On the morning of September 24, 1980, 43-year-old Joseph McCoy was walking in Niagara Falls, New York, when a stranger closed in from behind and fired two close-range shots, leaving him dead on the pavement in daylight before fleeing. Early witness impressions described the shooter as a white male, sometimes a white youth, but there was no immediate arrest and no known personal connection between McCoy and his attacker.

McCoy’s killing was treated as the fourth in a cluster of .22-caliber shootings across the Buffalo area over about a day and a half; authorities said the same firearm linked those attacks. Months later suspicion focused on Joseph G. Christopher, a white Buffalo native. Military confinement after an unrelated knife attack reportedly produced statements and physical evidence — ammunition and a sawed-off barrel seized from his family cabin and home — that investigators described as tying him to the early shootings.

Did anyone in Niagara Falls in September 1980 see Joseph McCoy that morning or recall unusual activity near where he was walking?