Joseph Harris: The Nefarious New Jersey "Ninja"

Joseph Harris in Court

On this day in 1991, former postal worker Joseph Harris murdered two of his co-workers at the Ridgewood, New Jersey, post office. His crimes were detected when another postal worker, Marcello Collado, drove up to the facility for a scheduled delivery and saw that the bay doors were closed and the two workers who were usually stationed there for the 3 A.M. shift were missing. Collado entered the building and saw a man all in black, wearing a bullet-proof vest, gas mask, and a Ninja headdress. He fled the building when the man shot at him, but missed, and alerted the police. Two police officers tried to enter the building but were attacked by a pipe bomb tossed by the assailant.

It soon became obvious that the SWAT team and hostage negotiators were needed on the scene. At dawn, Joseph Harris finally surrendered. When investigators entered the building they found the bodies of two mail handlers, Joseph VanderPaauw, 59, and Donald McNaught, 63. They had both been shot dead. Upon further investigation, it was noted that the shift supervisor, Carol Ott, had not reported for work. When authorities arrived at the home they discovered another crime scene. Ott had been stabbed several times with a weapon later determined to be a samurai sword. She was nude from the waist up. The body of her fiancé, Cornelius Kasten, was found in the basement. A bullet was still in his head.

Investigators learned that Joseph Harris had been fired from the Ridgewood post office after Carol Ott informed the U.S. Postal Inspection Service that he had made threats against her in the workplace. He was fired in April 1990 after refusing to cooperate with an investigation of the complaint. He blamed Ott for the firing. It should be noted that Ott had also gone to the police but decided against filing criminal charges against Harris.

As the investigation proceeded, police detectives realized that there was something familiar about the ninja outfit that Harris had been wearing. In 1988, a former investment banker was shot and killed in his Montville, New Jersey, home and his wife was brutally beaten and raped. Irene Edwards told police that she and her husband Roy and their two children had been attacked by a tall man wearing a ninja suit. Police believed that the motive was money. Roy was a dealer of rare gold coins and his inventory kept in the home. He also had several disgruntled former clients from the time he spent as an investment banker and had lost a lot of their money. With few leads to go on the case went cold until the Ridgewood murders.

Upon searching the residence of Joseph Harris, police found handcuffs similar to the ones used on the Edwards family in Montville. Even more damning was paperwork showing that Joseph Harris had been a client of Roy Edwards. Harris had even left a note that said "If you're reading this, I was probably killed. That guy conned me out of $10,000."

When Joseph Harris went to trial in 1993, for the murder of Roy Edwards, his lawyers attempted to mount an insanity defense. They argued that he had been doomed from the start, having been born behind bars in the Clinton State Reformatory for Women. They said that even as a young boy he had shown signs of schizophrenia. After his arrest, he had told a prison psychiatrist that he was possessed by a "Ninja spirit" that guided his actions. Nevertheless, a jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death. In 1996, he was sentenced to 160 years for the post office murders.

The case of Joseph Harris was brought before the New Jersey State Supreme Court when his lawyers appealed his death sentence. They argued that, as a black defendant, he had not been treated fairly. African Americans, they argued were more likely than whites to be handed the death penalty. The Court agreed to hear his appeal, but on September 24, 1996, two days before the hearing, Joseph Harris died in prison of natural causes.

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