US News

MASS KILLER EYES FREEDOM

The man convicted of systematically slaughtering two women and eight children in the worst mass killing in New York history before 9/11 could go free next month.

Christopher Thomas, 59, comes up for parole for the first time since he was found guilty of heartlessly pumping bullets into the heads of his terrified victims in the “Palm Sunday Massacre” on April 15, 1984.

Veteran detectives recoiled in horror when they saw the blood-splattered bodies – including that of a pregnant woman – in a railroad flat at 1080 Liberty Ave. in the East New York section of Brooklyn.

“One child was eating chocolate pudding sitting on the couch in a suspended state, with the spoon still in her hand, dead,” said former NYPD Detective Beau Dietl.

“There were victims sitting around the living room with fear on their faces after being systematically shot,” he said.

The slayings made front-page news for days. “Showed No Mercy,” read a Post headline.

At his trial, Thomas insisted he was innocent. And he did so again last week in an exclusive interview at the Shawangunk Prison in upstate Wallkill, where he is serving 25 to 50 years on 10 manslaughter counts.

“I didn’t do it,” the salt-and-pepper-haired Thomas coolly repeated. “I wasn’t there.”

The convicted killer, sporting a pencil-thin mustache, said he welcomed the chance to appear before the parole board to argue his case, but he wasn’t optimistic about being released.

“It would be a miracle – like landing a plane in the Hudson River,” he said.

He said he did not know who committed the heinous crime, but he had been involved in drug dealings with Enrique Bermudez, a convicted cocaine dealer whose family was killed.

Drug dealers “have enemies,” he noted.

Ballistic evidence was found at his home, and witnesses placed him near the scene of the crime.

But Thomas insisted that he was “hung out to dry” by zealous prosecutors and detectives who even used a jailhouse snitch’s testimony against him.

“I feel bad for the family,” he said. “But if I have a problem with you, I would take it up with you, not your family. I was thrown to the wolves.”

Thomas knows his chances of parole are extremely slim.

“I have seen guys in here turned down two and three times with cases much less high-profile than mine,” he said. “But I will get out. One day.”

Bermudez, returning from errands with a son, discovered the bodies, which included his pregnant girlfriend, Virginia Lopez, 24, and her two children, Eddie, 7, and Juan, 4.

He ran outside and found Carmine Rossi, who owned a bakery next door.

“There was a boy face-down in the kitchen, shot in the head,” Rossi recalled. “In the living room, I saw the back of several heads with the television on as though they were watching. One woman had a baby-food jar in her hand.”

Detectives initially thought the massacre was the handiwork of drug-cartel hit men.

But nine days later, Bermudez provided another possible motive. Thomas, he said, was a regular cocaine customer who accused him of having an affair with his estranged wife, an allegation that turned out to be a coke-fueled fantasy.

In July 1985, a Brooklyn jury found Thomas guilty of manslaughter but not murder. They felt he acted without full responsibility because of drug use.

john.doyle@nypost.com