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Offender and Offense Characteristics of a Nonrandom Sample of Adolescent Mass Murderers

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ABSTRACT

Objective

The authors conducted a descriptive, archival study of adolescent (≤19 years of age) mass murderers—subjects who intentionally killed three or more victims in one event—to identify demographic, clinical, and forensic characteristics.

Method

A nonrandom sample of convenience of adolescent mass murderers was utilized.

Results

Thirty-four subjects, acting alone or in pairs, committed 27 mass murders between 1958 and 1999. The sample consisted of males with a median age of 17. A majority were described as “loners” and abused alcohol or drugs; almost half were bullied by others, preoccupied with violent fantasy, and violent by history. Although 23% had a documented psychiatric history, only 6% were judged to have been psychotic at the time of the mass murder. Depressive symptoms and historical antisocial behaviors were predominant. There was a precipitating event in most cases—usually a perceived failure in love or school—and most subjects made threatening statements regarding the mass murder to third parties. The majority of the sample clustered into three types: the family annihilator, the classroom avenger, and the criminal opportunist.

Conclusions

The adolescent mass murderer is often predatorily rather than affectively violent and typically does not show any sudden or highly emotional warning signs. Although the act of mass murder is virtually impossible to predict because of its extremely low frequency, certain clinical and forensic findings can alert the clinician to the need for further, intensified primary care, including family, school, community, law enforcement, and mental health intervention.

Section snippets

METHOD

We defined adolescent mass murder as the intentional killing of at least three victims (other than the perpetrator) in a single incident by an individual 19 years old or younger. We limited our data collection to individuals who used a firearm, cutting instrument, or blunt object with or without other weapons, as these account for most of the killing instruments used in any homicide in the United States (FBI, 1999).

We searched multiple psychiatric, psychological, medical, social, and criminal

RESULTS

Data sufficient for inclusion in this study were gathered on 27 incidents of adolescent mass murder involving 34 perpetrators. Although a few other cases (less than six) were found that did not provide sufficient credible data for inclusion, and there are other cases of school shootings that resulted in fewer casualties, our comprehensive search leads us to conclude that our sample represents most of the universe of adolescent mass murderers, as we have defined them, in North America in the

DISCUSSION

Adolescent mass murder appears to be the exclusive domain of males—to a greater, but perhaps not significant, degree than other violent acts. The gender disparity in criminal violence is a consistent finding that cuts across racial, ethnic, national, cultural, and socioeconomic lines (Wilson and Herrnstein, 1985). The racial distribution of our subjects appears similar to population distributions in the United States as recorded in the 1990 census (U.S. Census Bureau, 1990) but is grossly

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    This study was supported by a grant from Forensis, Inc.

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