Bio

Joseph M. Harris was born in 1956 inside a correctional facility, setting a turbulent foundation for a life marked by significant psychological challenges. Throughout his youth and adulthood, Harris experienced ongoing psychiatric issues, which later influenced his behavior and actions. He eventually secured employment with the United States Postal Service, working as an overnight mail-sorting clerk at the post office located in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

During his tenure at the facility, co-workers described Harris as a highly tense, quiet, and sullen individual who displayed an volatile temper and resisted workplace authority. His professional relationships deteriorated significantly, particularly with his immediate night-shift supervisor, Carol Ott. The friction between Harris and Ott escalated to the point where Ott filed an official harassment report against him with the local police department in February 1990, citing workplace intimidation. 

Following the incident, postal management requested that Harris undergo a formal fitness-for-duty examination, which included mandatory physical and psychological evaluations. Harris refused to comply with the directive, resulting in his immediate termination from the United States Postal Service in April 1990. Harboring a severe grudge over his dismissal, Harris spent the subsequent 18 months isolating himself and stockpiling weapons including automatic firearms, silencers, hand grenades, and specialized blades, while plotting retaliation against his former employer.

Murder Story

Unbeknownst to law enforcement at the time, Harris's lethal violence began years before his high-profile postal assault. On November 15, 1988, Harris donned a black ninja suit, mask, and gloves to break into the Montville, New Jersey, home of his financial broker, Roy Edwards. Motivated by grievances over a failed investment that cost him roughly $10,000, Harris bound the family, sexually assaulted Edwards's wife and daughters, and shot Edwards to death when he attempted to escape. 

Because hundreds of other clients had lost money with Edwards, investigators did not initially consider Harris a suspect, leaving the homicide unsolved for nearly three years.The grudge regarding his postal termination culminated on the night of October 9, 1991. Dressed in black military fatigues, combat boots, a gas mask, a bulletproof vest, and a silk ninja-style hood, Harris drove to the Wayne, New Jersey, home of his former supervisor, Carol Ott. 

He forced entry and used a three-foot samurai sword to inflict fatal slashes on Ott. He then shot her fiancé, Cornelius Kasten Jr., behind the ear with a firearm as Kasten sat in a recreation room.Hours later, in the pre-dawn darkness of October 10, 1991, Harris used an old key to enter the Ridgewood post office. He hid in a basement locker room and ambushed two mail handlers, Joseph M. VanderPaauw and Donald McNaught, as they arrived for their shift, shooting them both at close range. 

When another employee arrived and fled to alert the police, responding officers were met with heavy gunfire and a stick of ignited dynamite thrown by Harris. Following a four-and-a-half-hour standoff with the Bergen County SWAT team, during which he detonated two small homemade explosives, Harris surrendered peacefully.

A search of his Paterson apartment uncovered a two-page manifesto detailing his intense hatred for the postal service and citing the 1986 Edmond, Oklahoma post office massacre as inspiration. Ballistics and forensic analysis from the standoff promptly linked Harris to the unsolved 1988 murder of Roy Edwards as well. Despite his defense attorneys arguing that he was legally insane and compelled by a "ninja spirit," a jury rejected the claim.

 In June 1993, Harris was convicted on multiple counts of first-degree capital murder and sentenced to death row. His case became an integral element of the era's national conversation surrounding workplace violence, heavily contributing to the phrase "going postal" in the American lexicon. Harris never faced execution, on September 23, 1996, he collapsed and died of natural causes at Trenton State Prison, just days before the New Jersey State Supreme Court was scheduled to hear arguments challenging the constitutionality of his death sentence.