Authorities are getting a closer look into the motives of a 33-year-old man who shot and killed a Syracuse police officer and an Onondaga County sheriff’s deputy last month.
Onondaga County District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick says a portrait of a disturbed young man filled with racism, anti-Semitism and paranoia has emerged after police dug through Christopher Murphy’s online life. Speaking with WRVO this week, Fitzpatrick said Murphy’s phone and computer were littered with racist images of Black and Jewish people, as well as Nazi symbols. Murphy had also downloaded content involving false conspiracy theories, including one that says Jews were responsible for 9/11.
“Turns out that he's a racist, anti-Semitic buffoon,” said Fitzpatrick. “A lot of the material that he accessed on his phone, on his social media, had to do with Nazism and anti-Jew rhetoric. And some of these crazy Jewish conspiracies that the Jews were behind 9/11, and the usual claptrap about controlling the banking and the media.”
Fitzpatrick called Murphy a “really troubled, foolish, paranoid young man, who wasted his life."
Then on the evening of April 14, Murphy ended the lives of police officer Michael Jensen and Sheriff’s Lieutenant Michael Hoosock during a shootout at Murphy’s family home.
Fitzpatrick said his take on how these kinds of beliefs led to tragedy, is simple.
"I know that in the world there is good and there is evil. And this young man was evil,” he said. “I don't know what moved him down the road to think that Jews were bad or that he was somehow better than other people because of the color of the skin. But hatred like that is usually learned. It's not inbred, it's not in our DNA."
Police continue their investigation.
