Chapter 5
Targeted Attacks
Research sometimes yields unexpected results. I had planned to present the college shooters as I did the secondary school shooters, grouping them as psychopathic, psychotic, and traumatized. However, this became problematic when I realized that several of the college shooters were both psychopathic and psychotic. Also, though traumatized shooters were the most common type of secondary school perpetrators, there was not a single traumatized shooter in the college sample.
As I studied the college incidents, I was struck by an alternative organizing principle: whether the attacks were targeted against specific people or were random assaults on strangers. Attacks by secondary school shooters were generally random or mixed, meaning the shooters targeted one or two specific victims while also shooting random people. College attacks, however, were more distinctly targeted or random.
In addition, the pattern of events leading up to targeted attacks was consistently different from that of the random rampages. Furthermore, analyzing the two types of attacks on multiple dimensions, including suicide rates and numbers of people shot, revealed striking differences. Thus, the college shooters are categorized as targeted or random attackers. Two shooters whose rampages did not clearly fit either category are discussed as ambiguous attackers. Finally, though the college shooters are organized by attack type, they are also discussed in terms of their psychopathic and psychotic features.
TARGETED ATTACKS BY PSYCHOPATHIC SHOOTERS
Gang Lu
“It is believed that there exists no justice for little people in this world, extraordinary action has to be taken to preserve
this world as a better place to live.”
Date: November 1, 1991
Age: 28
School: University of Iowa
Location: Iowa City, IA
Killed: 5
Wounded: 1
Outcome: Suicide
In 1985, one of the top physics students in China came to the United States to study for his PhD in physics. His name was Gang Lu. When he arrived at Iowa University, however, he changed his mind and decided to pursue his MBA instead.[1] Why the change in plans? That’s where the money was.
Lu was arrogant and abrasive and alienated people. A student said that Lu “argued about everything, and he had this I-must-be-right attitude.”[2] A former roommate of Lu’s said of him, “He looked down on people and made fun of them behind their back. He believed he was the smartest person in the physics department and felt everyone else should worship him and kowtow to him. . . . [He] was not a nice person.”[3]
Lu’s manner did not endear him to women. He wanted a girlfriend but had no success in his romantic endeavors. He was very persistent in his pursuit of women, sometimes showing up at their rooms unexpectedly. One woman commented, “He never threatened me, but he did scare me a few times.”[4] Once, after a rejection, he came home drunk and kicked a hole in the wall of his apartment. Following a trip to Las Vegas, Lu reportedly showed off photographs of prostitutes and disclosed their fees.
Though Lu wanted to change his major to business, the conditions of his visa prohibited this. He argued with people at the university, but without success. Despite Lu’s frustration, he might have accepted his role as the physics department’s rising star and perhaps had an illustrious career if it were not for the arrival of Linhua Shan. Shan, another physics student from China, arrived after Lu’s first year. Though Lu was brilliant, Shan was even more so. To make matters worse, he was friendly, attractive, and very popular. He also was engaged to a beautiful woman. Socially, Shan was everything that Lu wasn’t.
As they progressed in the program, Shan repeatedly outperformed Lu. He outscored Lu on their qualifying exam; when they had a class together, Lu got an A minus, but Shan got an A. Furthermore, even though Shan entered the department a year after Lu, he received his degree sooner.
Besides his rivalry with Shan, Lu became increasingly bitter toward the faculty. He was particularly angry with his adviser, Professor Chris Goertz, by whom he felt unsupported and mistreated. In addition, when Goertz missed deadlines in sending letters of recommendation, Lu blamed him for not being hired.
Lu reached his breaking point, however, when he did not win the Spriesterbach Award—a $2,500 cash award given by the university to the student with the best dissertation. To make matters even worse for Lu, the prize was awarded to Linhua Shan. Lu was both stunned and outraged. He believed he was the most brilliant student in the department and that his dissertation was the best. He believed this with absolute certainty and interpreted his failure to win the prize as an indication that the system was rigged against him. He felt he was the victim of an unfair process.
Lu’s failure to get the Spriesterbach Award became the major focus of his life. He waged a campaign in protest, first in the department, then higher up in the university, and eventually tried to take his complaint to the press. Considering that the award had a relatively small cash value and was unheard of outside the university, Lu’s rage was striking. He wrote to an administrator that he would take “further action, whatever necessary, to protect my rights.”[5]
When he did not get satisfaction from the university, he sent letters to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Des Moines Register, and KGAN-TV in Iowa City. He believed he was the victim of a conspiracy by university administrators and was determined to bring their misconduct into the open. Lu wrote of himself, “Outraged by the downright attempt to cover up, Mr. Lu is more determined to pursue a fair resolution of this matter at any cost. And he is considering to take possible legal action if he is left without other choice.”[6] None of these letters drew any response.
When all of his efforts proved futile, Lu resorted to violence. He gunned down Linhua Shan, Professor Goertz, other physics professors, and an administrator and her secretary. Then he killed himself. He defended his actions in a statement he left to be read after his death.
Lu’s statement justified his violence, explaining that using firearms were a traditional way to protect one’s rights in the United States. Lu wrote, “Privately-owned [sic] guns are the only practical way for individuals/minority to protect them against the oppression from the evil organizations/majority who actually control the government and legal system.”[7] In his mind, he was the victim of injustice, and, therefore, “extraordinary action has to be taken to preserve this world as a better place to live.”[8]
Lu was narcissistic, abrasive, insensitive, and envious of Linhua Shan. He believed that his professors interfered with his success and that the university engaged in gross misconduct in denying him the Spriesterbach. After his narcissistic strivings were repeatedly thwarted, he justified the necessity of murder, believing he was making the world a better place.
* * *
Like other psychopathic shooters, Lu could not tolerate a threat to his narcissism, so he killed the authorities who thwarted him and the rival who “stole” his award. In this way, he resembled Robert Steinhäuser, who also killed teachers and administrators he believed had wronged him.
Lu appears to be an example of an abrasive psychopath. Such people “have incessant discords with others, magnifying every minor friction into repeated and bitter struggles.”[9] They are quarrelsome, attacking and belittling people who disagree with them. A key feature is their claim of acting on behalf of lofty principles. Lu believed he was righting the wrongs of the university, bringing to light the evil that existed there. For such psychopaths, “Anything personal they have done to others does not really reflect their character but is merely a justified reaction to the uncaring treatment to which they have been exposed.”[10]
Valery Fabrikant
“I know how people get what they want, they shoot a lot of people.”
Date: August 24, 1992
Age: 52
School: Concordia University
Location: Montreal, Canada
Killed: 4
Wounded: 1
Outcome: Took hostages.
Overpowered and
apprehended. Prison
According to multiple sources, Valery Fabrikant’s behavior was chronically outrageous. Much of the information presented here comes from the official report commissioned by Concordia University and written by John Cowan (one of two reports on the incident).[11] Cowan reviewed over nine hundred documents and interviewed more than two dozen people.
An immigrant from Belarus to Montreal, Fabrikant was hired by the mechanical engineering department at Concordia University. His French, however, needed improvement. He took a French class but complained incessantly to, and about, the instructor. He was so verbally abusive to her that many students, as well as the instructor herself, wanted to quit the class. Fabrikant was barred from attending, first by a supervisor, and then by “a legal and proper order.”[12] Despite these measures, Fabrikant came to class and tore up the legal order in front of the teacher and classmates. As noted by Cowan, “This is a marvelously clear example of classical insubordination, from a labour law perspective.”[13] Afterward, an order came from higher up in the university, and Fabrikant finally complied.
This was not the end of the matter, however. Feeling that he had been victimized, Fabrikant “complained that his career was being damaged by the refusal of the University to let him become bilingual for free.”[14] He argued that the university must pay the tuition for another French class. He pushed this issue repeatedly, and it went up the chain of command until legal counsel to the university advised that no concessions should be made.
As demonstrated in this sequence of events, Fabrikant was narcissistic, relentlessly entitled, abrasive, demanding, abusive, and insubordinate yet somehow believed he was the victim and used his status as victim to make further demands.
During his years at Concordia, Fabrikant became embroiled in significant conflicts with his department. Having named colleagues as coauthors on his articles, he later said they did not contribute to the papers. He accused them of acting unethically in allowing their names to be included. He demanded they write letters to all the journals where the articles had been published and retract their authorship. When they refused to do so, he sued two members of his department.[15]
The history of Fabrikant’s conflicts with the university is too long and complex to be told here. Besides the issue with authorship, however, there were contract disputes regarding his position and pursuit of tenure. Most relevant are Fabrikant’s behavior in creating conflicts and his methods of attempting to get his demands met. As early as 1989—three years before his attack—Fabrikant talked about solving his problems “the North American way”: “I know how people get what they want, they shoot a lot of people.”[16] He even named people in his department he’d like to shoot. This was taken seriously, and the university had him followed and posted security guards at the homes of two of the intended victims.[17] Despite this, Fabrikant continued to teach at the university.
His outrageous behavior continued. An administrator came home one evening to a voice-mail message from Fabrikant: “You know who I am, and you know what is going to happen.”[18] He sent e-mail complaints to people inside and outside the university, sent transcripts of secretly recorded conversations, and made allegations of financial fraud against the department. He even contacted two government agencies about his complaints. More disturbing was the tone of one of his e-mails: “I am no longer afraid of anything or anybody. . . . We all have to die one day.”[19]
Fabrikant eventually received media coverage of his complaints against the university. Following this, a woman who had reported to the university in 1982 that she had been raped by Fabrikant[20] contacted the administration to warn them that he could be physically violent.[21] The situation in the department was so tense that surveillance cameras were mounted and secretaries had panic buttons installed in their desks.[22]
During the legal proceedings against his colleagues, Fabrikant was cited for contempt of court.[23] The contempt hearing was scheduled for August 25, 1992. This hearing never occurred, because on August 24 Fabrikant went on a rampage, shooting five people in his department, killing four. Still not satisfied, Fabrikant took two hostages, called 911, announced he had “made several murders,” and asked to speak to a television reporter.[24]
An official report about the attack summed up his story, finding that “Dr. Fabrikant was thwarted in his search for a tenured professorship. First, he gathered evidence with which to blackmail his way into an appointment; then he attempted to force the university to appoint him; then he tried to destroy the reputation of those he thought responsible for his rejection; and finally, in despair and anger, he killed four innocent bystanders in cold blood and gravely wounded a fifth.”[25] To this day, Fabrikant apparently has no remorse. On the website he maintains from prison he boasts, “I killed not one, but four scoundrels.”[26] It seems that as far as he is concerned, he was the victim. Like Gang Lu, Fabrikant appears to think he made the world a better place by killing innocent people.
* * *
Valery Fabrikant, like Gang Lu, sought revenge when his goals were thwarted. Fabrikant seems most like the abrasive psychopath, turning minor issues into major conflicts and pursuing them with a vengeance. Like Gang Lu, he apparently believed he was acting to uphold ethical standards. Even after killing four people, Fabrikant defended the murders on principle as an appropriate response to an inappropriate situation.
Robert Flores
“You better watch your back if you’re going to flunk me.”
Date: October 29, 2002
Age: 41
School: University of Arizona
Location: Tucson, AZ
Killed: 3
Wounded: 0
Outcome: Suicide
Robert Flores had an anger problem. At times, he was aware of this. Once, when a professor had told him his classroom behavior was unacceptable, Flores replied, “I’m doing better than I used to. In the past I would have bashed someone’s head against a curb.”[27] Typically, however, Flores apparently viewed his anger as a reasonable response to unreasonable treatment.
According to Flores, he had “marginal parents at best.”[28] His father was a police officer who was emotionally distant. Flores joined the army at nineteen and served for eleven years; during his service he qualified as an expert marksman.[29] Flores married, had two children, and became a licensed practical nurse. He moved his family from Texas to Tucson to obtain additional nursing education at the University of Arizona. Once in Tucson, his life began to unravel.
Flores’s wife left him, taking their two children with her. He said his wife falsely accused him of being “cruel and abusive,”[30] claiming she manipulated the legal system by stating “all the politically correct buzzwords.”[31] He lost a year in his program dealing with the divorce. This led to financial hardships: “Eventually laid off and scraping together temporary work, he struggled to pay credit card debts and student loans.”[32]
His interactions with his professors angered him. As a narcissist, Flores liked to be the center of attention; he dominated classroom discussion to the point of being disruptive. He “was belligerent, angry, and rude. . . . He would blow up and call [the instructors] names in class.”[33] When one professor didn’t call on him, he erupted in fury and challenged her in class. Flores felt so ignored by his professors that he complained to the dean and insisted on making a written statement. His behavior was so belligerent that twice the dean warned him he could be expelled.[34] Unfazed by authority, he continued to threaten and intimidate his professors.
In April 2001 Flores was heard to make a suicidal remark, as well as a comment that he might “put something [like a bomb] under the college.”[35] The professor who heard these comments reported them to campus security, but there was no apparent follow-up. Flores’s professors encouraged him to seek counseling, but he refused.
One of his instructors, Robin Rogers, failed Flores in his pediatric rotation. She had received four complaints about his behavior from staff and patients. Flores was heard telling Rogers, “You better watch your back if you’re going to flunk me.”[36] Rogers was so worried about Flores that she talked to family and friends about him and asked her congregation to pray for her safety. Another professor, Barbara Monroe, also failed Flores. A third professor, Cheryl McGaffic, talked to her husband about Flores’s anger and intimidating behavior and her fear of what he might do.[37]
These three women—Rogers, Monroe, and McGaffic—were the three women Flores murdered. Shortly before his rampage, however, he announced that he had received a concealed-weapons permit.[38] Perhaps this was his way of making them squirm in fear before he killed them. After killing the three professors, Flores killed himself.
On the morning of the attack Flores mailed a twenty-two-page letter to the publisher of the Arizona Daily Star. He referred to his upcoming attack as “a reckoning,” making his concern with status clear: “The University is filled with too many people who are filled with hubris.”[39] As a narcissist, Flores could not tolerate anyone with status and wanted to bring down the authorities who had power over him.
* * *
Robert Flores, like Lu and Fabrikant, felt wronged by university authorities and believed he was making the world a better place by murdering those who wronged him. The fact that all three of his victims were female professors may have been a coincidence, but perhaps not. Maybe he could not tolerate women having power over him. He allegedly abused his wife and may have been hostile toward women in general.
Flores’s quarrelsome, contentious behavior suggests he was an abrasive psychopath. He believed he was upholding high principles in killing people who had wronged him, and he justified his behavior as a reasonable reaction against them. In addition, however, Flores also had features of the malevolent psychopath: “These psychopaths often relish menacing others, making them cower and withdraw.”[40] Flores threatened and intimidated his professors and apparently enjoyed doing so. Millon and Davis capture key aspects of Flores’s character in their description of this kind of psychopath. “Spurred by repeated rejection and driven by an increasing need for retribution,” they write, “aggressive impulses will surge into the open. At these times, the psychopaths’ behaviors may become outrageously and flagrantly antisocial. Not only do they show minimal guilt or remorse for their violent acts, but they may instead display an arrogant contempt for the rights of others.”[41]
COMMENTS
Lu, Fabrikant, and Flores were highly narcissistic, with demanding, obnoxious behavior. They were also paranoid—not in the delusional sense, but in terms of seeing malice or slights where they did not exist. This was a result of their narcissism. They could not accept failure, rejection, or disappointment as having anything to do with their own shortcomings. This simply was not conceivable within their mental worlds. Thus, they viewed their problems as being caused by other people’s hostility toward them. They also had the masochistic trait of obsessing about and magnifying their complaints and setbacks, acting as “injustice collectors” who accumulated grievances that in their minds justified revenge.
A noteworthy feature of these three shooters is the lack of charm or impression management that is often seen in psychopaths. They were all openly arrogant and abrasive. Whereas Eric Harris was able to hide his dark side from his teachers under a mask of pleasantness, these psychopathic shooters demonstrated no such ability in impression management. Also, unlike the secondary school psychopathic shooters who often had peer support for their attacks, these shooters had no external support for their rampages.
TARGETED ATTACKS BY SHOOTERS WITH
PSYCHOTIC AND PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS
Peter Odighizuwa
“I was sick, I was sick. I need help.”
Date: January 16, 2002
Age: 43
School: Appalachian School of
Law
Location: Grundy, VA
Killed: 3
Wounded: 3
Outcome: Prison
Peter Odighizuwa was afraid of others, and they were afraid of him. His fears for his safety were unwarranted. Others’ terror of him was justified.
Odighizuwa was born in Nigeria and came to the United States in 1980 at age twenty-one. He worked in Portland, Oregon, as a bus driver for seven years. His job came to a bizarre end when Odighizuwa was ordered off his bus by a company officer. Odighizuwa refused to comply, drove away in the bus with the officer in pursuit, and crashed the bus. Odighizuwa was fired for “reporting to work under the influence of drugs or alcohol, deliberate destruction of the district’s property, and for posing an immediate or potential threat to public safety.”[42] Odighizuwa initiated a lawsuit claiming unlawful termination but dropped it after ten days.
In the 1990s, Odighizuwa briefly attended The Ohio State University[43] before going to Central State University in Ohio where he earned a mathematics degree. He then decided to be a lawyer and was accepted at the Appalachian Law School in Grundy, Virginia. He was forty-two, married to a woman from Nigeria, and had four sons. He had no income or money saved. Lack of funds was a chronic stress, and Odighizuwa was frequently desperate, such that “Early in his first semester he brought his four children to a meeting of the Student Bar Association to plead for money to pay his electric bill. Later that semester, he took over the podium in his Civil Procedures class and again appealed for money.”[44] Besides his financial stress, Odighizuwa struggled in his classes, failing some and barely passing others. He also had conflicts with faculty and administration. He filed a grievance against a professor and, in an unusual move, sent it to most of the faculty. He also filed a grievance against two people in the Student Services department.[45] At this point, he was paranoid, “complaining of a conspiracy to deny him access to sources of financial aid.”[46]
His paranoia manifested in other situations as well. When Odighizuwa found a spent shell casing in his yard, he became convinced his life was in danger. The police found no evidence of a threat, but Odighizuwa was so relentless in pestering them that they threatened to charge him with obstruction of justice.[47]
He became increasingly suspicious. When a tree fell across a road, Odighizuwa thought people had deliberately obstructed his movements. At home, he covered his bedroom windows with cardboard and had multiple locks on his door—a precaution that was not necessary in Grundy, Virginia. Odighizuwa “really started to think that people were out to get him, [that they] just didn’t want to see him make it through law school.”[48]
Odighizuwa’s behavior was abrasive, particularly toward women. The director of Student Services “considered him so abusive and threatening that she barred him from the office unless he was accompanied by one of the Deans or the president of the Student Bar Association.”[49] He reportedly refused to sit next to women and “verbally assaulted and threatened female students and staff . . . several students had reported they were afraid of him.”[50]
Odighizuwa talked back to professors in class and was prickly and belligerent. One student said, “Peter would snap at you for no reason—even when you tried to reach out to him.”[51] Another said, “He always thought he was getting picked on. . . . I had been told to stay away from him.”[52] Odighizuwa was nicknamed “Shooter,” and a student recalled, “We used to sit around and talk about how Peter’s gonna shoot somebody.”[53]
Odighizuwa’s situation deteriorated in September 2001, when he hit his wife in the face. He was charged with assault; she took their children and moved out.[54] Shortly after this, a physician gave him an undisclosed medication. Odighizuwa’s grades for the fall semester were a D+, a D, and an F. He decided to withdraw from school and met with Student Services on January 15, 2002. When he learned that his withdrawal meant his financial aid would end and he would have to begin repaying his student loans, Odighizuwa had a “bitter altercation” with a staff member.[55]
The next day Odighizuwa shot and killed the two professors who had worked with him most closely.[56] He passed through a student lounge and chatted briefly with a classmate and then shot a group of four women, killing one. One source said he only knew one of the women.[57] Another source said Odighizuwa commented that all four had been unusually mean to him, but he was unable to give particulars. This source also quoted Odighizuwa as saying, “I wasn’t just shooting all over the place. . . . I saw the people who were menacing me.”[58]
Though people had observed Odighizuwa’s paranoia before the attack, his comments afterward revealed severe delusional thinking. He reported, “I feel like I’m God sometimes, and I was running demons out of the school. It was like an exorcism.”[59] When he was in prison, he stated, “I was taking care of FBI and CIA agents. And the KGB, too.”[60] He said, “I was sick, I was sick. I need help.”[61] He also said that he didn’t have his medication and that he needed it. After the attack, Odighizuwa was diagnosed with schizophrenia.[62]
* * *
Peter Odighizuwa had a history of litigation and problematic behavior at work. He faced severe financial stress. He appears to have had particular hostility toward women, including his wife and women at the university. (In this way he resembled Robert Flores, who also reportedly hit his wife and who focused his anger on women at the university.) Odighizuwa was schizophrenic, with prominent paranoid delusions. Unlike some psychotic shooters, his attack had nothing to do with ideology and he had no role models for murder. His rampage was a response to overwhelming stress, hopelessness, and paranoia.
Besides being psychotic, he also seems like an abrasive psychopath, being chronically quarrelsome and belligerent. He could also be seen as an explosive psychopath. These are people who are “deeply frustrated by the futility and hopelessness of their lives” and for whom “impotence and personal failure become the source of . . . aggressive acts.”[63]
Biswanath Halder
“By doing what I did I saved the mankind.”
Date: May 9, 2003
Age: 62
School: Case Western Reserve
University
Location: Cleveland, OH
Killed: 1
Wounded: 2
Outcome: Standoff with
police for hours. Shot by
police. Surrendered. Prison
At age sixty-two, Biswanath Halder was a lonely, isolated man. He had come to the United States from India in 1969 when he was eighteen, eventually becoming a citizen in 1980. He apparently had no friends or family in this country and maintained virtually no contact with his relatives in India.[64] Despite his dreams of success, Halder had “an erratic work history characterized by short-term jobs where he was either terminated or quit because of personality or monetary problems. In addition, Halder had sued many of his former employers, alleging racial discrimination or unfair employment practices.”[65]
Halder also had an erratic education history. He completed a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in India but struggled with graduate education in the United States. He started a business program at New York University, studied mathematics, computer science, and economics at the University of Massachusetts, and later took courses at Boston University. He did not complete a degree at any of these institutions.[66]
Halder eventually received his MBA from Case Western Reserve University in 1999 and continued taking classes there for another year. He wanted to launch an online business and spent twelve to fourteen hours a day in a campus computer lab. His behavior, however, became increasingly problematic. He monopolized multiple computers and was rude to students, and one woman reported that he harassed her in an effort to make her proofread documents for him. He also reportedly wore the same clothes daily and had poor grooming. His behavior was so odd, arrogant, and abrasive that someone created a website called HalderSucks.org, where people posted insulting comments about him.[67]
The situation became serious when someone hacked into Halder’s business website and deleted his files and a reported fifty thousand contacts.[68] This constituted cyber crime, and Halder was relentless in pursuing justice. Unfortunately, he believed that Shawn Miller, who worked in the computer lab, was the guilty party. Investigations subsequently showed this was not true,[69] but Halder was fixated on Miller.
Halder was also paranoid. He complained that he was mistreated in the computer lab by “master race” employees because of his “inferior race.”[70] As a student in the Weatherhead School of Management, he sent an e-mail to the entire program in which he wrote, “The evil man [Shawn Miller] wiped out everything that it took my lifetime to create. . . . Now, the evil man is on his evil path to destroy Weatherhead.”[71] Halder was not only paranoid, he was also grandiose. He claimed that if his site hadn’t been hacked, he could have had a business dealing with “billions and trillions” of dollars in less than two years.[72]
Halder fought a legal battle for nearly three years, even after his own attorney tried to convince him that Miller was innocent.[73] Halder also waged a campaign through other channels, posting messages about his situation on his website, sending e-mails to people in the university, and even contacting the FBI and the Judiciary Committees for the United States Senate and House of Representatives.[74]
He said that if he lost his appeal in the case against Miller, he would “fuck those fuckers up.”[75] When Miller heard about this, he told his supervisor, “apparently Halder is interested in killing us.”[76] Halder lost the appeal on April 29, 2003. This legal failure convinced him that the FBI and legal system were corrupt and deliberately working against him.[77] He also believed that Case Western paid journalists to write negative articles about him. When his attorney withdrew from the case due to Halder’s behavior, Halder wrote “a letter to the judge alleging that his opponent [Shawn Miller] had bribed his attorney.”[78] After the attack, Halder claimed that his “attorneys were conspiring against him with the prosecutor and with Case Western.”[79]
Ten days after he lost his appeal, and nearly three years after his website had been destroyed, Halder went on his rampage. He broke into the building that housed the business school, using a sledgehammer to shatter a glass door. He shot and killed the first person he encountered.[80] He fired at other people, missing some but wounding two. His primary targets were “Shawn Miller and three of his friends,”[81] but they managed to avoid Halder. The police arrived, along with seventy SWAT troops. Halder held them off for seven hours with a reported ninety-three people stuck in the building. Halder shot at the officers and eventually surrendered after he had been wounded by gunfire.
After his rampage, Halder seemed to believe he had put an end to cyber crime and was the salvation of humanity. He said, it “will never be allowed to happen again. . . . By doing what I did I saved the mankind.”[82] Even in prison he was unrepentant, claiming “Violence is essential!”[83] He continued to seek publicity, wanting to contact journalists to “tell the entire world the whole truth” and bring to light the “evil objectives” of Case Western Reserve University.[84]
* * *
Biswanath Halder may be schizotypal or schizophrenic. After his attack, multiple mental health professionals diagnosed him as psychotic.[85] He had poor grooming, had no friends, and maintained virtually no contact with his family. Despite years of education he could barely eke out a living. Halder had paranoid delusions about Shawn Miller, Case Western, the justice system, and even his own attorneys. He also had delusions of grandeur, believing that despite his failure at the age of sixty to achieve financial stability his website would produce trillions of dollars. His grandiosity was also evident in his claims that he had ended cyber-crime and “saved the mankind.”
Like previously discussed shooters, Halder had features of the abrasive psychopath, being chronically belligerent and entitled. He had the incessant discords, the quarrelsomeness, and the conviction that what he did was justified because of the treatment he had received. Like other targeted shooters, he waged a campaign both inside and outside the university. He also claimed the moral high ground even as he was suing and threatening to kill someone who was innocent.
Amy Bishop
“Dr. Amy Bishop, Harvard trained.”
Date: February 12, 2010
Age: 44
School: University of Alabama
Location: Huntsville, AL
Killed: 3
Wounded: 3
Outcome: Apprehended.
Prison
On February 12, 2010, Professor Amy Bishop was in a biology department staff meeting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Forty-five minutes into the meeting, she pulled out a Ruger nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol and shot six of her colleagues, killing three.[86] It was a bizarre act for a professor. Even more bizarre is that it was not the first time Amy Bishop had killed somebody. When she was twenty-one, she had shot her brother with a shotgun, fled the scene, and tried to hijack a car from a car dealership. She claimed the shooting was an accident, and it was accepted as such at the time.[87]
The details of the shooting, however, suggest that she knew what she was doing. Bishop reportedly had fired the gun accidentally previously that same morning, leaving a hole in her bedroom wall. She then took the gun downstairs. Right after her mother told her not to point it at anyone, Bishop turned toward her brother, pointed the gun, and pulled the trigger. She then, allegedly, accidentally fired the gun a third time. The former police chief who handled the case in 1986 commented, “To say someone accidentally fired a shotgun three times is crazy.”[88] Furthermore, an article was found in her bedroom about a man who had committed murder with a shotgun, fled the scene, and hijacked a car from a car dealership—the very sequence of actions that Bishop enacted, except that she failed in her attempt to steal a car.[89]
Between killing her brother and murdering her colleagues, she may have also tried to kill someone else. In the 1990s Bishop had worked for Dr. Paul Rosenberg, a researcher at Children’s Hospital in Boston. Rosenberg had wanted her to leave because of her inability “to meet the standards required for the work.”[90] She was not stable and had reportedly been violent.[91] While working with Rosenberg, a team of nine researchers had completed a paper for publication, with Bishop listed as second author. She erupted with fury over not having been named the first author. One of the other authors said, “She exploded into something emotional that we never saw before.”[92]
Less than a month after Bishop left Rosenberg’s laboratory, he received a letter bomb. Bishop and her husband were investigated, but there was too little evidence to convict them. When Bishop talked to a colleague about being interrogated, she “was quite cavalier about it,” grinning as she described the interview.[93] Interestingly, Bishop wrote three highly autobiographical novels (unpublished); in all three, the protagonists “fantasize about the deaths of those who have wronged them.”[94]
Bishop was unusually status-conscious and often introduced herself as “Dr. Amy Bishop, Harvard trained.” She acted as if she were superior and was once arrested when her arrogance got out of control. While dining at the International House of Pancakes she wanted a booster seat for one of her children. Another woman took the last booster seat, and Bishop flew into a rage, shouting, “I am Dr. Amy Bishop.”[95] She then punched the woman in the head. Bishop was arrested for assault and battery and disorderly conduct and was given probation.[96]
Besides being arrogant, Bishop’s behavior revealed social cluelessness. Whether in a writers’ group in her neighborhood or with students and colleagues, she was odd, inappropriate, and abrasive. One neighbor said, he “could just tell she wasn’t right. I said to my wife right away, stay away from her. She’s bad news.”[97] He went on to describe Bishop as “belligerent, confrontational, a bully.” When Bishop and her family moved away, the neighbors got pizza and beer and had a celebration; one person said, “Ding, dong, the witch is dead.”[98]
Bishop’s students at the University of Alabama complained repeatedly to the administration about her. They wrote a letter to the head of the department, met with him in person, and submitted a petition signed by dozens of students.[99] The petition cited her “odd, unsettling ways,”[100] including her failure to make eye contact when speaking with them. Also, “Students and colleagues observed that Bishop was angry, stressed, distracted, disruptive, and displayed inappropriate behavior.”[101] Her graduate students frequently switched out of her lab due to her odd behavior and “flip-outs.”[102] Bishop reportedly “could be rude and dismissive to students and colleagues alike, and her teaching was often seen as disjointed.”[103] A university administrator said that in faculty meetings Bishop rambled about “bizarre” things—“left-field kind of stuff.”[104]
One administrator avoided Bishop due to her “harassing” and “hounding” behavior.[105] A professor said he had seen her go “ballistic” and stated that she was “out of touch with reality.” He even called her “crazy.” When challenged on this, he held his ground: “I said she was crazy multiple times, and I stand by that. . . . The woman had a pattern of erratic behavior. She did things that were not normal.”[106]
In April 2009 Bishop was denied tenure. She appealed the denial but lost the appeal in November of that year. She then sued the university for discrimination.[107] During her tenure battle, Bishop threatened people in the department, but the details of these threats have not been released.[108]
Bishop was in crisis. She “threatened suicide to faculty members and coworkers at UAH [University of Alabama, Huntsville], both verbally and in writing.”[109] At one point, when Bishop’s suicidal comments were brought to the provost, he “immediately summoned the UAH armed police to protect himself and other administration officials by barring Bishop’s entrance to the administration building.”[110] Perhaps because of Bishop’s threats to people in the department, the provost feared that she was both suicidal and homicidal.
Bishop said she was “fighting for my life, and my life has been put squarely in the hands of the department.”[111] Facing life as a nontenured professor was devastating to her. Bishop had written a sentence in one of her novels that sheds light on her psychology: “The thought of being some unemployed loser, a non-Harvard, a nonscientist, made her shiver at her loss of identity.”[112] Her battle for tenure wasn’t just about a job; it was about who she was.
Bishop reportedly knew who had voted in favor of her tenure and who had not. If true, she did not discriminate during the shooting, firing at people who supported her as well as those who voted against her. During the police interrogation, she insisted, “I wasn’t there. . . . It wasn’t me.”[113]
* * *
Though there was talk of Bishop being schizophrenic,[114] and though she “pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity,”[115] I have not found the results of any formal diagnostic evaluations. Nonetheless, her long history of poor social skills, odd and inappropriate behavior, lack of eye contact, and bizarre and rambling conversation all suggest the possibility of schizotypal personality disorder.
Bishop resembles Peter Odighizuwa and Biswanath Halder in that she had no role models or ideology driving her attack. She was desperate, facing the loss of her position, and believed she had been wronged. Like Odighizuwa and Halder, however, her behavior was so belligerent and abrasive that she, too, seemed to have psychopathic traits. Her quarrelsome attitude and contentious behavior fits that of the abrasive psychopath. She could also be seen as having features of the malevolent psychopath, particularly the vindictiveness and chip-on-the-shoulder attitude that alienated so many people. Or, like the explosive psychopath, her violence could be seen as a result of “repeated failures, humiliations, and frustrations,”[116] with her ultimately exploding against people who symbolized her failures—the members of the department that rejected her.
COMMENTS
Not only were Odighizuwa, Halder, and Bishop either schizophrenic or schizotypal, they were also belligerent and abrasive. They alienated people with their demanding, arrogant ways. Thus, they resembled the three shooters who were solely psychopathic (with no psychotic symptoms) who engaged in targeted attacks. This is significant. Most people who are schizophrenic or schizotypal are not belligerent and abrasive. They may be shy and self-effacing, pleasant and eager to please, or have any other personality traits. Instead, Odighizuwa, Bishop, and Halder resemble Lu, Fabrikant, and Flores with their caustic personalities.
All six shooters in this chapter felt they were victims of injustice and obsessed about having been wronged. They were injustice collectors, nursing their grudges until they felt justified in committing murder. Author Stanton Samenow provides insight into the dynamics behind such attacks in his book Inside the Criminal Mind. “Criticism or interference with the criminal’s plans,” he finds, “constitutes a monumental threat, because it signifies to him that he is not the omnipotent person he thinks he is. Instead of modifying his expectations and changing his behavior, he insists that it is others who err, not he. His pride is such that he adamantly refuses to acknowledge his own fallibility. Unyielding, uncompromising, and unforgiving, his attitude is ‘I’m going to hold my ground if it costs me everything.’”[117]
1.
Edwin Chen, Deadly Scholarship: The True Story of Lu Gang and Mass Murder in America’s Heartland (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1995). Note that Chen puts the family name of Lu first, which is the Chinese usage; I follow the Western usage of the family name as the last name. Also note that all the information on Lu in this chapter is from this source.
2.
Chen, Deadly Scholarship, 43.
3.
Chen, Deadly Scholarship, 67.
4.
Chen, Deadly Scholarship, 52.
5.
Chen, Deadly Scholarship, 129, italics mine.
6.
Chen, Deadly Scholarship, 136, italics mine.
7.
Chen, Deadly Scholarship, 151.
8.
Chen, Deadly Scholarship, 152.
9.
Theodore Millon and Roger Davis, “Ten Subtypes of Psychopathy,” in Psychopathy: Antisocial, Criminal, and Violent Behavior, ed. Theodore Millon et al., 167 (New York: Guilford Press, 1998).
10.
Millon and Davis, “Ten Subtypes,” 168.
11.
John Scott Cowan, “Lessons from the Fabrikant File: A Report to the Board of Governors of Concordia University,” Montreal, Can., January 6, 1994, 15, available online at http://archives.concordia.ca/sites/default/files/uploaded-documents/pages/2011/07/26/Cowan_report.pdf.
12.
Cowan, “Lessons from the Fabrikant File,” 15.
13.
Cowan, “Lessons from the Fabrikant File,” 15.
14.
Cowan, “Lessons from the Fabrikant File,” 16.
15.
Morris Wolfe, “Dr. Fabrikant’s Solution,” Essays: New and Selected, n.d., http://www.grubstreetbooks.ca/essays/fabrikant.html.
16.
Cowan, “Lessons from the Fabrikant File,” 18.
17.
Wolfe, “Dr. Fabrikant’s Solution.”
18.
Wolfe, “Dr. Fabrikant’s Solution.”
19.
Wolfe, “Dr. Fabrikant’s Solution.”
20.
Cowan, “Lessons from the Fabrikant File,” 14.
21.
Wolfe, “Dr. Fabrikant’s Solution.”
22.
Wolfe, “Dr. Fabrikant’s Solution.”
23.
Wolfe, “Dr. Fabrikant’s Solution.”
24.
Wolfe, “Dr. Fabrikant’s Solution.”
25.
H. W. Arthurs, Roger A. Blais, and Jon Thompson, “Integrity in Scholarship: A Report to Concordia University,” The Independent Committee of Inquiry into Academic and Scientific Integrity, April 1994, 5, available online at http://www.schoolshooters.info.
26.
Valery Fabrikant, personal website, n.d., http://web.archive.org/web/20091026234951/http://geocities.com/benny_patrick/.
27.
Helen Hickey De Haven, “The Elephant in the Ivory Tower: Rampages in Higher Education and the Case for Institutional Liability,” Journal of College and University Law 35, no. 3 (2009): 543.
28.
Mitch Tobin, “Killer Sends 22-Page Letter to Publisher,” Arizona Daily Star, October 30, 2002.
29.
John Broder, “Arizona Gunman Chose Victims in Advance,” New York Times, October 30, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/30/us/arizona-gunman-chose-victims-in-advance.html.
30.
Tobin, “Killer Sends.”
31.
Tobin, “Killer Sends.”
32.
Scott Smallwood, “The Deadly Risk of Giving an F,” Chronicle of Higher Education, November 15, 2002.
33.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 542.
34.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 542, note 186.
35.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 543.
36.
Smallwood, “The Deadly Risk.”
37.
Nate Buchik, “2 Slain Profs Feared Flores,” Arizona Daily Wildcat, October 30, 2002, http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/96/47/01_1.html.
38.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 544.
39.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 545.
40.
Millon and Davis, “Ten Subtypes,” 169.
41.
Millon and Davis, “Ten Subtypes,” 168.
42.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 528.
43.
Chris Kahn, “Appalachian School of Law Killer Still Haunted by Paranoia, Delusions,” Associated Press, June 11, 2004.
44.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 530.
45.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 532, text and note 129.
46.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 532.
47.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 531, text and note 123.
48.
Nara Schoenberg, “Appalachian Tragedy,” Chicago Tribune, March 5, 2002, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-03-05/features/0203050001_1_dean-l-anthony-sutin-coal-miners-tight-knit-campus.
49.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 532.
50.
Quoted in De Haven, “The Elephant,” 531, note 121.
51.
Jeffrey Gettleman and Stephanie Simon, “Dean, Professor and Student Killed at Law School in Va.,” Los Angeles Times, January 17, 2002, http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jan/17/news/mn-23244.
52.
Gettleman and Simon, “Dean, Professor and Student.”
53.
Schoenberg, “Appalachian Tragedy.”
54.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 532, note 130.
55.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 533.
56.
Schoenberg, “Appalachian Tragedy.”
57.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 534.
58.
Kahn, “Appalachian School.”
59.
Kahn, “Appalachian School.”
60.
Kahn, “Appalachian School.”
61.
Schoenberg, “Appalachian Tragedy.”
62.
Chris Kahn, “Ex-Law Student Admits to Slayings,” Washington Post, February 27, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12363-2004Feb27.html.
63.
Millon and Davis, “Ten Subtypes,” 166–67.
64.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 547–78.
65.
State of Ohio v. Biswanath Halder, 2007-Ohio-5940, No. 87974, Case No. CR-437717 (2007), 4, available online at http://www.schoolshooters.info.
66.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 547.
67.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 548.
68.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 549.
69.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 550, note 245.
70.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 548.
71.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 550.
72.
Arthur J. Pais, “Halder Case: Into the Mind of a Killer,” Rediff.com, last updated January 19, 2006, http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/jan/19halder.htm.
73.
Brian Wallace, Administrator of the Estate of Norman E. Wallace, v. Biswanath Halder et al., Supreme Court of Ohio, Case No. 2009-1817, No. 92046, Case No. CV-591169, 7, available online at http://www.schoolshooters.info.
74.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 550.
75.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 551.
76.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 551.
77.
Pais, “Halder Case.”
78.
State of Ohio v. Biswanath Halder, 5.
79.
State of Ohio v. Biswanath Halder, 6.
80.
Brian Wallace v. Biswanath Halder, 3.
81.
De Haven, “The Elephant,” 553.
82.
Pais, “Halder Case.”
83.
Pais, “Halder Case.”
84.
State of Ohio v. Biswanath Halder, 39, note 40.
85.
State of Ohio v. Biswanath Halder, 16.
86.
Amy Wallace, “What Made This University Scientist Snap?” Wired, February 28, 2011, http://www.wired.com/2011/02/ff_bishop/all/.
87.
Wallace, “What Made This University Scientist Snap?”
88.
Patricia C. McCarter, “Prosecutor: Amy Bishop Should Have Been Charged in Brother’s 1986 Death,” Everything Alabama, February 17, 2010.
89.
Wallace, “What Made This University Scientist Snap?”
90.
Wallace, “What Made This University Scientist Snap?”
91.
Shelley Murphy and Eric Moskowitz, “US Orders Review of Attempted Bombing,” Boston Globe, February 25, 2010, http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/02/25/us_orders_review_of_attempted_bombing/.
92.
Shaila Dewan, Stephanie Saul, and Katie Zezima, “For Professor, Fury Just Beneath the Surface,” New York Times, February 20, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/us/21bishop.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
93.
Laurel J. Sweet, Jessica Van Sack, Jessica Fargen, and Ira Kantor, “‘Oddball’ Portrait of Amy Bishop Emerges,” Boston Herald, February 15, 2010.
94.
Wallace, “What Made This University Scientist Snap?”
95.
Wallace, “What Made This University Scientist Snap?”
96.
Wallace, “What Made This University Scientist Snap?”
97.
Wallace, “What Made This University Scientist Snap?”
98.
Wallace, “What Made This University Scientist Snap?”
99.
“Ala. Students Complained about Amy Bishop,” CBS News, February 17, 2010, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ala-students-complained-about-amy-bishop/.
100.
Dr. Jaqueline U. Johnson v. Dr. Vistasp M. Karbhari, Dr. Amy Bishop, a.k.a. Amy Bishop Anderson, and James Anderson, Case No. CV-2011-900038.00 (2011), 4, available online at http://www.schoolshooters.info.
101.
Johnson v. Karbhari, Bishop, Anderson, 4.
102.
Dewan, Saul, and Zezima, “For Professor.”
103.
Wallace, “What Made This University Scientist Snap?”
104.
Tom Bartlett, “Slain Department Head Supported Accused Killer’s Tenure Bid,” Chronicle for Higher Education, February 13, 2010, http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/slain-department-head-supported-accused-killers-tenure-bid/21250.
105.
Johnson v. Karbhari, Bishop, Anderson, 10.
106.
Johnson v. Karbhari, Bishop, Anderson, 9–10.
107.
Wallace, “What Made This University Scientist Snap?”
108.
Johnson v. Karbhari, Bishop, Anderson, 10.
109.
Johnson v. Karbhari, Bishop, Anderson, 11.
110.
Johnson v. Karbhari, Bishop, Anderson, 5.
111.
Johnson v. Karbhari, Bishop, Anderson, 5.
112.
Wallace, “What Made This University Scientist Snap?”
113.
Wallace, “What Made This University Scientist Snap?”
114.
Susan Donaldson James, “Shooter Amy Bishop Likely Schizophrenic, Says Lawyer,” ABC News, February 19, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/amy-bishop-lawyer-plead-insanity-alleged-university-alabama-shooter-schizophrenic/story?id=9880257.
115.
Jay Reeves, “Former Professor Pleads Not Guilty in Ala Shooting,” Seattle Times, September 22, 2011, http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2016284360_apusalauniversityshooting.html.
116.
Millon and Davis, “Ten Subtypes,” 166.
117.
Stanton Samenow, Inside the Criminal Mind, revised and updated (New York: Crown, 2004), 89.