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Radical Hate Manifesto: The Buffalo Supermarket Attack · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:25
  I'm going to have to kill that security guard. These chilling words, whether
• 0:30
  heard or read, are horrifying enough on their own, but they become even
• 0:34
  more sickening when we realize that the sinister intentions behind them were brought to life
• 0:40
  just a few short months later. The man, or, in some ways
• 0:44
  more than others, the boy behind those words was Peyton S. Gendron.
• 0:50
  Born on June twentieth, two thousand and three, in New York, Peyton
• 0:54
  planned on following his parents and becoming a civil engineer. To do that,
• 0:59
  he first went to Susquehanna Valley High School, where classmates remembered him as being
• 1:03
  a little odd but a quiet student, someone who just kept to himself.
• 1:08
  But that was only until the summer of twenty twenty one, when Peyton would
• 1:14
  say something that sent a shiver down everyone's spines. A teacher asked him and
• 1:19
  his classmates what they planned to do when the school year was up. Others
• 1:23
  mentioned traveling, summer vacations and universities. Peyton's answer was, I want to
• 1:30
  murder and commit suicide. His teacher didn't skip a beat. This incident was
• 1:34
  immediately reported, and Peyton was referred to a mental health hospital for evaluation,
• 1:40
  a quick and timely response from those in charge, and one that couldn't come
• 1:44
  any sooner because Peyton actually already owned multiple firearms. But only a day and
• 1:51
  a half later Peyton was released. He told the doctors and the police who'd
• 1:56
  responded to the incident that it had all been a joke and that he he
• 2:00
  only said that to get out of class. The authorities believed him. They
• 2:04
  didn't file anything against him, they didn't remove his weapons, and nothing serious
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  when on his records. Peyton then enrolled in Sunny Broome Community College to study
• 2:14
  engineering science and seemed to move on with his life, but online he revealed
• 2:19
  his true intentions. He confessed that his plans to commit murder and then kill
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  himself had been real and none of it had been a joke. In what
• 2:29
  is now being called his Manifesto, a one hundred eighty page document, outlines
• 2:34
  exactly how Peyton was feeling. He cites several sources far rights and white supremacist
• 2:39
  authors and politics, and he says that he believes that white people in America
• 2:44
  are being subjected to genocide. He describes that he had not always felt this
• 2:49
  way. He claims to have actually originally supported left leaning politics, but that
• 2:54
  he couldn't abide by them anymore. It was four Chan, he claimed,
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  that opened to racist memes that had spread at the beginning of the pandemic,
• 3:04
  had shown him that there was an active race war going on right under all
• 3:07
  of our noses, and at the end of things, it wouldn't be white
• 3:12
  people who'd come out on top. If I could go back, maybe I'd
• 3:15
  tell myself to get the f off of four Chan and get an actual life.
• 3:21
  He later wrote online in a moment of self reflection, I would like
• 3:24
  to say I had a quite normal childhood, but that is not the case.
• 3:29
  It's not that I actually dislike other people. It's just that they make
• 3:32
  me feel so uncomfortable. I've probably spent actual years of my life just being
• 3:37
  online, and to be honest, I regret it. I don't go to
• 3:40
  friends houses often, or go to any parties or whatever. Every day after
• 3:45
  school I would just go home and play games and watch YouTube, mostly by
• 3:49
  myself. For any of you listening and hoping that this self reflection meant that
• 3:54
  Peyton was doubting himself and his feelings enough to change his plans. That tragically
• 4:00
  not what happened. His online activity goes on to describe a trip to the
• 4:04
  emergency room in the spring of twenty twenty one. This visit had been the
• 4:10
  result of Peyton's confession to his teacher, and he explains that he ended up
• 4:14
  having to spend twenty hours in the hospital before he was released. His time
• 4:17
  there was supposed to draw him away from any nefarious intentions he may have had,
• 4:21
  but instead, he wrote that it pushed him towards actually acting on them.
• 4:28
  Peyton decided to make his ambitions a reality. He began studying other famous
• 4:32
  attacks and staking out locations. He purchased more weapons and more ammunition, and
• 4:39
  modified the ones that he already owned so that they could hold more rounds.
• 4:43
  All of this was documented online, either in his manifesto or in a private
• 4:47
  server on discord, where he kept a daily log. In January twenty twenty
• 4:53
  two, he honed in on a location he knew it would be somewhere in
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  Buffalo, which was the closest city to him that had the highest black population,
• 5:00
  and then he narrowed down the search even further. He studied churches and
• 5:05
  shops, even a synagogue, to see if he could target Jewish people instead,
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  and then he found Top's Friendly Markets, the only supermarket in Buffalo's East
• 5:15
  Side neighborhood. He studied their opening times and used Google to see when it
• 5:19
  was the busiest. Everything was hinged towards doing as much damage as possible,
• 5:25
  all with the intent of terrorizing, in Peyton's words, quote all non white,
• 5:30
  non Christian people and get them to leave this country. Peyton did all
• 5:34
  the reconnaissance that he could do online and then made plans to go down to
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  Top's Friendly Markets in person. But first he had some last minute modifications to
• 5:44
  do on his weapons. He covered them in racial slurs and names of other
• 5:47
  extremists who had committed terrible acts of violence and attacks. They were covered in
• 5:53
  slogans and references to the far right ideology that Peyton was using to justify the
• 5:58
  actions he was about to take. He was about as ready as he could
• 6:00
  be. The only thing he had left to do was go and see Top's
• 6:04
  Friendly Market with his own eyes so that he could get a good sense of
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  the place. In March two thousand twenty two, he drove hours from his
• 6:13
  home town of Conklin County, New York, to Buffalo and made his way
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  into the store. He didn't draw any attention to himself at first, but
• 6:20
  when he began sketching out the layout and making note of other people's races,
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  he was approached by the security guard. In hindsight, it was a close
• 6:30
  call, Peyton later wrote. He managed to swindle his way past the security
• 6:34
  guard by claiming that he was collecting census data and left before any one could
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  question him further. I'm going to have to kill that security guard. I
• 6:44
  hope he doesn't kill me, Peyton shared in his logs. Peyton wouldn't see
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  Tops again until May two thousand twenty two. The then nineteen year old arrived
• 6:54
  on May thirteenth and positioned himself outside. He looked like a beggar, and
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  many people mistook him for one. The manager at the store actually asked Peyton
• 7:02
  to leave, probably more than grateful anything else that Peyton did so without arguing,
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  but he would be back the very next day. About a half an
• 7:13
  hour before he arrived, Peyton sent out several invitations to join that private server
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  on discord, where he had been keeping a daily log of all of his
• 7:20
  preparations. He also uploaded his manifesto onto Google Docs and got in his car.
• 7:28
  He was wearing camouflage clothing and several layers of protection, including a military
• 7:31
  helmet. Once he'd reached the parking lot of the Top's Friendly Market, he
• 7:36
  live streamed his actions on Twitch. Only two minutes into the stream and Twitch
• 7:42
  shut him down. Just got to go for it, He's heard saying before
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  the feed cut out, and then he opened fire. Around two thirty Peyton
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  shot and killed four people in the parking lot before entering the store. Many
• 7:57
  heard the shots outside, but Peyton moved quickly and didn't leave much time for
• 8:01
  people to get to safety. Some staff and members of the public managed to
• 8:05
  make it into the break room and barricade the door. Some made it into
• 8:09
  the milk fridges, only to find Peyton shooting at them. They were some
• 8:13
  of the lucky ones, as the milk cartons actually ended up blocking the bullets.
• 8:18
  It was then that Peyton's own words would turn into a chilling case of
• 8:20
  foreshadowing. Former Buffalo Police Department officer and now armed security at Top's Friendly Market,
• 8:26
  Aaron Salter Junior, approached Peyton and tried to end this heinous attack.
• 8:33
  Aaron shot at Peyton and hit him in the head. The military helmet that
• 8:37
  Peyton was wearing actually helped save his life. Peyton then turned on Aaron and
• 8:41
  opened fire, killing him almost instantly. Just like Peyden said he would have
• 8:46
  to do, he killed the security guard. First responders were still on their
• 8:50
  way, and Peydon was now free to roam the store. He made his
• 8:54
  way through the aisles, picking off victims until he whipped around and pointed his
• 8:58
  gun at someone hiding behind the checkout counter. He then apologized and moved on,
• 9:03
  leaving the victim alive and physically unarmed because they were white. About six
• 9:09
  minutes after the attack started, law enforcement had Peyden pinned outside the store.
• 9:15
  Peyton's plan had been to continue his attack, but it looked like he would
• 9:18
  be moving on to phase two sooner than expected. He pointed a gun at
• 9:24
  his own neck and prepared to commit suicide. It seemed Peyden would get exactly
• 9:28
  what he wanted all along, but officers at the scene managed to talk Peyden
• 9:33
  out of taking his own life. He dropped his weapon and removed some of
• 9:35
  his body armor before surrendering himself to the police. A peaceful end to a
• 9:41
  tragic event that had just left ten innocent people dead. The courts, and
• 9:46
  the jury then threw the book at him. Peyton was found guilty of one
• 9:50
  count of domestic terrorism, ten counts of first degree murder as a hate crime,
• 9:54
  ten counts of second degree murder, and three counts of attempted second degree
• 10:00
  murder. He was sentenced to eleven life sentences without the possibility of parole,
• 10:05
  with an additional ninety years, but he still had more court cases to come.
• 10:09
  Given the magnitude of his crimes, it was possible that the prosecutions desired
• 10:13
  for the death penalty would be fulfilled before the day was done. It was
• 10:18
  only that the state of New York changed its legislature on the death penalty that
• 10:22
  spared Peyton from sharing the same fate as many of his victims. That's ten
• 10:39
  minute murder for today Brief and bingeable True Crime. I'm Joe, I'm the
• 10:43
  host, and thank you for taking the time to listen to the podcast today.
• 10:48
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  to the podcast, you can go to ten minute Murder dot com and I
• 11:03
  need to give you a heads up. Like always, I plan to post
• 11:05
  photos on social media as it relates to this case. Now, you know
• 11:11
  that I never post graphic and gory content on social media because first of all,
• 11:16
  I don't like seeing it, and I just assume that you don't either,
• 11:18
  so I don't post that. However, some of these photos, the
• 11:22
  non graphic photos, like the weapon I describe. He's got slurs written on
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  his guns. These pictures when I post them may or may not be taken
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  down. I don't know, So you can go to Facebook and Instagram and
• 11:35
  see if they're there. I'm going to post them anyway, just because I
• 11:39
  think it's important that you see all of the details of this case with your
• 11:43
  own eyes. So I'm going to post them now. Whether they are there
• 11:48
  at the time when you go to look for them, I don't know.
• 11:50
  Rarely do I have a post that gets flagged or taken down, but I
• 11:54
  have a feeling this one might be one of them. So go check it
• 11:58
  out on Facebook. You can search ten minute Murder and on Instagram as well.
• 12:01
  And that's going to do it. That's your episode for today. Thank
• 12:05
  you. So much for listening to ten minute murder