Joseph Christopher. I rememeber it well.Originally Posted by keyboard150
Copied from nytimes.com
April 29, 1981
2 ARMY NURSES TO TESTIFY ABOUT KILLINGS IN BUFFALO
By SHEILA RULE, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Two Army nurses left Fort Benning, Ga., for Buffalo today, reportedly to testify before a grand jury about comments that a white Army private allegedly made to nurses that he had killed blacks here and in New York City.
Military sources said the nurses, Capt. Bernard Burgess and Lieut. Dorothy Anderson, were on duty or attached to the Fort Benning base hospital where the soldier, Pvt. Joseph G. Christopher, was treated for a self-inflicted wound.
Three black men and a dark-skinned Hispanic man were fatally stabbed in midtown Manhattan last Dec. 22 and seven blacks have been killed in the Buffalo area since last fall.
After spending four days at Fort Benning, two New York City detectives will go to Buffalo today to confer with investigators. Accused of Attempted Murder
A police source, who did not want to be identified, said that Private Christopher could possibly have been in the city on the day of the rampage.
''We know he left Georgia on Dec. 19 and that he arrived upstate on the 24th or 25th,'' the source said. ''We don't know where he was during the interval.''
Private Christopher cut himself while in custody at Fort Benning on charges of attempted murder in the stabbing of a black soldier there in January. He was taken to a section of the base hospital where the two nurses were on duty in the detention section.
Meanwhile, forensic specialists continued their search for clues that might determine whether there was a link to the seven slayings here as Buffalo investigators waited at Fort Benning to question the soldier.
One of two attorneys retained by Private Christopher's family, Kevin M. Dillon, said he had advised investigators not to talk to the soldier. The other attorney, Mark J. Mahoney, said they had not spoken to Private Christopher but planned to leave for Fort Benning tomorrow and spend Thursday there.
Initial ballistics tests on bullets and bullet casings recovered during searches of the 25-year-old soldier's Buffalo home and his family's hunting camp were inconclusive when compared with those removed from four black men who were killed last September with a .22-caliber weapon.
However, most of the bullets removed from the shooting victims were either deformed or fragmented. According to information provided by Dr. Justin Uku, Acting Erie County Medical Examiner, only one of nine bullets removed from the bodies of the victims was in ''reasonably good shape.'' Several Bullets Recovered
Of three bullets removed from the first victim, Dr. Uku said, two were ''squashed'' and the third was fragmented. Fragments of one bullet were recovered from the second victim, while a deformed bullet and another of unknown condition were removed from the third shooting victim, he said. Bullets removed from the fourth victim, according to Dr. Uku, included one that was deformed, one that was in fragments and one in ''reasonably good'' condition.
The laboratory director, Robert Perrigo, said that comparisons were also more difficult to make if a gun has not been recovered. Investigators have said that court-ordered searches of Privater Christopher's belongings at Fort Benning, his home and his family's cabin and hunting camp 40 miles southwest of Buffalo turned up knives, .22-caliber ammunition, shell casings of .22-caliber bullets, sawed-off gun stocks, a .22-caliber barrel and wearing apparel, including a jacket that was stained with human blood.
Private Christopher is also regarded as a possible suspect in the murder of a black man in Rochester on Dec. 30. In other developments, a spokesman for Buffalo's Black Leadership Forum said the group had met with Governor Carey in Albany today and asked him to designate a special state investigator to oversee the case because of the group's loss of confidence in the District Attorney, Edward C. Cosgrove, who is in charge of the investigation. But the Governor said he did not have the legal authority to remove Mr. Cosgrove, the spokesman said.