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M Is For Mass Murderer

July 28, 2012
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The YY chromosome of men may be a lethal ingredient in the equation for taking people’s lives indiscriminately.  There may be a sociological profile of killers who focus on murdering people for vengeance?  In the article below only one woman in 1908 planned and executed a group of people related to her on her Indiana farm for monetary reasons. If one was to do an analysis of the DNA of people who have a preponderance of agitated and delusional instinct to kill would there be an increased level of testosterone?  In the case of this woman was there an anomaly in her genetic disposition that led her to act in a way that is far more likely to attract men to violence?

 

Is there anyone who knows a person who is doing research along these lines and if there is research about characteristic traits is there someone who would like to see if there is a way to avoid these torrents of violence from occurring?

M is for Mass Murderer

by Hunter on April 14, 2012 in Crime & Psychology, Forensic Psychology

“The Mass Murder is generally defined as the killing of multiple people (most definitions say at least 4), usually in one location, over a short period of time (within 24 hours). In this respect, this post talks about the mass murderer who kills at one time, in the one location.

The term mass murder has historically also been used for someone who murders multiple times – ie this could be a serial murderer or a spree killer.

Mass Murder in History

Via Death Reference:

When terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, it was not the most extensive example of mass murder ever committed, but it did have a great impact on the world, launching an extensive “war on terrorism.” This incident is just one of thousands of examples of mass murder perpetrated throughout human history.

The site and time of the first mass murder is unknown. The Bible delineates numerous examples of mass murder including Samson’s slaying of the Philistines (Judges 16:27–30) and King Herod’s order for the murder of all male children who were two years old or less in the region of Bethlehem while trying to kill Jesus (Matt. 2:16). The thanatologist Panos Bardis notes that in ancient Greece it was common to cremate a fallen Greek hero with several enemy soldiers who were still alive. Archaeological excavations have revealed the murder and burial of a royal court with a deceased king. The purpose was to serve their leader in the afterlife. One of the earliest examples of mass murder in the United States took place on August 10, 1810, at Ywahoo Falls, Kentucky, when racist whites murdered over 100 Cherokee women and children. Since the Ywahoo Falls incident the number and examples of mass murders in the United States and other parts of the world have been numerous and varied. Perhaps the most extreme example of late-twentieth-century mass genocide occurred in 1993 when nearly 1 million Rwandans were slaughtered over a period of 100 days by the Presidential Guard, elements of the Rwandan armed forces, and extremist military.

Holmes and Holmes Typology for Mass Murderers

In reference to the motivations for mass killings, Holmes and Holmes (1994) indicate that those motivations may be either intrinsic, occurring within the offender, or extrinsic, involving factors outside the offender.

Holmes and Holmes (2001) list eight different types of mass murderer, building on the works of others (Dietz, 1986; Monahan, 1980; Fox and Levin, 1989; Davis, 1990). These are –

  • Disciple Killer – follows the direction of a charasmatic leader, motivation is extrinsic. (See D for Disciple Killer)
  • Family Annihilator Killer – kills his entire family at one time, and may even kill the family pet.  The motivation for the Family Annihilator is intrinsic, inhttp://hunteremkay.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=647&action=editside the offender. (See F for Family Annihilator)
  • Disgruntled Employee Killer – may have been dismissed from a job, denied a promotion, have received some disciplinary action, or suffered some other perceived wrong.  May be on medical or mental disability leave. Can be a long-term employee or a new employee. They lash out to fix some perceived wrong, however it has been found that this situation can happen with either a very regimental or lax management system. The motivation is intrinsic in an effort to “right a wrong.” (See G for Going Postal also).
  • Ideological Killer – the PseudoCommando, – stockpiles weapons to lash out against something which is perceived as not right about the world. Pseudo-political reasonings, sometimes semi-affiliated to terrorist or extremist ideals (See L for Lone Wolf)
  • Set and Run Killer – either a mass bomber, or perhaps a product tamperer. They intend normally to set the weapon and then run, not to commit suicide. Some similarities to the serial arsonist. (See A for Arson, S for Set and Run Killer)
  • Disgruntled Citizen Killer – These are people that are unhappy with something in their lives and feel that killing a large number of people at one time will either change their lives or at least give them an outlet for their hate.(See G for Going Postal)
  • Psychotic Killer (sometimes called the Mentally Disordered Multiple Murderer) – three examples are given in the below section on Kelleher’s Psychotic Killer type. 
  • School Shooter – normally males aged 11 – 18, with social problems, who target their own schools in rampage murders. Often a team killing.(see G for Going Postal, and T for Team Killing)

Kelleher Typologies for Mass Murder

Kelleher in ‘Flash Point‘, denotes seven different motives behind mass murder – these are discussed below.

Perverted Love

(Source: Death Reference)

Kelleher’s first category is defined by the concept of perverted love, with an example being the family man who kills his entire family out of his own depression or pathology. Perverted love killings may be either of two types: family murder/suicide or a family killing. In the first category, more commonly done by males, the individual commits suicide by proxy, a term from the psychiatrist Shervert Fraser used by James Fox and Jack Levin in their bookOverkill (1994).

The families of the offender are seen as part of the self. If there is no happiness in life for the self, then, he reasons, there is no happiness in life for the extended self. He views himself as saving his family from future suffering. The egocentrism of this individual does not allow for his family to have a different opinion on life.

The individual who engages in a family killing without suicide is demonstrated by the example of Ronald Gene Simmons, the father of his daughter’s son, who killed fourteen members of his family on Christmas in 1987 when his wife threatened to divorce him.

Mass murderer Julio Gonzalez became jealous of his girlfriend in 1990 and torched the Bronx’s Happy Land Social Club, killing nearly all ninety-seven persons inside. There have been other instances where a mass murder has been committed to protect a family member or members.

During the Allen-Edwards feud in Hillsville, Virginia, on March 13, 1912, feudists entered the courtroom where a family member was being tried, and killed the judge, sheriff, commonwealth attorney, a juror, and an innocent bystander.

There are obvious tie-ins here with Holmes and Holme’s Family Annihilator, although in this case the typology of love for a family member can be taken out to the greater community. I would also suggest that the Murder Cults such as the Manson Family with a charasmatic leader and disciple killers would fit well into this typology, often subfusing the cause with a political and hate agenda also. (See C for Cult Murders and D for Disciple Killers for more. ).

Politics and Hate

(Source : Death Reference)

The second type of mass murder involves politics and hate.

Adolf Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany’s problems, and the result was genocide.

The terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and other suicide bombers perceive the victims as violating one of the terrorists’ political or religious goals. From his or her perspective, the death is viewed as for the greater good because the individual has eliminated a number of people whose views differ from his or hers. Even this minimal expectation may not always be true due to the randomness of the victims. Galvanizing the alienated opposing side into political action and a cycle of revenge is also an obvious and frequently counterproductive consequence of such a terrorist choice for mass murder.

A differing example of mass murder involving politics and hate includesTimothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, because they were angry at the federal government over the 1993 Waco, Texas, raid against the Branch Davidians. They are classified as set-and-run murderers in the Holmes and Holmes typology, for this type of killer sets the killing device in motion, then leaves the location, as McVeigh did before killing 168 people, including twenty children.

Terrorism

According to the September 24, 2001, issue of Time, the profile of the suicide bomber before September 11 had been of a young man, aged eighteen to twenty-four, who had been born in poverty and was full of both despair and zealotry, having nothing to lose. But the suicide bombers of September 11 showed a shift in profile. These men were older and had the option of middle-class lives because of their education and technical skills. One of them left behind a wife and children.

According to the April 15, 2002, issue of Newsweek, there have been 149 suicide bombing attacks against Israel since 1993, with the perpetrators being most often single (87.2%), from Hamas (47%), residing on the West Bank (59%), between seventeen and twenty-three years of age (67.1%), and possessing some or a full high school education (37.6%).

For more on some of these types of politically activated mass murderers see L for Lone Wolf.

Revenge Killings

Revenge Killings involve a murderer who gives “payback” to someone who is perceived to have humiliated him or her. The killer’s own personal responsibility is rationalized away and blame is conveniently placed on others. The Holmes and Holmes subtype of the Disgruntled Employee sits in this motive, and I took the liberty above of combining that with the Disgruntled Citizen, and even the School Shooter. Further details and examples for these can be found at G for Going Postal.

(Source: Death Reference) Though innocent victims are frequently killed in this type of assault, workplace mass murderers typically plan the assault and are selective in their hunt for particular prime victims. The depersonalization of others is viewed by Kelleher as symbolically eliminating the whole organization or school and is called murder by proxy by Fox and Levin. They also point out that murderers in general have an average age of twenty-nine, but workplace mass murderers have an average age of thirty-eight. While a younger man can still see opportunities in the future, the older man sees his salary and/or status disappearing, with no satisfactory substitute in sight. Although many people experience job loss without becoming mass murderers, workplace murderers have frequently experienced chronic or recent social isolation. The only factor in their lives that is meaningful to them is their job or career, and they are incapable of coping with their problems in adaptive ways by changing their behavior. Interestingly, the workplace mass murderer will often have no significant criminal record, and others will perceive him or her to be reasonable or at least harmless. Typically, many years of frustration have occurred before the fatal event.

Fox and Levin’s analysis of workplace killers also showed that 93 percent were male and more than 70 percent were white. Female mass murderers in general are less likely to choose guns or bombs, leaning more toward poison or accidents. Even in suicide, females are less likely to use firearms and more likely to use drugs, indicating that males are more acculturated to lethal mass weapons.

Sexual Homicide

(Source: Death Reference) A significant number of killings have been perpetrated by a desire to achieve sexual gratification through inflicting pain on the victims (sadism) and/or receiving pain by being kicked, scratched, pinched, or bitten by the victim.

Richard Speck was influenced by drugs and alcohol when he killed eight student nurses, raping some of them in the process, on July 13, 1966, in Chicago.

Numerous mass murderers such as Peter Manual and “sex beast” Melvin Rees were sadists and derived sexual pleasure from killing their victims and mutilating the corpses.

The ultimate pleasure for some masochistic killers is being executed.

The Executioner

The Executioner is  semi-related to the Holmes and Holmes ideological killer.  The executioner kills for greed, personal gain or profit, in this case in a mass murder scenario. The execution mass murderer kills for greed and personal gain and may engage in either cold-blooded killing for profit or the unplanned execution of witnesses.

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929 was a result of turf rivalry between Al Capone and “Bugs” Moran concerning the whisky business. 7 mob associates were killed.

William Burke and William Hare, Irish laborers and body snatchers living in Edinburgh, Scotland, killed approximately eighteen persons in 1829 and delivered their bodies (for dissection purposes) to medical schools, impelled by a desire for money.

Jack Gilbert Graham, irritated at his mother when she came to visit him in Denver Colorado, in 1955, decided to murder her for insurance money. He presented her with a bomb wrapped as a Christmas present to take home with her on the plane. It exploded, killing forty-three people on board.

Belle Guinness, America’s most notorious murderess, killed several people on her Indiana farm in 1908, including her husbands (and potential husbands), adopted daughter, and biological children for monetary reasons. Although strictly seen as a black widow serial killer with a long history of killings, the killings Belle was eventually found out on were all located at the same farm, and in mass body formations. (See B for Black Widow)

The Psychotic

(Source: Death Reference) The psychotic type is a category used to describe a murderer who has a significant mental disorder. This typology obviously maps with Holmes and Holmes own Psychotic, above, where you will find some examples. Sometimes familicide killers who are women can make some claims towards post-partum depression or psychosis.

Charles Whitman was suffering from a brain tumor when he randomly killed eighteen people at the University of Texas on July 31, 1966. 
Martin Bryant was suffering from a mental disorder when he went on a rampage on April 28, 1996, in Port Arthur, Tasmania, killing thirty-five people. 
Howard Unruh, a World War II veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, became upset with his neighbors in East Camden, New Jersey, and went on a murder spree in September 1949, slaying thirteen individuals.

Unexplained

The seventh category, in true Kelleher style, is the unexplained.  Given that the majority of mass murders end in the suicide of the killer, authorities and victim’s family members are often left with little information to allow them to piece together the motives or thinking behind the killings. Many mass murders remain unexplained. 

Those murders that cannot be explained fall into the unexplained group. For example, authorities could never figure out why Thomas Eugene Braunwent on his killing spree in 1967. While several hypotheses exist, there is no definitive explanation of why Charlie Lawson, a North Carolina farmer, killed his wife, six children, and himself on Christmas Day, 1929.

The Mass Murderer

Four Basic Characteristics of Mass Murderers

  • they give little thought or concern to inevitable capture or death
  • they commit crime in public places
  • their motive is retaliatory; based in rejection, failure, and loss of autonomy
  • the offence is an effort to regain a degree of control over their lives

Five Basic Characteristics of Mass Murderers

(Source: Post Gazette) Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, cited five:

  • The killer blames others for his problems.
  • He is much more likely to have a mental illness, particularly paranoid schizophrenia, than homicide perpetrators in general.
  • He is often a loner, with few friends or social connections.
  • He carefully plans his attacks, taking days to months to get ready.
  • He is much more likely to be suicidal than a typical killer. “Because the mass murderer considers his life no longer worth living, he will either kill himself or force the police to kill him,” Dr. Duwe said.

For his doctoral dissertation, Dr. Duwe examined 909 cases of mass murder in America from 1900 through 1999 and found that out of 116 mass public shootings in that data set, 47 percent ended with the killer committing suicide, compared with less than 5 percent among homicide offenders in general.

During the incident April 4, Mr. Poplawski called friends during the shootout with police to say he was going to die that day, although he ended up surrendering to police.

“That occasionally happens”, said Eric Hickey, director of forensic studies at Alliant International University in San Diego, who has studied mass murders for several years.

“Most of these guys don’t plan an exit strategy,” he said, “and if they get caught, it’s not by design — it’s more that they’ve vented and they’re just out of ammo, and so they sit down and say come and get me.”

The Perception of the Mass Murderer

Serial Murderers vs Mass Murderers

Oddly, although much more relevant to our society nowadays, the public still looks on serial murderers with more fear than that of the “psycho” mass murderer who just goes postal one day. With only 1% of homicides being put down to serial homicides, the statistics don’t seem supported by the amount of public fear for the potential of being involved as a random victim in a mass murder event. Perhaps some of this comes from living in the age where the world is now threatened by terrorism.

The public knows that they can only do so much to be prepared for such an event – we look out for unmanned baggage or packages left behind – which might harbour a bomb, and we watch out for nervous strangers coming into our vicinity. We listen to our country’s or city’s terror alert warnings. In our schools, we take measures to drill our students in measures to take if a hostage situation begins, just as in many countries, we drill the kids on how to dive under desks in the event of an earthquake. And that’s about all we have control over, when dealing with a random person that we consider is just mentally unstable.

(Source: Eric Hickey) Both serial killers and mass killers evoke fear and anxiety in the community, but the reaction to a mass murder will be much more focused and locally limited than that to serial killing. People generally perceive the mass killer as one suffering from mental illnesses. This immediately creates a “they”/”us” dichotomy in which “they” are different from “us” because of mental problems.

We can somehow accept the fact that a few people go “crazy” sometimes and start shooting others. However, it is more disconcerting to learn that some of the “nicest” people one meets lead a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde life: a student by day, a killer of coeds by night; a caring, attentive nurse who secretly murders sick children, the handicapped, or the elderly; a building contractor and politician who enjoys sexually torturing and killing young men and burying them under his home. When we discover that people exist who are not considered to be insane or crazy but who enjoy killing others for “recreation,” this indeed gives new meaning to the word “stranger.”

Although the mass murderer is viewed as a deranged soul, a product of a stressful environment who is just going to “explode” now and then (but of course somewhere else), the serial murder is seen as much more sinister and is more capable of producing fear.”

Citations and References

 

from → Men YY Chromosomes are Lethal
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