Joseph Christopher

Joseph Christopher was an American serial killer who was active from September 22, 1980 until his arrest on May 10, 1981. He was known as the ".22-Caliber Killer" and the "Midtown Slasher." It is believed that he killed twelve individuals and wounded numerous others, almost all of them African American with one Hispanic male. [1] The motivation behind the attacks is generally accepted to be deep pathological racism. [2]

Murders and arrest

Christopher's homicidal rampage began on September 22, 1980 when he was twenty-five. Christopher started his crimes by shooting African American men while they went about their daily duties, striking in the middle of the day, and into the night with sometimes more than five murders in one day. However, Christopher changed his modus operandi midway through his onslaught of terror by choosing a knife as his weapon, stabbing his victims to death and cutting the heart out of two of his victims.

Christopher may have never been stopped if it weren't for his out of control anger towards African Americans, when he attacked a fellow soldier at their home station of Fort Benning, causing his arrest. Once his apartment was searched in the hopes that the police may have come across their serial killer by accident, the police found sufficient evidence linking Christopher to three of the murders. After many attempts to plead mentally incompetent, Christopher was found guilty on first degree murder, and sentenced to sixty years in prison. He later died in prison from a rare form of male breast cancer at the age of 37.

Recently, a new book about the .22 Caliber Killings has been published (Plain View Press, 2010), Plain View Press), by Dr. Frank Dobson, Jr., which is a historical fiction account of the killings and their effect on a community.