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Catherine Pelonero’s
Absolute
Madness:
A True
Story of a Serial Killer, Race, and A City Divided.
http://skyhorsepublishing.com/titles/13238-9781510719835-absolute-madness
http://skyhorsepublishing.com/titles/13238-9781510719835-absolute-madness
“Torment In The Box"
"Do you know how to drive a dog crazy? Put him in a box and beat the box with a stick every now and then.
They tell me time is the healer of the mind. I hope that is true.
If I do not know love, I'm nothing.
I'm nothing.
--Joseph Christopher,
letter to his mother, 1981.
"Do you know how to drive a dog crazy? Put him in a box and beat the box with a stick every now and then.
They tell me time is the healer of the mind. I hope that is true.
If I do not know love, I'm nothing.
I'm nothing.
--Joseph Christopher,
letter to his mother, 1981.
On November 7, 2017 Catherine Pelonero’s
second crime nonfiction book Absolute Madness: A True Story of a Serial Killer, Race, and a
City Divided was published by Skyhorse Publishing. 
The movement came from
a single person, a slight figure who suddenly darted through an opening in the
fence that separated the parking lot from her street, Floss Avenue. The man – she had the impression it was male
– wore a dark hooded jacket. As he
emerged from the fence, he ran across Floss Avenue in her direction. Veering to his left, he pulled the hood
tighter around his head as he ran up Floss toward East Delevan Avenue
disappearing past houses.
It all happened very quickly.
The witness, whose name was Barbara
Wozniak, and who didn’t realize at the time that she was in fact a witness to
something of importance, remained at her door for a moment longer, staring in
the direction where the man had run.
Nothing happened. There was no
one around; all was quiet again.
Directly south of her home sat Genesee Street, a main thoroughfare that
ran all the way from Buffalo through the east side of the city and out to the
suburbs. Even Genesee Street seemed
unusually still. Then again, it was
10:00 p.m. or close to it on a Monday night, a school night, and it had been
raining on and off for hours. Hardly the
kind of weather for strolling or sitting on the porch. The peaceful stillness
that had now returned was more typical than the odd popping sounds and the
figure running off into the dark.
Barbara assumed he was some kid who had
set off firecrackers in the parking lot and she didn’t give it much thought,
particularly with the silence that followed.
The rising crime rate around the neighborhood had made residents a bit
more alert, but this seemed inconsequential.
She went back inside, closing her front door against the drizzle and the
dark, and returned to watching Monday
Night Football with her brother.
It was later learned that the shots were not
firecrackers but the shooting death of 14-year-old African American Glenn Dunn, (Left) who was shot while parked in a stolen car on Floss Avenue.
The events of the next thirty-six hours would change
the course of American legal history as well as the lives of Buffalo,
Manhattan, Niagara Falls, and Rochester residents.
In the early afternoon of Tuesday, September 23,
1980 African American Harold Green (Right) was shot while eating lunch in his car at the
Burger King parking lot on 1870 Walden Avenue in Buffalo’s suburb Cheektowaga. He died from his injuries on September 28, 1980
at 7:45 p.m. 
On Tuesday, September 23, 1980 at 11:30 p.m.
African American Emanuel Thomas (Left) was shot to death while walking on Zenner
Street in Buffalo.
On Wednesday, September 24, 1980, at 9 a.m.
African American Joseph McCoy (Right) was shot to death in his Niagara Falls
neighborhood on Cleveland Avenue.
Then the shooting deaths in Buffalo ended
and finally the people of Buffalo experienced what they thought was peace.
As the sun set on Tuesday October 7, with the
sudden, strange rash of murders now two weeks behind them, the people of
Western New York perhaps slept a bit more peacefully beneath the waning
crescent moon, never suspecting the worst was yet to come.
On Monday, December 22, 1980 at 11:30 am.
African American John Adams, 25, was stabbed in the chest while exiting the
subway at Fourteenth Street and Seventh Street in Manhattan. He survived.
On Monday, December 22, 1980 at 1:30 p.m.
African American Ivan Frazer, 32, was stabbed in the left hand while traveling
on the E train from Queens to Manhattan.
On Monday, December 22, 1980 at 3:30 p.m.
dark skinned Hispanic Luis Rodriquez, 19, was robbed and stabbed in the chest while
walking on Madison Avenue. He died at the hospital.
On Monday, December 22, 1980 at 6:47 p.m.
African American Antoine Davis, 30, was stabbed in the chest at Thirty-Seventh
Street in Manhattan. He died at the hospital.
On Monday, December 22, 1980, at 10:40 p.m.,
African American Richard Renner, 20, was stabbed in the chest at a candy store
on 49th Street in Manhattan. He died at the hospital.
On Monday, December 22 1980, at 11 p.m. African
American Carl Ramsey was stabbed in the chest on the subway at Thirty-Third
Street in Manhattan. He died at the hospital.
On Monday, December 29, 1980, at 7:25 a.m.,
African-American Roger Adams, 31, was stabbed to death in the neck and chest on
the outside of Sattler’s Department Store at 998 Broadway in Buffalo.
On the morning of Tuesday, December 30, 1980,
African American Wendell Barnes, 27, was stabbed in the chest while waiting for
his bus at 172 East Main Street in Rochester, New York. He died in the
hospital.
On Thursday, January 1, 1981 between 3:30
and 4 a.m., Kim Edmiston, 21, was attacked by a man at her apartment on
Tonawanda Street in Buffalo. She
managed to escape by running into her apartment building and slamming the door,
immediately calling the police.
On Thursday, January 1, 1981 at 3 p.m.
African American Calvin Crippen, 23, was attacked by a man with a knife on
Niagara Street in Buffalo but managed to escape unharmed.
She followed her sister’s suggestion and began her three-year journey of researching thousands of pages of documents, police reports, psychiatric records, court documents, newspaper articles, letters, and diary entries.
She spent two more years placing every single piece of information into chronological timeline order; then
outlined what pieces of information would apply to each chapter; and started
writing the 470 page book one sentence at a time, cross referencing with her
notes and research materials to make sure every single detail was truthful,
factual, and accurate. 
Part One: The .22 Caliber
Killer and Part Two:
The Midtown Slasher detail the actual crimes, the victim’s
histories, how the authorities responded, and how the community responded,
which at the time was racially divided and literally threw the African American
community into epic panic.
Soon, due to self inflected wounds, he was placed in the psychiatric ward at the Martin Army Community Hospital (Above Left) in Fort Benning, Georgia
where he gave his first confession to Private First Class Corwin, who was
assigned to guard the patient/prisoner named Joseph Christopher. . . (Above Right Christopher at the Martin Army Hospital photographed by the police in April of 1981)
He seemed to dwell in his own head, which based, on his behavior, appeared
to be a very desolate place indeed. When
Joseph Christopher would go into whatever routine this was, the rocking and
squeezing his head and calling “Christopher,” over and over again in despair,
it was apparently his own name he invoked in that mournful chat.
So it came as a surprise to PFC Corwin when Christopher finally spoke to
him. Corwin was sitting dutifully in a
chair by the side of the bed when he noticed that the patient was awake and
looking directly at him.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Private First Class Christopher Corwin.”
There was a pause.
“PFC Corwin, do you realize I was a mass murderer in Buffalo?”
Corwin didn’t react. This wasn’t
the first time he’d heard a prisoner say something outrageous. And this was, after all, the psychiatric
ward. When he finally responded, he
said, “Christopher, I really don’t believe that.”
“Well, I was,” the prisoner/patient said.
“I refuse to believe that” Corwin said.
“It’s true.” He spoke slowly,
remotely. “I killed seven people in
Buffalo and I killed some people in New York.”
The Fourth
Section: The Gauntlet is the smallest section of the book – only 21
pages long and details Joseph Christopher’s stay in the county jail while
waiting for his first trial in Buffalo. (Left: Christopher's Defense Attorney Kevin Dillon) 
The biggest surprise of this section is the action of Joseph Christopher 14 days before the 36-hour shooting murder spree began. Pelonero details in her book how Assistant District Attorney Duane Stamp (Right) learned that Joseph Christopher visited the Buffalo Psychiatric Hospital on September 8, 1980 seeking help. The Buffalo Psychiatric Hospital psychiatrist and social worker met with Christopher and deemed him not a danger to himself nor to others and told him to go home. They called him a week later for a check up and he revealed to them that he had joined the army.
Pelonero details court battles between the
prosecution and the defense playing Christopher like a ping pong ball – to
determine if he was competent or legally sane to stand trial. Psychiatrists for the defense said no and
psychiatrists for the prosecution said yes.
The yes and no ping pong battle continued until it was deemed he was fit
to stand trial. Christopher’s first
conviction for the Buffalo murders would be overturned and he would be retried
and found guilty. In addition to the
guilty verdict for the Manhattan murder of Luis Rodriguez and the stabbing of
Ivan Frazer, Christopher was sentenced to 58 years in prison.
EPILOGUE Pelonero
aggressively investigated, researched and wrote the truth about Christopher’s
mental state and ability to stand for trial with no pre conditioned notions and
some readers might find her findings uncomfortable and inconvenient, but still
her findings are based on facts. She
details her journey of writing this book; the people that helped her; and where
the people who played a role in this book are now; including Joseph Christopher
who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. 
The major turning point in her writing career
was when she met the legendary playwright Emanuel Fried (Right): “I’m grateful that Emanuel "Manny" Fried was my
mentor. Manny is a legend around Western New York, and rightfully so. He gave
me the single greatest piece of writing advice I have ever heard: “Never write about events, only write about
people.” I've applied Manny's advice to everything I've written
since: fiction, nonfiction, book, script. Character is key, whether I'm writing
about real people or ones born in my imagination.”
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