CRJS 3010 DISCUSSION WEEK 1

MASS MURDER Defining Mass Murder

Mass murder can be defined as the murder of three or more people at one time and at one place (Holmes & Holmes, 2003; Holmes & DeBurger, 1988; Hickey, 1997). Mass murders take place over a very short period of time, such as minutes or hours, but not days. Mass murder killings may occur at different locations, but these locations are usually within a very small geographic area. On July 29, 1999, for example, 44-year-old stock investor Mark Barton, armed with two semi-automatic pistols, killed nine and wounded twelve others at two Atlanta investment offices. Two days, earlier, killed his wife Leigh Ann with a hammer and one the eve of his office shooting he bludgeoned his son and daughter as they slept in their beds. To ensure that they were dead, he held each child face down in the bathtub. He then placed each child into their beds and left a note at his home to attempt to explain his actions. The note read, “I killed Leigh Ann because she was one of the main reasons for my demise. I killed the children to exchange them for five minutes of pain for a lifetime of pain. I forced myself to do it to keep them from suffering so much later. No mother, no father, no relatives.” Mark Barton would be considered a mass murderer, even though his killings did not strictly occur at one time or at one place.

The terms mass murder and serial murder are often used interchangeably. There are, however, several fundamental differences between mass murder and serial murder. Serial murder can be defined as the killing of three or more persons over a thirty-day period. Serial murder often involves a “cooling off period” in which the killer takes a “break” between murders. This break may take place over 2 or 3 days or over 2 or 3 weeks. There is no “cooling off period” involved with mass murder. Mass murders are usually a one-time event or a single episode of violence, whereas serial murders involve a series of murders. A second difference between mass murder and serial murder is that most serial murderers take great precautions to avoid being detected and will usually not stop killing until they are caught. Mass murders, on the other hand, are a final act of violence in which the offender often commits suicide at the crime scene of places themselves in a situation where they “force” the police to kill them (Holmes & Holmes, 2003). A final difference between mass murder and serial murder has to do with the offender’s motivation. Serial murders often involve a sexual component and the victims are often selected to fulfill a sexual or paraphilic fantasy. The motivations of most mass murderers do not include a sexual fantasy.

Most people, when asked to imagine a mass murderer, think of killers who suddenly go berserk or run amok (see Westermeyer, 1982). They may recall James Huberty, the unemployed security guard who strolled into a McDonald’s restaurant in 1984 and fatally gunned down 21 random victims, most of whom were children. Those old enough to remember may think of Charles Whitman, the former Marine who opened fire from atop a tower on the University of Texas campus in 1966, killing 14 people and wounding 31 others, or Howard Unruh, a World War II hero who wandered down a street in Camden, New Jersey, in 1949, killing 13 people in 13 minutes.

Most observers do seem to believe that mass killers suddenly snap. After all, many phrases in the English language describe this kind of rampage, including “running amok,” “going berserk,” “going off the deep end,” “going ballistic,” “going bonkers,” “flipping out,” and “flipping one’s lid.” It is highly unlikely, however, that an employee who gets fired by his boss and snaps would happen to have two AK-47s and 1,200 rounds of ammunition in the trunk of his car for just such an occasion. More likely, he would have made arrangements long beforehand to commit mass murder.

In actuality, sudden, seemingly episodic and random incidents of violence are as unusual as they are extreme. Most mass killers are quite deliberate, not spontaneous. They do not just suddenly explode. To the contrary, mass killers typically plan their assaults for days, weeks, or months (see, for example, Walkup & Rubin, 2013). These preparations include where, when, and who to kill, as well as with what weapons they will strike. These assailants are deliberate, determined to kill, with little regard for what obstacles are placed in their path.

For example, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the two adolescents responsible for the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, purposely chose Hitler’s birthday for their attack (out of admiration for the dictator’s power), and spent long hours in the woods fine-tuning their marksmanship skills. They even conceived a grand follow-up plan should they survive the school shooting: to hijack an airplane and fly it into the skyline of New York City (and this was two years before the September 11, 2001, acts of terrorism).

The level of detailed planning may help to explain the calm demeanor exhibited by mass murderers, even in the midst of chaos. Witnesses to a mass shooting often report, for example, that the gunman appeared relaxed, even smiling, while killing or injuring dozens of innocent victims (see Aitken, Oosthuizen, Emsley, & Seedat, 2008). Mass murderers have been known to develop and follow a mental script, one that is rehearsed over and over again, to the point where they become comfortable with the mission.

A majority of mass killers target victims who are specially chosen, not because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. The indiscriminate slaughter of strangers by a crazed killer is the exception to the rule. Instead, mass murderers typically slaughter people they know—family members, neighbors, and coworkers—based on a clear-cut and calculated motivation. In a study of 30 mass killers, for example, researchers reported that half of the rampages were precipitated by problems at work and nearly one quarter involved discordant personal relationships.

Many massacres are actually suicidal rampages. Before taking his own life, however, the killer intends to get even with everyone he holds responsible for his miseries and failures. In an analysis of massacres from 1976 and 1996 researchers found that 21% of all mass murderers committed suicide and another 3% were gunned down by the police (possibly suicides by cop). Research conducted from 1997 to 2002 found that 21.4% of mass killers took their own lives and 1.4% were fatally shot by police, consistent with earlier findings. This prevalence of suicide following mass murder is substantially higher than the figure for murderers generally, estimates of which generally range in the single digits in terms of percentage of homicides leading to suicide (see Eliason, 2009; Stack, 1997). Lankford examined life or death outcomes of 185 rampage- style mass shootings between 1965 and 2010, finding that 48% of the perpetrators either committed suicide or were killed by the police at the scene. The fact that this percentage is somewhat higher likely surrounds a specific weapon (i.e., a gun is certainly more easily

turned on oneself than a knife or bomb) and public location of this particular subset of mass murder. Case Study: Vlad the Impaler

Some of the first mass murders were members of royal families. You already read about Elizabeth Bathory, however, many people are not aware that Bram Stroker’s Dracula, published in 1897, was based on a Romanian noble, Prince Vlad, or as he was called in his own time, Dracula, which means “Son of the Dragon.”

Vlad Dracula was born in 1431 in Transylvania, a principality of Romania. Vlad Dracula’s father, Basarab was as a member of the noble Basarab family, who later inserted himself as king of Wallachia, a small region of Romania just south of Transylvania. During the 15th Century Romania sat on the border between the Muslim Ottoman Turkish Empire to its west and the Catholic Roman Empire to its east. The country itself was a doorway linking the opposing cultures. During this time Romanian royalty found themselves constantly at battle, not only with the Turks, but also with German, Hungarian, and Polish armies from the east. Dracula’s father, Basarab, earned a reputation as being a fierce warrior. Shortly before the birth of Vlad, he was inducted into a Romanian knighthood called the Royal Order of the Dragon. After he was awarded this honor, Basarab would thereafter refer to himself as “The Dragon.” In Romanian, Dragon is Dracul, and adding an “a” after the name denotes “son of.” Thus, as his son, Vlad gained the famous nickname: Dracula.

Growing up, Vald and his two brothers Mircea and Radu learned the art of war, learning how to steady a bow, fight with a blade and ride bareback at an early age. At the age of 13, however, Vlad and his younger brother Radu were kidnapped by a Turkish sultan. During this time it was common for the Turks to capture young European boys from noble families to prepare them from admission into the Ottoman ruling class. During their captivity boys were trained in Islamic studies, were taught Persian and Arabic, and received military training. The boys were not treated as prisoners, per se. They were supervised, but were free during the day to wonder city streets to learn about Turkish laws and customs, and could even court a girl if they wished, as long as she came from an honorable family.

Younger Radu fully accepted his new way of life and “adopted” his new country. Vlad Dracula, on the other hand, always demonstrated a belligerent attitude, quarreling with his superiors, insulting his bodyguards, and belittling Muslim customs. The Turks were forced to take Vlad to the whipping post on more than one occasion. While in captivity Vlad also witnessed the executions and torture of prisoners of war the Turks has taken during their battles. One form of execution that drew his interest was impalement, which involved piercing a body lengthwise with a long sharpened pole. The pole was usually stuck through the victim’s rectum and then placed upright into the ground, leaving the victim to die an excruciating and slow death atop the raised pole.

In 1445, a Hungarian noble knows as the White Knight attacked Vlad’s family’s castle in Wallachia, killed his father and older brother Mircea, and took over Wallachia as his own. When the news of his family’ death reached 17-year-old Vlad he was furious. He wanted revenge. Vlad made a deal with the Turkish sultan. If the sultan would supply him with a force of retake his family’s land, he promised that he would keep

Wallachia open to Turkish commerce and pay an annual tribute. The sultan agreed and under the cover of night Vlad Dracula destroyed the White Knight’s army and placed himself back on the throne.

Vlad’s reign as king of Wallachia last from 1456 to 1462 and can be characterized as a “reign of terror”. It is estimated that he murdered between 30,000 and 100,000 people. Most of victims were against his enemies but he also often killed simply because he was bored. During one outdoor festival of St. Bartholomew, for example, Dracula had 20,000 men, women, and children arrested claiming that they were treacherous bourgeoisie. The citizens were taken to a nearby forest and impaled as he had his servant set up a table of food and wine so that he could enjoy his lunch while watching the torture.

Later during his reign are army of 250,000 Turkish soldiers crossed the Danube to invade Wallachia. The size of Dracula’s total army was estimated at only 30,000 men. Knowing that is was outmanned, Dracula determined to make the road to his kingdom as dreadful for the Turks as possible. For years Dracula had been capturing Turkish soldiers and spies, keeping them imprisoned in case in need to barter with the Turks. With his reign in jeopardy, Dracula decided that he had nothing to lose. He decided to use psychological warfare to impede the invading army. When the Turkish army reached one of the many villages in their path to Wallachia they came upon a most appalling sight. Around the town Dracula impaled 20,000 Turkish prisoners with large wooded spikes hammered up from their backsides and protruding from their mouths. Horrified, the Turkish soldiers retreated, believing who ever had did this must be the devil himself.

In an interesting twist of fate, Radu, Vlad Dracula’s little brother, who had become fully indoctrinated in the Turkish culture, was one of the Turkish officers who was forced to ride back from Romania with retreating Turkish army. He was angry that such a trick by his brother worked and stopped his advance. Radu believed that he had every right to be king of Wallachia and that with his brother dead, he could be the Ottoman Empires first crowned power in Romania. Learning that Vlad, his wife, and a small number of body guards were vacation at a castle in northern Wallachia, Radu and his men rushed to the city and began a artillery barrage. After three days of continuous bombing, a courier brought Vlad a message from Radu warning that unless he surrendered, he and everyone in the castle would be impaled upon capture. Terrified of facing impalement, Dracula’s wife committed suicide by jumping from the top of the castle tower. With his wife dead and facing little alternative, Vlad escaped from the castle under the cover of darkness. Radu, however, was able to take over the as king of Wallachia.

Over 13 years later, Vlad, with the help of a Christian king in Hungary was able to form an army to face is brother in battle. Radu, however, did not die by the hand of his brother, but instead died of syphilis in 1475. After a year of fighting with the Turks Vlad Dracula regained is throne, but his reign was short lived. A month later Dracula’s army faced an overwhelming number of Turks in the Vlasi Forest. Although out number Vlad and his men fought fiercely, charging the enemy screaming “no surrender.” After the battle, Vlad Dracula’s mutilated body was found in a nearby swamp. He was decapitated and the only way the monks from a nearby monastery could tell who he was from the royal medallions that he wore. His head was nowhere to be found. Trends in Mass Murder

Unlike the case with serial slayings, for which there are no official data sources

for assessing prevalence or patterns, massacres can be studied to some extent from police statistics routinely collected by local law enforcement agencies and transmitted to the FBI for publication and analysis. As part of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program, police departments are asked to supply detailed information about homicide incidents, victims, and perpetrators for the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR). Although these data are hardly flawless, the FBI’s SHR provide some ability to examine the characteristics and circumstances of massacres and to compare them with homicide patterns generally. Compiled in incident-based form, these data offer detailed information on location; victim and offender age, race, and sex; victim–offender relationship; weapon use; and circumstances for virtually all homicides known to police for the years 1976 through 2011. The SHR covers approximately 92% of the murders committed nationwide, with a few states missing for certain years.

For this analysis, mass murder is defined operationally as a criminal homicide claiming three or more victims (not including the perpetrator in the event of a mass murder/suicide). These homicides are then compared with criminal homicides generally, only a tiny fraction of which are multiple killings. The data set used here, spanning the years 1976 through 2011, includes 927 massacres involving 4,330 victims and 1,301 offenders.

Approximately 25 incidents of mass murder occur per year in the United States, claiming approximately 125 victims annually. Most incidents, of course, are not as widely publicized as the horrific slaughters of 20 children and six teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown or 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech in 2007. Still, the massacre phenomenon is perhaps not quite as rare as many would believe, although it hardly comes close to reaching epidemic levels. Moreover, despite the concerns of many Americans mass murders generally nor mass shootings in particular are moving on an upward trajectory. Incidence of mass murder, despite yearly fluctuations, has not shown any tendency to increase or decrease since the mid-1970s. On the other hand, mass murders have not declined in number since the mid-1990s, even while murder generally has dropped significantly over the same period of years.

Mass murders do not tend to cluster in large cities as much as does homicide in general (43.9% vs. 57.5%). Instead, massacres frequently occur in suburban or rural areas (45.1%), with a higher proportion than for homicide overall (30.7%). Some differences in setting are those associated with region. The South (and the Deep South in particular) is known for its high rates of murder (41.0% of homicides), but this does not hold quite so much for mass murder (38.7%). In comparison with single-victim murder, which is highly concentrated in urban areas populated by poor Blacks and in the Deep South, where arguments often are settled through gunfire (see, for example, Doerner, 1975), mass murder more or less reflects population distribution.

The findings regarding victim–offender relationship (for the cases in which it has been determined) are perhaps as counterintuitive as the weapon-use results were obvious. Contrary to popular belief, mass murderers infrequently attack strangers who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact, 38.2% of these crimes are committed against family members, compared to 29.2% for murder overall. Indeed, it is well known

that murder often involves family members, but this is especially pronounced among massacres.

The differences in circumstance (when they are known) underlying these crimes are quite dramatic. About half of all homicides occur during an argument between the victim and offender, but it is relatively rare for a heated dispute to escalate into mass murder (24.5%). As it happens, massacres of strangers often are committed to facilitate other felonies—for example, armed robberies. The largest category of mass murder circumstance is unspecified (45.4% “other circumstances”), primarily because of limitations in the Supplementary Homicide Report data. These crimes involve a wide array of motivations, including revenge and hate.

Compared to murderers generally, mass murderers are more likely to be male (94.1% vs. 88.4%), are far more likely to be White (59.3% vs. 46.6%), and are some- what older (43.0% vs. 38.0% are over 30 years old). Typically, the single-victim offender is a young male, slightly more often Black than White, whereas the massacrer is typically a middle-age White male. This profile comes into sharpest focus for those mass killers who are motivated by something other than robbery or similar felony: The average age of perpetrators of felony-related mass murder is 26.9 but the average age rises to 31.3 for those offenders in other mass murder circumstances, including grudges of various kinds. Finally, according to Matt Delisi and Aaron M. Scherer (2006), multiple murderers are no more likely than those who have killed just one victim to have a prior criminal record.

The victim characteristics are, of course, largely a function of the offender characteristics discussed above, indicating that mass killers generally do not select their victims on a random basis. For example, the victims of mass murder usually are White (68.5% compared with 50.5% for all homicides) simply because the perpetrators to whom they are related or with whom they associate are White. Similarly, the youthfulness of victims (34.6% are under age 20 for mass murders compared with 16.2% for all killings) and greater representation of females (43.4%) among the victims of mass murder, as compared to all homicides (23.3%), stem from the fact that a typical mass killing involves the breadwinner of the household who annihilates the entire family—his wife and his children. Types of Mass Murderers

Throughout the years researchers have attempted to create a typology of mass murderers. The construction of typologies, again, is a search for patterns to the same ends as described above for inductive profiles. The great problem with developing a typology is that it can be difficult to place a person or case in a black and white category. When examining the scholarly research on mass murder, two common themes or typologies continue occur: love/loyalty mass murder and revenge mass murder. These two categories of mass murder are based upon an offender’s motivation. Love/Loyalty Mass Murder The most common type of love/loyalty mass murder occurs when an murderer is inspired to kill by a warped sense of desire to save their love ones from misery and hardship. Typically, a husband/father is despondent over the fate of the family unit and takes not only his own life but also those of his children and sometimes his wife, in order to protect them from the pain and suffering in their lives.

Many love/loyalty mass murderers are often called family annihilators. As the name infers, the family annihilator is a person who kills his entire family. According to Holmes & Holmes (2001), this is the most common type of mass murders. The majority of family annihilators are the head of the household (fathers). This killers are often white males in their 30s or 40s who are often described as very controlling and believe that they are the only ones who can fulfill the family’s needs. Many family annihilators have recently had some type of stress in their life that they feel is beyond their control; such as loss of a job, a loss of financial security, or a loss of a relationship Feeling powerless and unable to cope with the stress in their lives’ they often turn to murder (Ewing, 1997). Robert Lynch, for example owned a business that went in to decline a left him in debt. He later found out that his wife was pregnant with their fourth child. Unable to cope with these building stresses, he shot his entire family and then killed himself. Another example is Bruce Sweazy, who had been laid off from work in 1994, and then came home one day to kill his wife and three sons with an ax before shooting himself in the chest. Revenge-Oriented Mass Murder

A second type of mass murder is the revenge-oriented mass murderer. Many multiple murders, especially mass killings, are motivated by revenge, either against specific individuals, particular categories or groups of individuals, or society at large. Most commonly, the murderer seeks to get even with people he knows—with his estranged wife and all her children or the boss and all his employees. There are two subtypes of revenge-oriented mass murderers: (1) workplace killers and (3) school shooters. The overall profile of the typical workplace murderer is a middle-aged white, male, who feels that his employment problems signal the end of the world as he knows it. Despite changing gender roles, men – much more than women – still tend to judge their self-worth by what they do, rather than who they are. If they aren’t doing anything , then what good are they? Further more, men tend to regard violence as a means for establishing control, as an offensive move, whereas women see it as a last resort, as a defensive move.

Some workplace murders involve youthful perpetrators, but most do not. To a younger employee, a job is often just a job, certainly not a career, and there is always another opportunity down the road. The middle-aged employee, however, views termination or the threat of termination as truly the end of the road. He sees few opportunities for alternative employment at the same wage, benefits, or status level to which he has grown accustomed. At this juncture, the middle-aged man expects to be at the tope of his career, not hitting rock-bottom.

For the lonely employee termination from a job means not just a loss of his self- esteem, and not just the loss of income. It also means the loss of his only source of companionship- his co-workers. Therefore, job loss carries a double burden: frustration and anger, on the one hand, and a severance of important social anchors, on the other. Here too there is a trend in society that places more and more middle-aged men at risk. An increased rate of divorce, greater residential mobility, and a general lack of

community and neighborliness mean that, for many Americans, work is their only source of stability and companionships. School Shooters

A second subtype of revenge-oriented mass murderers is the school shooter. A school shooting is an incident of attempted mass murder, involving at least one actual death that occurs at a school. Unlike other forms of school violence, there is usually no single target; the perpetrator's objective is to kill as many people as possible. Sometimes these events are perpetrated by students; in other cases, expelled students, alumni, or even total outsiders commit them. Rates of adolescent violence have decreased since 1993. However, in the last two decades there has been a dramatic increase in the number of school shootings. In the United States, school violence, especially of the gang-related sort, is more common in poor, inner-city schools, but student-perpetrated school massacres most often occur in affluent suburbs where they receive the most media attention due to severity in a brief period of time.

Like terrorist attacks, school massacres are very rare but traumatic. They receive extensive media coverage and often result in nationwide changes of school discipline and security policies.

One of the first school shooting occurred in 1998 in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Four middle school girls and a teacher were killed and 11 people were wounded Tuesday when two heavily armed boys in full camouflage gear opened fire on their classmates and teachers during a false fire alarm. Police did not offer a motive, but a classmate said one of the suspects had recently broken up with his girlfriend. The suspects, who are cousins, ages 11 and 13, were caught by police near Westside Middle School shortly after the shooting. A third boy who allegedly pulled the fire alarm was still being sought.

When Johnson was 13, he and his friend, Andrew Golden, then 11, stole rifles from Golden's grandfather on March 24, 1998. The boys, dressed in camouflage, hid in the woods behind the school until lunchtime, when Golden ran inside to pull the fire alarm. They opened fire as classmates and teachers filed out of the buildings, killing four students and one teacher. The state had no way to hold Johnson past his 18th birthday because of a since-closed loophole in Arkansas' juvenile justice system. Federal prosecutors have used weapons laws to keep Johnson and Andrew Golden locked up until age 21. The Columbine School Shooting

The most widely publicized school massacre in the United States was the student perpetrated Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in unincorporated Jefferson County, Colorado, near Denver and Littleton. Two teenage students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, carried out a shooting rampage, killing twelve fellow students and a teacher, as well as wounding twenty-four others, before committing suicide. It is considered to be the deadliest school shooting, and the second deadliest attack on a school in US History.

At 11:10 AM Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold arrived at Columbine High School in separate cars. Harris parked in the Junior parking lot and Klebold in the Senior parking

lot at spaces not assigned to them. From these spots, both of them had excellent views of the first floor cafeteria and each one was covering a main exit of the school. Shortly before arriving at Columbine, Harris and Klebold had set up a small fire bomb in a field half a mile away from the school. The bomb was set to detonate at 11:14 AM, and is thought to have been placed there as a diversion for emergency personnel. The bomb did detonate, and caused a small fire that was extinguished by the fire department. This event was not tied to the attacks until after the official investigation began in May 1999.

At Columbine, the pair entered the cafeteria a few minutes before the "A" lunch shift began and placed two duffel bags with 20 lb (9 kg) propane bombs inside set to explode at 11:17 AM. At the moment they entered the cafeteria, a custodian removed the security camera video tape and rewound it, so the act of placing the bombs was not recorded. However, once it was restarted the bags could be seen clearly. The bombs had enough explosive power to destroy the entire cafeteria and bring the library above crashing down. Each shooter returned to his car to wait until the bombs exploded. As they did so, Harris encountered Brooks Brown in the parking lot. Having recently patched up their friendship, Brown approached Harris and scolded him for having missed a test. Harris replied to him by saying "Um, Brooks, I like you, I like you. Now go home, get out of here", before continuing on his way. Several minutes later, students departing Columbine for lunch noticed Brooks Brown heading down South Pierce Street away from the school. Meanwhile, Harris and Klebold armed themselves by their cars and waited for the bombs to explode. They intended to kill at least 500 people.

At 11:19 AM, a witness heard Eric Harris yell "Go! Go!" At that moment the gunmen pulled out their shotguns and began shooting at Rachel Scott and Richard Castaldo, who were sitting on a grassy knoll to their left (next to the West Entrance of the school), eating lunch. Both were hit and critically injured. After the initial shots, one of the shooters shot Scott again, killing her. It is unclear who shot first and who killed Scott. Next, Harris took off his trenchcoat and took out his 9 mm semi-automatic carbine, aiming it down the West Staircase. Daniel Rohrbough and his two friends, Sean Graves and Lance Kirklin, were walking up the staircase directly below the shooters. Lance reported seeing them standing at the top, when suddenly they began shooting at him. Shot in the chest, Rohrbough fell back onto Graves; a bullet pierced Graves' foot. The shooters then turned their guns on Kirklin, standing across from them. All three fell wounded. Harris and Klebold then turned and began shooting south (away from the school) at five students sitting on the grassy knoll adjacent to the steps, opposite the West Entrance of the school. Michael Johnson was hit but kept running and escaped. Mark Taylor fell to the ground, crippled, and played dead. The other three escaped uninjured.

As the shooting continued, Sean Graves stood up and limped down the staircase into the cafeteria's side entrance, where he collapsed in front of the door. Klebold began walking down the steps heading toward the cafeteria. As he descended, he shot Lance Kirklin once more in the face, wounding him critically. Daniel Rohrbough began to struggle down the steps towards the bottom of the staircase. Seeing this, Klebold walked up to him and shot him in the back of the head at close range, killing him. He then continued down the staircase and stepped inside the cafeteria, walking over the injured Sean Graves, who lay at the cafeteria entrance. It is speculated that Klebold did this because he was checking to see why the propane bombs had failed to explode. As Klebold stepped into the cafeteria, Harris began to shoot down the steps at several

students sitting near the cafeteria's entrance, wounding Anne-Marie Hochhalter as she attempted to flee. After a few seconds, Klebold returned back up the staircase to meet with Harris at the top.

Next, the two attempted to shoot at students standing near the soccer field a few yards away, but did not succeed in hitting anyone. They then threw pipe bombs at the parking lot, roof, and hillside to the east; none of which detonated

Meanwhile, a police deputy sheriff arrived at the scene and began shooting at Harris and Klebold, distracting them from the injured Brian Anderson. Anderson staggered out of the area and made it into the library where he ran into an open staff break room, remaining there until the ordeal ended. Harris fired ten shots at the officer, who then radioed in a Code 33 (officer in need of emergency assistance). When his gun jammed, Harris ran inside the school with Klebold. The pair then proceeded down the main North Hallway shooting at anyone they saw and throwing pipe bombs. While doing so, they shot student Stephanie Munson in the ankle. She was able to walk out of the school and make it to a house across the street. The pair then proceeded to shoot out the windows to the East Entrance of the school. After going through the hall several more times, shooting at any students they saw (but not injuring any), they headed back towards the West Entrance and turned to the Library Hallway.

In the library, the shooters would soon begin their deadliest massacre. Inside, Patti Nielson was on the phone with the emergency services. According to transcripts, the call was received by the 9-1-1 operator at 11:25:05 AM. The time period between when the call was answered and when the shooters entered the library was four minutes and ten seconds. Before entering, the shooters threw two pipe bombs into the cafeteria from the staircase in the South Hallway, both of which exploded (one of which can be seen on the security tapes). They then threw another in the Library Hallway which also exploded, damaging some lockers. At 11:29 AM, the pair walked through the heavy doors of the library where 55 students, three library staff, and Ms. Nielson were hiding under desks and inside exterior break rooms.

“Get up! We'll get the guys in white hats!" (wearing a white baseball cap at Columbine was a tradition amongst sports team members). When no one stood up, one was heard to say: "Fine, I'll start shooting!" The two then made their way down to the opposite side of the library, to two rows of computers. Evan Todd used the time to conceal himself behind the administrative counter. Kyle Velasquez was sitting at the north (or upper) row of computers; he had not ducked down below the desk. Klebold shot him first, hitting him in the neck and back, killing him. The shooters then set down their duffel bags, filled with ammunition, at the south (or lower) row of computers and began reloading their weapons. They walked to the windows facing the outside staircase where they had just been a moment ago. Noticing police evacuating students, they began to shoot out the windows; police returned fire.

Harris then walked over to the table across from the lower computer row, slapped the top twice with his hand, knelt down, and said "peek-a-boo" before shooting Cassie Bernall in the head. The recoil from the weapon hit his face, breaking his nose. It is popularly believed that Bernall was the individual who was asked "Do you believe in God?", but it has since been determined by several witnesses near Bernall, as well as the official investigation, that the shooters asked this to another student, and not to Bernall.

Harris then turned to the next table, where student Bree Pasquale sat next to the table rather than beneath it (she had not hidden underneath as there was not enough room to hide). Harris asked her if she wanted to die to which Pasquale responded with a plea for her life. Witnesses report that Harris was disoriented as this occurred, possibly from the wound to his face, which was bleeding heavily. As Harris taunted Pasquale, Patrick Ireland began to administer first aid to one of the two injured near him; seeing this, Klebold shot at him, hitting him twice in the head and once in the foot. The shot to his foot blew his shoe clear off. He was knocked unconscious, but remarkably survived.

Harris and Klebold caught on the high school's security cameras in the cafeteria shortly Sometime between 12:02 PM and 12:05 PM the shooters entered the library again, but it was empty of all living students except for the unconscious Patrick Ireland and Lisa Kreutz (who played dead). It is not known what they did between the time they left the cafeteria and the time they re-entered the library. Once inside, they attempted to shoot out the windows at policemen, without success. They then moved over to the table next to where Matthew Kechter and Isaiah Shoels lay; there, they shot themselves, committing suicide. The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective

The purpose of this section is to provide a profile of the typical school shooter, describe several common warning signs shown my school shooters, and to discuss current prevention strategies that many schools are now implementing.

Though school shootings are extensively covered in the news media, the information available in news reports is not necessarily complete, accurate, or balanced. Journalist ordinarily do not have access to police and other investigative reports that may contain information about the school shooting or about the background, previous activities, and traits of the student or students who carried out the shooting. This section will examine three major areas in the life of school shooters: 1. Personality Traits 2. Social Characteristics 3. Family Characteristics I. Personality Traits

1. Alienation The student consistently behaves as though he feels different or estranged from others.

2. Depression The student shows features of depression such as lethargy, physical fatigue, a dark outlook on life, and a loss of interest in activities that he once enjoyed. For example, Andy Williams, the teen accused of killing two classmates at his high school out side of San Diego, grew increasingly depressed in the days before the shootings. His former girlfriend said that she could tell that he was getting progressively unhappy,” “It was getting worse and worse” she said. She had traded online chat room messages with the 15-year-old Williams four days before the shoting. The topic was usually Williams’ unhappiness.

3. Narcissism

The student is self-centered. Lacks insight into others’ needs and/or feelings, and blames others for failures and disappointments. The narcissistic student assumes an attitude of self-importance or grandiosity that masks feelings of unworthiness. For example, Eric Harris, one of the students responsible for the school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, wrote in another student’s yearbook “I am God.”

4. Anger Management Problems The student consistently shows little if any ability to deal with frustration, criticism, disappointment, rejection, or humiliation. He tends to deal with these situations through anger. The anger may be noticeably out of proportion to the cause, or may be redirected toward people who had nothing to do with the original incident. His anger may come in unpredictable and uncontrollable outbursts, and may be accompanied by expression of unfounded prejudice or hatred toward individuals or groups.

5. Intolerance and Prejudice The student often expresses racial or religious prejudice or intolerant attitudes toward minorities, or displays slogans or symbols of intolerance in such things as tattoos, jewelry, clothing, bumper stickers, or book covers.

6. Failed Love Relationship The student may feel rejected or humiliated after the end of a love relationship, and cannot accept or come to terms with the rejection. For example Andy Williams of the California School shooting and Thomas Solomon of the Conyers shooting had both recently broke up with their girlfriend before committing the shooting. Luke Woodham, the Mississippi school shooter, killed his ex-girlfriend in the shooting.

7. Unusual Interest in Violence The student demonstrates an unusual fascination with movies, TV shows, computer games, music videos or printed material that focus intensively on themes of violence, hatred, death, and destruction. He may watch one movie over and over again or read and reread one book. Themes of hatred, violence, weapons, mass destruction recur in virtually all of his activities, hobbies, and pastime. The student spends inordinate amounts of time play video games with violent themes and seems more interested in the violent images than the game itself. On the internet, the student regularly searches for web sites involving weapons, violence, and disturbing subjects. The student also demonstrates an unusually interest in other school shootings or other heavily publicized acts of violence. He may declare his admiration for those who committed the acts and he may express desire to carry out similar acts in his own school.

8. Inappropriate Humor The student’s humor is consistently inappropriate. Jokes or humorous comments are often seen my others to be mean, sick, or strange. This one reason many school shooters are not taken seriously when make jokes about killing other persons. Students often say “he always made sick jokes in class, I never thought he really meant any of them. For

example, Charles "Andy" Williams, the 15-year-old freshman accused of the Santana High School shooting outside of San Diego, California, joked about shooting up his school to classmates on several occasions.

9. Leakage In appropriate humor can often be part of a process known as Leakage. Leakage occurs when a student intentionally or unintentionally reveals clues to thoughts, fantasies, or intentions that may signal an impending violent act. These clues can take the form of subtle threats, boasts, jokes, or predictions. They may be spoken or conveyed in stories, diary entries, essays, poems, letters, songs, drawings, doodles, or videos. For example, the two offenders of the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris , made several video tapes describing their intentions of killing fellow students. For a class project, Eric and Dylan made a video. They cast students as gunmen in long coats shooting athletes in the school hallways. Teacher Sherry Higgins says she was told it was a spoof, a "bang-bang, Dick Tracy-type thing that they were trying to put together." In hindsight, she admits it should have been a clue.

In home videos made in the final weeks before their deadly attack on Columbine High School, the two teen-age gunmen said they hoped to kill hundreds in the assault and speculated about which Hollywood director might make a movie about it. I hope we will kill 250 of you," Klebold said on one tape. Leakage is considered by the FBI to be one of the most important clues that may precede an adolescent’s violent act. II. Social Characteristics

1. Attachment to School The student is detached from school. He is not well known by fellow students or his teachers and does not participate in any school activities, such as sports or school clubs. 2. Student is Typically Bullied and Teased by others Bullying and teasing is most likely the main motivation behind the student’s violence. He was to get back at others who teased and bullied him. Andy Williams, for example, was often bullied at school because he was small. III. Family Characteristics

1. Lack of Intimacy within Family The family of the typically school shooter appear to lack intimacy and closeness. The student’s relationship with his parents is often turbulent.

2. Student “Rules the Roost” The parents set few or no limits on the child’s conduct, and regularly give in to his demands. The student insists on an inordinate degree of privacy, and parents have little information about his activities, school life, friends, or other relationships. The parents seem intimidated by their child. If they confront him about his behavior, the may be unwilling to face an emotional outburst, or the may be afraid that upsetting the child will spark an emotional crises. Traditional family roles are reversed:

for example, the child acts as if he were the authority figure, while parents act as if they were the children. Parents do not react to behavior that most parents would find very disturbing or abnormal. They appear unable to recognize or acknowledge problems in their children and respond quite defensively to any real or perceived criticism of their child. If contacted by school officials or staff about the child’s troubling behavior; the parents appear unconcerned, minimize the problem, or reject the reports altogether even if the child’s misconduct is obvious and significant.

3. No Limits or Monitoring of TV and Internet Parents do not supervise, limit or monitor the student’s television watching or his use of the Internet. The student may have a TV in his own room or is otherwise free without any limits to spend as much time as he likes watching violent or otherwise inappropriate shows. The student spends a great deal of time watching television rather than in activities with family or friends. Similarly, parents do not monitor computer or Internet access. The student may know much more about computers than the parents do, and the computer may be considered off limits to the parents while the student is secretive about his computer use, which may involve violent games or Internet research on violence, weapons, or other disturbing subjects.

4. Access to Weapons The family keeps guns or other weapons in the home, accessible to the student. More

important, weapons are treated carelessly, without normal safety precautions; for example, guns are often not locked away and left loaded. Parents or a significant role model may handle weapons casually or recklessly and in doing so may convey to children that a weapon can be a useful and normal means of intimidating someone else or settling a dispute. College School Shooters

Although incidents at middle schools, high schools, and institutions of higher education all fall under the umbrella of school shootings, there are, in fact, several characteristics of mass shootings at college campuses that make them unique. The most striking and important distinction surrounds issues that motivate campus shooters and their younger counterparts. Shootings at high schools are often precipitated when students feel bullied or persecuted by their classmates or teachers (Vossekuil, Reddy, Fein, Borum, & Modzeleski, 2002). However, the perpetrators of multiple shootings at colleges and universities are often graduate or professional students—older individuals who turn to violence in response to what they perceive to be unbearable pressure to succeed or the unacceptable reality of failure (Fox & Burstein, 2010). At least half of the multiple- victim campus shooting sprees implicated a current or former graduate or professional student or a faculty member. Rather few were committed by traditional-age undergraduates.

Unlike undergraduates, students in graduate and professional programs often lack balance in their personal lives, narrowly focusing on academic work and training to the exclusion of other interests and other people in their lives. Students who had been at the

top of their class in high school and college may come to find themselves struggling to get by with just passing grades. No longer supported financially by parents, they experience great pressure to juggle assistantship activities or outside employment with coursework and thesis research, with little time for attending to social networks. At some point, their entire lifestyle and sense of worth may revolve around academic achievement. Moreover, their personal investment in reaching a successful outcome can be viewed as a virtual life-or-death matter. Compounding the problem is the fact that faculty mentors, the gatekeepers to success, may be insensitive to the pressures placed upon their students. At the extreme, some faculty may even maintain an oppressive relationship with graduate students, perhaps perpetuating a power imbalance they themselves suffered in graduate school. Regrettably, not all faculty members are sensitive to the enormous and often unrestrained power they have over students.

Foreign students experience additional pressures because the academic visas allowing them to remain in this country are often dependent upon their continued student status or full-time employment. Also the stress factor related to the need to succeed, if not excel, is frequently intensified for foreign graduate students from certain cultures where failure is seen as shame on the entire family.

Cultural factors may help to explain the surprising number of college campus shootings that have occurred at the hands of Asian students, even though murder rates overall are low among Asians (both Asian immigrants to the United States as well as native populations in Asian countries). Seung-Hui Cho,the Virginia Tech gunman, struggled throughout his violence-shortened life in terms of assimilating to American culture. In addition, 7 students were killed during an April 2012 shooting rampage at Oikos University in Oakland, California, a small private college primarily for students of Korean descent. The Korean-born shooter, One L. Goh, 43, had recently been expelled. The most telling example, however, involved an accomplished graduate student from China, who felt humiliated and betrayed when not being considered the very best in his class.

By the fall of 1991, after having failed in repeated efforts to have a perceived injustice reversed, Chinese-born Gang Lu knew that his best and last resort was a firearm. For this 28-year-old grad student, things had changed dramatically. In the course of a few years, he went from being widely considered a rising star in his program to an object of shame and pity.In 1985, Gang Lu had been chosen for a coveted doctoral fellowship in physics at the University of Iowa. But achievement never came easy for Gang Lu, as he had toiled hard in school throughout his life, painstakingly preparing for national science tests given by the Chinese government to identify the academic elite. Unfortunately for Gang Lu, within a year after entering the program at the University of Iowa, a brighter doctoral prospect arrived in the department who was also from his homeland of China—a younger, handsome, charismatic rival for whom everything—not just academics—came easily. It didn’t take long for Linhua Shan, the new arrival, to eclipse Gang Lu in his pursuit of excellence. For Gang Lu, the final straw came when Shan was nominated by the department for outstanding doctoral dissertation. Unable to think objectively, Gang Lu couldn’t accept that Shan’s thesis was brilliant, while his own was just competent and workmanlike—nothing that would turn the scientific community on its ear.

Gang Lu’s disappointment was only part of the problem. Failure to win the

D.C. Spriestersbach dissertation prize would deny him a significant advantage in seeking a tenure-track post in the tight job market. He felt his work had been judged unfairly by the department chair and other professors who had the power to nominate the prize winner. From Gang Lu’s perspective, they would have to pay for destroying his chances, ruining his life, and bringing shame upon him.

After several attempts to appeal the decision up through the university’s administrative hierarchy, Gang Lu saw only one way to even the score. He appointed himself judge, jury, and executioner. On November 1, 1991, after months of anguish and detailed planning, Lu launched his all-out assault. He knew that his adversaries would be gathered at a regular Friday afternoon physics department seminar held in Room 309 of Van Allen Hall. Shortly after 3:30 p.m., Lu removed from his briefcase his doomsday device, a .38-caliber revolver that he had purchased in July during the early stages of his planning. Without saying a word—he didn’t need to, as everyone was already painfully aware of his grudge—Lu started blasting away.

He killed Professors Christoph Goertz and Robert Alan Smith, both members of his dissertation committee, and shot Linhua Shan, his “successful” rival for the prize. Lu then traveled down the hall and killed the department chair, Dwight Nicholson. Next, he went across campus to “discuss” matters with T. Anne Cleary, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, with whom he had filed an appeal. Lu let his gun do the talking, killing Cleary and wounding her receptionist, who was little more than an impediment along his murder route. Lu then returned to the physics department to finish off Shan, who had briefly survived his injuries. Having done what he came to do, he had only one final element to his plan—suicide.

Lu had worked out every detail of his rampage, and he was chillingly methodical in his implementation. In 12 short minutes of terror on campus, he got his revenge, having killed five members of the university community and wounded one more. It is difficult for many people outside the academic world to appreciate the concepts of academic life and academic death. The phrases “publish or perish” and “curriculum vitae” both reflect the virtual life-and-death significance of academic achievement and failure. Gang Lu understood this and felt that his career was doomed before it had begun. The Role of Violent Video Games in School Shootings Besides imitation of notorious crimes and criminals, fictional portrayals of murder and mayhem can also potentially provide a source for modeling behavior. Certainly, concern over the negative impact of violent entertainment is hardly new. However, the realism of today’s entertainment options has intensified the debate. It can be tempting to try to blame entertainment media—especially video games—for various stunning episodes of extreme violence. A Gallup poll of approximately 1,000 adults nationwide taken immediately following the December 2012 Sandy Hook shooting found that 78% of respondents believed that reducing the depiction of gun violence in entertainment media would be effective in decreasing the risk of mass shootings.

It is not surprising that most schoolyard shooters (as well as some adult mass murderers) played violent video games in their spare time. Violent people are often attracted to violent entertainment, on TV, in film, or through game consoles; but, the

ability to document a direct causal link indicating that consuming violent entertainment leads to violent behavior has eluded social science researchers.

Much was written in the popular press about the fact that Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza spent long hours alone in the basement of his Newtown home playing violent video games and had a rich collection of titles that featured military-style warfare. Reportedly, his favorite was “Call to Duty,” also a game frequently played by Norwegian mass murderer 32-year-old Anders Breivik and 34-year-old Aaron Alexis who in 2013 killed 12 at the Washington, DC, Navy Yard.

In Lanza’s case, his obsessional game-playing may have been more a symptom of his personality and temperament than the cause. As a socially awkward youngster, reportedly with Asperger’s syndrome, his social isolation may be the key to his preoccupation with gaming as well as his rampage against an unwelcoming society. Moreover, the large number of hours he devoted to his gaming may in part have just filled the void left by his withdrawal from interpersonal relationships with real people rather than virtual characters. The entertainment industry has, at times, been used as a convenient scapegoat, and censorship as an easy solution. Lawsuits directed against various media organizations have occasionally been launched, albeit unsuccessfully, when it was discovered that some mass murderer had been obsessed with violent entertainment.

Fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal, who killed three classmates and wounded five others at the Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, was a fan of Basketball Diaries—a 1995 film in which a high school hoops star, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, daydreams of shooting up his high school class. Carneal also enjoyed playing violent video games, including Doom and Quake. Within months of the shooting spree, the parents of the three slain children filed a $130 million lawsuit naming the producers and distributors of Basketball Diaries, as well as computer game companies and two Internet pornography sites, for their alleged role in causing Carneal’s violent outburst. The legal long-shot fizzled in August 2002, when a Federal appeals court in Cincinnati dismissed the case, ruling that it was “simply too far a leap from shooting characters on a video screen to shooting people in a classroom” (James v. Meow Media, Inc., 2002).

Concerns about the negative effects of violent video games on impressionable children also led to the passage of a 2005 California ban on the sale of such game to minors, although the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately judged the prohibition to be unconstitutional in a 7–2 decision ruling on Brown v. Entertainment Media Association (2011). It has long been easy to point fingers at this profitable industry, while ignoring some of the root causes of violence that are much more difficult to resolve. Responses to School Victimization

In response to victimization and bullying at schools, many schools have instituted

security measures. Most commonly, schools have hired law enforcement officers, installed metal detectors, installed security cameras, begun to lock entrances and exits during school hours, and implemented supervision of hallways during the school day (Devoe et al., 2010). According to a survey of principals, almost half of public schools in 2008 had paid law enforcement or security staff, more than half used security cam-eras, and 5% used metal detectors (Devoe et al., 2010). The School Crime Supplement Survey

also indicates that many schools are implementing security measures. Almost one fourth of students reported that they were required to wear picture identification at school, and 94% indicated that visitors were required to sign in at their school (Devoe et al., 2010).

In addition to school security measures, laws and policies are in place to address violence within schools. Current federal law, under the Gun-Free Schools Act, mandates that each state that receives federal funding must suspend for at least 1 year any student who brings a firearm to school. As such, most states have laws to address bullying, harassment, and hazing that occurs at school (Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, 2011)—some of which are zero-tolerance policies that mandate specific punishments for fighting and violence along with bringing weapons to school—which may serve to limit school victimization and bullying. Fortunately, most states have instituted a broad range of policies that attempt to address school victimization more holistically. For example, see the next box, which provides a description of Florida’s laws. Although it remains to be seen how effective these laws are at reducing the amount of victimization that occurs at school, many of the laws also require mandatory reporting of suspected victimization, mandate that schools have programs and resources to reduce school victimization, and require that people are in place to over-see these programs.

Most school-based programs are targeted at reducing school violence and/or bullying specifically. The most effective of these programs are proactive and involve parents, students, and the community (Ricketts, 2010). A common type of a violence- reduction program is peer mediation. Peer mediation programs train a group of students in interest-based negotiation skills, communication skills, and problem-solving strategies so they can help their peers settle disagreements peacefully and without violence (Ricketts, 2010). Findings from evaluations of peer mediation programs show that they can change the school climate over time (Ricketts, 2010). To specifically attack bullying, some schools have adopted bullying prevention programs. One of the most widely adopted of these programs, the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, has shown promising reductions in bullying perpetration and victimization in both the United States and Norway (Olweus, 1991).

Adam Lanza, broke through the locked front door of the school and attacked students and faculty with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, killing 20 first graders and six adult staffers. He then took his own life by shooting himself in the head. Before attacking at Sandy Hook, Lanza had already shot to death his mother in the Newtown home they had shared.

In the aftermath of the Newtown school massacre, one of the few reforms advocated by both the president and the National Rifle Association involves increasing the presence of resource officers in the schools. This also happens to be one of the few recommendations that has a realistic chance of improving the safety of our children—and it has little if anything to do with having a gun-toting security guard on board when a rampage killer enters the classroom.

In fact, a police presence at Columbine High School in April 1999 didn’t stop two students from shooting down 34 of their schoolmates and teachers, killing 13 of them. In February 2008, having police officers on the campus of Northern Illinois University failed to prevent a former student from opening fire in a lecture hall where he killed five and injured another 19. It took 2 minutes to commit mass murder at Northern Illinois; the police arrived only 4 minutes too late but it might as well have taken an hour.

The real contribution of competent, community-minded school resource officers may be more educational than confrontational. Their role in the prevention of rampage murders may not depend so much on carrying a firearm as on carrying a life-saving message to the students and faculty.

According to a study by Eric Madfis (2012), the majority of averted school rampages were thwarted not by metal detectors or surveillance cameras, but because students informed authorities about a threatening remark made by a schoolmate. In too many cases, however, students who become aware of a threat in the hallway or over the Internet have ignored it. To inform on a peer is to “snitch” or “rat”—something that is widely regarded as uncool, even if it has the potential to save lives.

When they achieve the trust and confidence of students, school resource officers may be in an ideal position to provide programs aimed at breaking the culture of silence that has characterized many of our schools in the past. Effective resource officers typically walk the corridors, make connections with the students, and provide educational programs that provide an effective response to natural disasters as well as armed intruders.

In March, 2009, a student at Merrimack High School in New Hampshire approached Michael Murray, a resource officer who had served at the school for more than nine years and was trusted by faculty and students alike. The student informed Murray that he had heard two of his classmates planning to take hostages at the school through the barrel of a gun. Within a few minutes, the two suspects had been apprehended. School resource officers have also contributed to the resolution of potentially violent school rampages in areas from Anchorage, Alaska, to Bedford, Massachusetts; from Tehama, California, to Lexington County, South Carolina; from Sarasota, Florida, to Laurel, Maryland.

Another function of the school resource officer is to reduce the prevalence of bullying. This is an important antiviolence role, because the overwhelming majority of school rampages have been perpetrated by students who—having being bullied or humiliated on a daily basis—target their classmates. The rampage killers feel like pariahs or outcasts and decide to get even with the entire school.

Some wait until they have graduated to seek revenge. At Virginia Tech in 2007, for example, the killer of 32 innocent college students and faculty chose to target a convenient and vulnerable set of victims on campus who acted as surrogates for his real enemies—his classmates in middle and high school who had humiliated him for his flat affect, shyness, and difficulty with the English language. The Newtown killer may have employed the same psycho-logic. He had reportedly been a student at Sandy Hook Elementary School as well as Newtown’s middle and high school, where he may have been a victim of severe bullying. Apparently, his negative experiences in the classroom never left his consciousness, even as an adult.

Most states now have anti-bullying statutes, but many such laws and policies are less than effective. Schools should be held responsible for allowing such practices to continue unabated. Any school that fails to intervene should face tough sanctions. Resource officers have established or supported the enactment of effective anti-bullying programs in their schools. The town of Boaz, Alabama, for example, recently initiated its Stand for the Silent program, an anti-bullying effort that seeks to teach high school students that it is socially unacceptable to harass or torment their classmates. Aside from

their teaching role, resource officers in Boaz High School have also set up designated receptacles in which students can leave anonymous reports of bullying incidents.

Cult-Related Mass Murder

Multiple murders committed by cults reflect, at least in part, the desire of loyal

disciples to be seen as obedient to their charismatic leader. Members of cults who commit mass suicide often do so to show love, commitment, and loyalty to the cult itself or the leader of the cult. Members often form a suicide pact. One of the most famous examples of cult-related mass murder is the Peoples Temple in which 918 Americans committed a mass suicide led by their leader Jim Jones. The dead included 303 children. The suicide occurred in an town that the cult built, called Jonestown, in Guyana, South America. A tape of the Temple's final meeting in a Jonestown pavilion contains repeated discussions of the group committing "revolutionary suicide", including reference to people taking the poison and the vats to be used. The people in Jonestown died of an apparent cyanide poisoning, except for Jones (injury consistent with self-inflicted gunshot wound) and his personal nurse. The Temple had spoken of committing "revolutionary suicide" in prior instances, and members had previously drunk what Jones told them was poison at least once before, but the "Flavor Aid" drink they ingested contained no poison.

A second famous example of cult-related mass murder is Heaven’s Gate. On March 26, 1997, 39 followers of Heaven's Gate died in a mass suicide in Rancho Santa Fe, California, which borders San Diego to the north. Members of the cult believed, according to the teachings of their group, that through their suicides they were "exiting their human vessels" so that their souls could go on a journey aboard a spaceship they believed to be following comet Hale-Bopp. Some male members of the group underwent voluntary castration in preparation for the genderless life they believed awaited them after the suicide. In May 1997, two Heaven's Gate members who had not been present for the mass suicide attempted suicide, one succeeding, the other becoming comatose for two days and then recovering. In February 1998, the survivor, Chuck Humphrey, committed suicide.

The popular media often portrays cults as aggressive recruiters that gain and maintain their membership through brainwashing, hypnosis, or other mind control techniques. Most scholars who have actually done research on the topic believe that this is an inaccurate description of cult conversion. Several studies have found that new members of religious cults do not join unwillingly, but are often “religious seekers” who are looking for a new religious group or social network to join (Roof, 1993; Zimbardo & Harley, 1985; Paterline, 1998). Persons who join religious cults tend to come from a religious background, have been members of a variety of different religious groups, and are more willing to solve their problems through religion (Barker, 1984). In truth, there may be a variety of reasons people join cults; they may feel alienated from society, they may be unhappy with their current religion, or may be looking to solve one of their life’s problems. There are, however, several common characteristics that most successful cults share that allows them to attract new members and to keep members committed to the group. These characteristics include: (1) Transcendence, (2) Sacrifice and Investment, (3) Renunciation, and (4) Communion (Kanter, 1972).

Common Characteristics of Killer Cults Transcendence Members of the group believe that the cult is somehow special and the leader is capable of extraordinary feats. Sacrifice and Investment Members are asked to give up something important for the price of membership. The greater the investment, the greater the commitment to the group. Renunciation The cult demands that members give their complete exclusive allegiance to fellow members and ties with “outsiders” should be broken. Communion Increased solidarity and brotherhood is achieved through rituals, communal living, and the sharing of property and tasks.