Christopher's Erie County convictions saved Niagara County the cost of a prosecution.
Christopher was found mentally incompetent, but the ruling was reversed and he faced trial in April, 1982.
After 12 days of testimony, he was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to 60 years to life in prison.
Like Charles Manson more than a decade before, Christopher's aim had been to start a race war between blacks and whites.
Unlike Manson, Christopher had very nearly succeeded.
In a 1983 interview with the Buffalo News, Christopher said he was a part of a larger conspiracy, and claimed credit for the deaths of 13 men.
"I was ordered to kill. Who ordered me to kill? Who set up the conspiracy? I don't know," he said.
"It was just a collection of people. I can't explain it... I was a soldier. They drafted me and ordered me to kill. One tin soldier, you know," he continued.
The original investigators on the case have stated they doubt Christopher was responsible for the 13 murders he claimed to reporters. In particular, retired Buffalo Homicide Chief Leo J. Donovan was reluctant to attribute the two dead cabbies, whose hearts have never been found, to Christopher.
"We've never come up with any evidence that he did (kill 13 people), and he's never explained where or how," Donovan said in 1993.
That lack of closure in a number of the cases -- including McCoy's -- has remained troubling for many in the black community.
"That was not just an isolated incident," said Henry Louis Taylor Jr., director of the Center for Applied Public Affairs Studies at the University of Buffalo. "Those acts were symbolic of deeper tensions that still exist in Buffalo. If you don't see the connections, you don't understand the source that feeds these criminal acts."
In a 1990 interview, 10 years after the killings, Barbara Banks, publisher of the Challenger newspaper in Buffalo, put it more succinctly.
"This is not one thing that happened, a madman who shot some black folks and now it's over," she said. "It reminds black people there is a double standard. It reminds them of where they are. They can still be killed and not receive total justice. Some of these cases have never been solved."
Twenty-two years later, such is the status of Joe McCoy's case here in Niagara Falls.
Various authorities offered many insipid explanations for Christopher's sadistic killing spree.
A New York psychiatrist said it was because he had a homosexual urge towards black men.
In Buffalo, they said it was because a black man turned him in for wearing a pistol, an event that ultimately forced him to give up a prized gun collection his father had left him.
Joseph Christopher died in prison of a hopefully painful cancer in March, 1993.
Ironically, one of the chief witnesses in the case against Christopher, Calvin Crippen -- who survived a New Year's Day, 1981 knife attack while waiting for a bus at the corner of Niagara Street and Hertel Avenue in Buffalo -- was himself sentenced in 1993 on a charge of cocaine trafficking to 13 months in prison. He said at the time he didn't believe his brush with death had anything to do with his subsequent trouble.
Joseph Christopher. You can look him up on any of the Internet's many "Serial Killer" sites. His legacy is one of race hatred, murder and fear.
May he rot in hell.
Joe McCoy. A quiet man and former boxer. A veteran of Korea whose work with neighborhood children made him a beloved figure here in Niagara Falls.