In December of 2012, while I was deep in the writing of this book, there was another shooting, more horrific than most, due to its magnitude and the fact that the killer was an adult gunning down six- and seven-year-old children. On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza killed his mother at home and then massacred twenty-six staff and students at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Even after years of studying such attacks, I find that I have not become hardened to the horror. Instead, I seem more vulnerable to the suffering of others, my heart sinking with the heaviness of “No, not again,” as we as a nation and a world community one more time are left to ponder the causes of rampage attacks and what can be done to prevent large-scale violence in our schools.
I have grappled with these issues since April 30, 1999, just ten days after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attacked Columbine High School, when a sixteen-year-old boy was admitted to the psychiatric hospital where I worked. He was considered a potential school shooter, and it was my job to assess his risk for mass murder. Not long after this, another potential school shooter came through the hospital, and then another, and so on for more than ten years. There wasn’t a flood, but a steady, disturbing trickle of these cases.
I kept a file of these potential school shooters, studied what they had in common and how they differed, and compared them to the cases I read about in the news. Over the years, I have studied dozens of school shooters, compiled charts and graphs, and looked for patterns among the data. Out of necessity, I became a reluctant researcher of mass murderers in order to do the best job I could in working with patients, recommending appropriate treatment, and keeping them—and their communities—safe.
Preventing rampage attacks, however, is a complex task. Despite the facts that schools are more safety-conscious now than ever before, and that the perpetrators often leave a trail of warning signs, school shootings continue to occur. If we are to be more successful in preventing these attacks, we need to understand who these shooters are, what drives them to kill, and how we can spot them before it’s too late. This book is the culmination of many years of research and is my attempt to answer these urgent questions.
COMMENTS ON THE CASES
In this book I present forty-eight school shooters in depth and briefly reference others. There are some perpetrators I do not mention at all. I only included shooters in my sample if there was sufficient information available to gain insight into their minds and motives.
The purpose of the case descriptions is to provide enough information to classify the shooters within my typology, shed some light on the factors leading to the attacks, and allow for comparisons with other shooters. The amount of available information varied greatly from case to case; some attacks were very well documented, while others received scant news coverage after the incident.
I provide more background information for cases that are less well known and for which information is harder to find. In more well-known cases, such as the Columbine killers, I concentrate primarily on their personality dynamics, with less attention to their life circumstances. More in-depth information about their lives is available in my previous book, Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, my other writings, and through other resources.
Despite the attention many of these cases have received, there are still questions that remain unanswered. How badly was a shooter abused at home or bullied at school? Which of his many statements can be believed? Is there corroboration from other sources? I have worked hard to sort out these issues, but the conclusions are often tentative.
In some cases, basic information cannot be established. In the attack at Columbine High School, it is not possible to say with certainty whether Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold killed certain people, particularly when both shot the same person. This makes it impossible to definitively report the number of victims killed and wounded by each perpetrator. A similar problem exists for the Jonesboro shooting, where it is not known for certain which of the two shooters—Andrew Golden or Mitchell Johnson—shot which victims.
Even tallying the wounded can be problematic. Different sources sometimes have different figures, depending on how they count the victims. Also, in some instances the identities of the wounded were not made public, limiting the completeness of the data. For example, Wellington de Oliveira reportedly targeted girls, who constituted the majority of the fatalities. Not knowing if those who were wounded were male or female means that any attempt to tally the number of victims who were targeted because of their gender is incomplete.
For the sake of continuity, within each chapter, or section within a chapter, I present the shootings in chronological order.
COMMENTS ON DIAGNOSIS
Psychiatric diagnosis is highly subjective. Despite medical advances, there are no biological tests to determine if someone is schizophrenic, psychopathic, traumatized, or depressed. Brain scans can’t do it, and neither can blood tests, DNA analysis, or anything else. The same individual could be evaluated by multiple mental health professionals and receive different diagnoses from each.
I have not personally evaluated any of the shooters presented in this book. My classifications are based on the available information, which sometimes includes mental health evaluations conducted either before or after the perpetrators committed their attacks. For some shooters, the evidence very clearly suggests a particular diagnosis, but in other cases this is less clear. The conclusions presented here are open to debate, and the release of any new information may necessitate a reconsideration of my conclusions.
COMMENTS ON SYMPTOMS AND PATTERNS
I explore many possible factors that may contribute to rampage attacks. Many of these factors are true of millions of people who never commit violence. For example, having family members in the military was a common factor for many shooters. This does not mean that having relatives who served their country causes school shootings. It is, however, a factor that shows up repeatedly in the lives of the shooters and thus may be significant, particularly for those shooters who sought military careers but failed in their aspirations.
Similarly, a particular diagnosis, mental health problem, or behavior may be common among school shooters. This does not imply that anyone with these diagnoses, problems, or behaviors is at risk for committing a rampage attack. The vast majority of people who are psychotic, psychopathic, or traumatized do not commit murder.
In addition, some perpetrators reported paranormal experiences, which can be a symptom of schizotypal personality disorder. This does not mean that everyone who has paranormal experiences is schizotypal or that they are potential killers. In the context of other facts about these individuals, however, this may indicate a tenuous connection with reality and may be important in understanding the psychology of the shooters.