Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - As his nephew prosecutes the case against the teenage suspect responsible for the racially-motivated mass shootings at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo in May 2022, former Erie County District Attorney Edward Cosgrove, now 88, draws parallels to the .22-caliber killer he hunted some 40 years earlier.
In an extensive report by ABC News, Cosgrove said he was haunted by 'eerie parallels' in the current case involving Peyton Gendron, who will be sentenced this week, and Joseph Christopher who was found responsible for serial hate killings in Buffalo in 1980. "It's a repeat," Cosgrove told ABC News. "If you want to take the totality of the circumstances, it's a repeat of what happened in '80."
In the report, Cosgrove recalls intense pressure to quickly solve the case of the elusive Christopher who, law enforcement officials suspect, killed 12 people, shooting four and stabbing the rest. Seven other Black men who were allegedly attacked by Christopher survived.
Christopher was ultimately convicted in 1982 for the murders of his first three victims and sentenced to life in prison. That conviction was later overturned on appeal and a second trial in 1987 ended with his conviction again. He died in prison in 1993 at age 37.
On Wednesday, Gendron will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and will face the loved ones of those he killed, in the culmination of a case prosecuted by Cosgrove's nephew, now Erie County DA John Flynn.