The Red Zone

Tomorrow, dangerous times begin. April 16th will be the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech killings of 32 and the suicidal death of the shooter Cho. Vulnerable suicidal individuals who are thinking about homicide will be triggered by the recycling of the news on cable television, and for ten days, through the anniversary of Columbine. The days through April 26th will be a time in which you should remain alert. The theaters of this tragic play may be played out in more than universities, colleges, and other schools.

Remembering this, others sound similar warnings....

New York, April 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Morality in Media President Robert Peters had the following comments regarding tomorrow's first anniversary of the April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre:

"Two of our nation's leading newspapers, USA TODAY ("For families and survivors, grief becomes call to action," 4/11/08) and the N.Y. Times ("At State Level, More Attempts To Limit Guns," 4/11/08) have already chosen to remember the first anniversary of the April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre with front page articles highlighting gun control efforts.

"Undoubtedly, there are loopholes in our nation's gun control laws that need plugging, but in remembering that the Virginia Tech killer used guns to slaughter fellow students, we should also remember that the killer grew up in a culture that glamorizes and even celebrates gun mayhem.

"Along with reporting on loopholes in our nation's gun laws, therefore, the media should also be reporting on the irresponsible TV shows, films, rap lyrics and video games released in the past year that wallow in deadly gun violence and that are popular among children and young adults.

"The media should also reconsider its blind adherence to modernistic Supreme Court decisions that have made it almost impossible to hold entertainment media companies responsible for harm caused by their reckless disregard for human life. Surely, this was not the intent of our nation's founding fathers, which never meant for the Constitution to become a 'suicide pact.'

"Set forth below are quotations that appeared in news publications following the horrible mass murder that took place one year ago at Virginia Tech. They merit the public's consideration."

"Equally important was an observation made by one of the CNN talking heads who pointed out that the killer who made a bloody wreck of Virginia Tech used the 'weapon of choice' seen in rap videos and action films. That was another indictment of the strutting, malicious violence that pollutes our popular culture and may have influenced the Virginia Tech killer who brandished two pistols..." [Stanley Crouch, "Society hits a dead end," N.Y. Daily News, 4/23/07)

"The notion that 'movies don't kill people, lunatics kill people' is liberating to us screenwriters because it permits us to give life to our most demented fantasies and put them up on the big screen without any anxious hand-wringing. We all know there's a lot of money to be made in trafficking in blood and guts...[But can] we really in good conscience conclude that the violence saturating our popular culture has no impact?...As responsible Americans put their heads down on their desks and reflect, should the scribes of popular entertainment be excused to the playground? ...Before cashing those big checks, shouldn't we at least pause to consider what we are saying with our movies about the value of life and the pleasures of mayhem?" [Mike White, "Making a Killing," N.Y. Times, 5/2/07]

"'My first thought when I saw the newspaper picture of Cho holding two guns was this guy has seen too many Asian gun films...,' Tom Weisser, Editor of Asian Cult Cinema magazine, told the Post yesterday. 'Perhaps there has never been a better example of a pop-culture killer.'" [V.A. Musetto, "Erie link to blood soaked Korean film," N.Y. Post, 4/20/07]

"Much has been made of the frightening similarity between 'Oldboy,' Park Chan Wook's dark 2003 movie thriller, and the deeds of Cho Seung Hui, who shot to death 32 people...But there are problems as well. For one, 'Oldboy' wasn't a gun picture...Many of Cho's pictures - 11 out of 43 - featured guns. And when I look at them, another name struck me as far more relevant than Park Chan Wook. That's John Woo. Woo almost redefined the action genre with a series of Hong Kong gangster movies...In at least three regards, Cho activities so closely reflect the Woo oeuvre that it seems somewhat fair to conclude that in his last moments, before he blew his brains out, he was shooting a John Woo movie in his head. First is the peculiar nature of the gun violence...Second is the nature of the guns themselves...The third...is thematic..." [Stephen Hunter, "Cinematic Clues To Understand The Slaughter," Washington Post, 4/20/07]

"Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui plagiarized other school shooting psychos in a twisted show of one-upmanship. He used the Internet to research and learn from infamous school killers, including Columbine's Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold...'Cho was an empty vessel and he poured himself full from images off the Internet...,' said Loren Coleman, an expert on school shootings and the author of The Copycat Effect. 'There's a psychological process that these shooters appear to be competing for - the high body count.'" [Jill Culora, "Sick homages from a student of psychos," N.Y. Post, 04/22/07]

"Die, Elders, Die!"

Perhaps it is a coincidence but on March 22, 2008, a renegade alignment of "thinkers" calling themselves the RRRgroup (although known by some critics as the "KKKgroup") wrote a blog (together?) entitled "Death(s) will clean the UFO palate."

They begin by stating,
"When ufology’s old-guard passes on – Dick Hall, Stan Friedman, Kevin Randall, John Schuessler, and even the 60ish Jerry Clark to name a few – taking hangers-on and sycophants with them (and you know who they are), the UFO palate will be cleansed."

The RRRGroup then mention others who "include Paul Kimball, Nick Redfern, Greg Bishop, and Mac Tonnies."

I found such statements outrageous, incredible, and unwise. I said, partially, in a comment directed to the RRRGroup:

Every "new" generation sees themselves as having the "real" solutions or the next best outside-the-box suggestions. Of course, it will only be something you will reflect upon when the next generation after you, the new group of "Young Ones" start nibbling at your aging heels....

It's always been that way, and it will continue so into the future.

But calmness is rare and, instead, dark days are afoot when people like these young bloggers feel it is cool to expound on the positive value in the forthcoming deaths of their elders, mentors, and older writers.

It is now with some concern I reflect that on April 2, 2008, a week and half after these words were written by the RRRGroup, Rupert Sheldrake, 65, of London, while speaking at the "10th International Conference on Science and Consciousness" at the La Fonda Hotel, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was attacked by a much younger man.

Sheldrake had just taken a break at 3:00 p.m., when Hirano Kazuki, 33, of Yokohama, Japan, stabbed Sheldrake in the leg.

The Santa Fe New Mexican described the wound in graphic detail: "Sheldrake had a 2- or 3-inch cut on the front of his left thigh, just above his kneecap, causing blood to spurt some 8 inches into the air as he lay on his back."

A statement of probable cause quoted witnesses to the stabbing as saying the man, Hirano Kazuki, had a knife in his hand, pushed people out of the way as he approached the stage where Rupert Sheldrake was speaking and tried to get onto the stage. According to the statement, Kazuki tripped as he tried to stab Sheldrake in the chest and stabbed him in the left thigh instead.

Sheldrake's keynote address was entitled "Memory and Morphic Resonance," and his workshop was "Fields of the Mind: Experimental and Research and Practical Intuition," according to a catalog on the conference.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake studied biochemistry at the Clare College, Cambridge, UK, graduating with a double First Class honors degree. He was a Frank Knox fellow at Harvard, studying philosophy and history. He returned to Cambridge where he gained a Ph. D. in biochemistry and was a Fellow at Clare College. He was a Research Fellow of the Royal Society.

In recent years, Sheldrake has been an intellectual writer of some note on the topics of animal and plant development and behavior, telepathy, perception and metaphysics, which skeptics and critics have called "pseudoscience." Writers like Jerome Clark, Greg Bishop, and Nick Redfern, the same ones whom the RRRGroup mentioned, have noted Sheldrake's thoughts with favor. Sheldrake's material is marginal to ufology, although central to some Fortean thoughts, but overlaps, no doubt, have occurred.

Getting into the mind of the Japanese stabber seems to be key. But who knows why this individual attacked Sheldrake? Amazingly, people can read articles and watch visual presentations which stimulate their future actions, as I document throughout The Copycat Effect. When statements about how the "deaths" of certain researchers will result in "cleaning the palate" are added to the blogsphere, can anyone say who is reading them and what impact they might have?

What is known about Hirano is that he had been attending the "10th International Conference on Science and Consciousness." Other attendees said he had been acting oddly. They said he confronted Sheldrake earlier in the week, telling Sheldrake that he heard voices and saw demons. Another featured speaker at the conference told the man he was 'full of negative energy' and counseled him to 'calm down,' reported Evan Mecham, an attendee from Broomfield, Colorado.

Hirano is being held on a $200,000 bail.

Sheldrake is expected to fully recover, physically.

Assassination Copycats

Do assassinations come in copycat clusters? Historically, such situations appear to have occurred.

Forty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. On April 3, King in Memphis, addressed a rally, delivering his "I've been to the Mountaintop" address at Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ, Inc. – World Headquarters). King was shot on the 4th of April, while standing on the 2nd floor balcony, near his room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

On April 4, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy, the then-senator from New York State, learned of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and gave a moving impromptu speech in Indianapolis' inner city, in which Kennedy called for a reconciliation between the races. Riots broke out in 60 cities in the wake of King's death, but not Indianapolis, a fact many attribute to the effect of Kennedy's speech. (Barack Obama recalled that speech while speaking himself from Indianapolis on April 4, 2008.)

On April 7, 1968, Black Panther Bobby Hutton, who held the title of the Minister of Defense, was killed. Bobby Hutton, or "Lil' Bobby," was the youngest member of the Black Panther Party. He joined soon after the conception of the BPP in 1966, at the age of 16. He was killed by the Oakland, California, police after a firefight. Eight Black Panther Party members, including Hutton, Eldridge Cleaver and David Hilliard, were traveling in two cars when they were allegedly ambushed by the Oakland police. Cleaver was wounded. Both the Oakland police and the Black Panther Party each called the event an ambush by the other group. Two policemen were shot in the incident.

Rudi Dutschke born Alfred Willi Rudi Dutschke (March 7, 1940 – December 24, 1979, Århus, Denmark) was the most prominent spokesperson of the left-wing German student movement of the 1960s. He famously split from those who went on to form the violent Red Army Faction and advocated instead "a long march through the institutions" of power to create radical change from within government and society by becoming an integral part of the system's machinery.

On April 11, 1968, Dutschke was shot in the head by Josef Bachmann. After the attempted assassination, Dutschke lived for another 12 years until related health problems caused his death. Because of massive brain damage from the assassination attempt, Rudi Dutschke continued to suffer the effects for the rest of his life. He died on December 24, 1979 in Aarhus, Denmark, when he had an epileptic seizure while in his bathtub and drowned.

On June 3, 1968, Andy Warhol, while in his New York loft, was shot by frustrated writer, Factory-hanger-on Valerie Solanas. The Pop Art guru barely survived the shooting, and would face physical repercussions from the assassination attempt until his death in 1987.

On June 4, 1968, presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy had just scored a major victory from winning the California Democratic primary. He addressed his supporters in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, in a ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He left the ballroom through a service area to walk through and greet supporters working in the hotel's kitchen. In a crowded kitchen passageway, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian, opened fire with a .22 caliber revolver and shot Kennedy in the head at close range. Following the shooting, Kennedy was rushed to The Good Samaritan Hospital where he died the next day.

June 5, 1968, was the first anniversary of the Six-Day War between the military forces of Israel versus Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq.

There has been no assassination of a major political figure resulting in a fatality of any leader in the United States since 1968. There have been killings of minor figures, assassination attempts against significant individuals, and some of these events have come in clusters.

Tappan Zee Suicides

Bridges are magnets for suicides. Two men jumped from the Tappan Zee Bridge on Thursday, April 3, 2008.

"More than 25 people have made fatal jumps from the Tappan Zee Bridge into the Hudson River in the past 10 years, the [New York] State Thruway Authority said," on August 29, 2007, noted New York's CBS-TV.

Called "one of the country's largest bridges," the number of suicides from the Tappan Zee is vague. Copycats are a problem.

"The 3-mile-long Governor Malcolm Wilson Tappan Zee Bridge, which opened in 1955, has no walkway. Would-be suicides tend to drive to midspan, stop their cars in an outside lane, scale the barrier and jump," reported CBS-TV in 2007.

In general, bridge authorities do not like to publicize how many people jump off bridges. "More than 25," of course, could be 250 or 1500. After yesterday's Tappan Zee suicides, the number was revised to "about 30 people" in media accounts.

The specific number of bridge suicides is a touchy topic nationally. Take, for example, what has occurred in conjunction with the suicide count from the Golden Gate Bridge. I wrote about the subject in The Copycat Effect:

Between 1937 and 1973, five hundred people “officially” died by suicide from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. That’s a rate of fourteen a year. Between 1974 and 1995, when the next five hundred victims died, the rate had increased to about twenty-four a year. When the actual number of suicides neared a thousand, local media madness tried to document who would be number 1000. Tad Friend writing in The New Yorker in 2003 about the approach of this milestone in 1995, recalled that a “local disk jockey went so far as to promise a case of Snapple to the family of the victim. That June, trying to stop the countdown fever, the California Highway Patrol halted its official count at 997. In early July, Eric Atkinson, age twenty-five, became the unofficial thousandth; he was seen jumping, but his body was never found.”

By 2003, upwards of 1,300 people are said to have died from throwing themselves off the Golden Gate Bridge, a yearly rate of nearly forty-three people a year. But one Coast Guard coxswain who works closely with others on the bridge recently told the media that the yearly average is, incredibly, closer to three hundred.

The Tappan Zee may have more suicides in its near future because of copycats. On April 3, 2008, it experienced two men jumping from the bridge within an hour of each other. Steve Lieberman of The Journal News shares the following about the news (edited):

The two suicides were individual decisions and represented the first time in recent memory that two people jumped from the bridge within such a short period of time, authorities said.

The first man, a 55-year-old from Montvale, N.J., jumped from the bridge's causeway in Rockland on the Westchester-bound side just before 1:30 p.m. The second man, a 27-year-old from Ossining, leapt into the water from the main span on the Rockland-bound side about 2:30 p.m., about 10 minutes after the first jumper's body had been found.

Both were dead when pulled from the water by Piermont firefighters.

State police were not releasing the names of the two men until they could confirm their identities and notify their families.

The two deaths came about two weeks after a 23-year-old Newburgh man jumped to his death from the 3-mile bridge on the Rockland-bound side. His body has not been recovered.

"This is the first time I can recall two jumpers so close together in time," South Nyack-Grand View Police Chief Robert Van Cura said.

Van Cura, a police officer for 26 years and a volunteer firefighter, said there might have been two jumpers within a 24-hour period before, but he couldn't recall specifically.

A state police report said the jumps were an "unprecedented series of events" on the bridge.

During the past decade about 30 people have jumped to their deaths from the bridge. Several others have been saved, either in the water or grabbed on the precipices.

"I don't know what it is about the Tappan Zee Bridge, but it is certainly a magnet for folks," Van Cura said. "This is all very sad. Two people dead."

...

"Never before have we had two jumpers like this in one day," said Goswick, a three-time Fire Department chief and a 25-year volunteer. "We've had a lot of jumpers in recent years after a quiet period. You don't know what goes through people's minds."

Yesterday's first jumper leapt into the river from the bridge's causeway, which is 35 feet above the river. The chances of survival from that portion is considered better than from the main span, which at its highest point is 157 feet above the river.

Ramesh Mehta, the New York State Thruway Authority's director for the Hudson Valley, said the man pulled into the right lane, which was closed for maintenance. Moments later, a two-truck crew arrived on the scene to ask if the man needed help. He declined and drove off. Mehta said the man then passed through the tolls, turned around at an exit, crossed the bridge back into Rockland, circled around again and then headed back onto the causeway, where he pulled over - and jumped around 1:40 p.m.

He had left the keys in the ignition, witnesses said.

Rescuers found the first jumper just before 2:17 p.m.

At first, state police held out hope of saving his life, though they didn't know at the time the man was dead when pulled from the water.

"We got the person and they are working on him now," Sgt. John Antonelli of the state police said before the jumper had been pronounced dead. "We had a quick response and found the body pretty quickly. We hope they can revive him. In a sense, that height is more survivable."

...

Authorities have taken some steps to cut down on the number of suicides off the Tappan Zee Bridge and other spans in the Lower Hudson Valley.

In August, the Thruway Authority activated four suicide hotline phones at each end of the bridge. Signs were installed along the approaches on both sides and near midspan directing people to the call boxes. Above each telephone is a sign that says, "When it seems like there is no hope, there is help."

Mehta said the hotlines have yet to receive a call.

Mall Stabbings in Japan

One person was stabbed to death and at least seven others injured in a stabbing spree at a shopping mall in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, eastern Japan, local media reported Sunday, March 23, 2008.

The 24-year-old man suspected of attacking the eight people with a knife was arrested, reported the Kyodo news agency. One of the victims was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died.

The suspect was wanted for the earlier slaying of a 72-year-old man, police said.

SoCal Shooting

Four men were shot to death in a junk yard on March 18, 2008, at Santa Maria, near California's central coast in what police called "a case of workplace violence."

In a wild scene that sent workers and customers fleeing for their lives, police said, the shooter killed the men with a semiautomatic handgun, pausing at one point between rounds to reload. A suspect was later taken into custody.

The shooting at Black Road Auto was reported about 4 p.m., and all four victims were dead by the time police and medics arrived, Police Chief Danny Macagni told the Santa Maria Times.

The victims, whose names were not immediately released, were shot at close range, Macagni said. One victim was found outside the junk yard, and three were found inside.

The gun used in the shooting was found at the scene.

"This is a case of workplace violence," the chief said. "We have a lot of work to do here. We have a very large crime scene."

Police aided by California Highway Patrol helicopters searched the area to see whether there were more victims. Macagni said police believed there was "a sole suspect that entered the premises and fired the shots."

Officers chased the man over a fence, tackled him and took him into custody. Police said witnesses have identified the man who did the shooting.

The junkyard, Black Road Auto, is on the outskirts of Santa Maria, near Black and West Stowell roads. Santa Maria is a city of 92,000 people 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, in northwestern Santa Barbara County.

Homicides are rare in Santa Maria, which is in a largely agricultural area. In 2006, there were two homicides in the city; in 2005, there were three.
+++update+++
Lee Isaac Bedwell Leeds of Santa Maria was booked for investigation of murder and was held without bail. Police issued a news release saying witnesses at the scene identified the 31-year-old as the gunman.

At least one of those killed at Black Road Auto was related to Leeds, two were employees and the fourth victim appears to have been a customer of the business, investigators said. The wrecking yard is in the outskirts of Santa Maria, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Cafeteria Carnage

Death at the Wendy's in Florida is cause for a pause. Before the terribly high death toll at Virginia Tech, the largest number of recent "rampage deaths" took place in an eating establishment in 1991, with a direct link to an earlier fast food rage killing in 1984.

"The McDonald's Massacre" incident resulted in 21 deaths and 19 injuries at a McDonald's in the San Ysidro section of San Diego, California, on July 18, 1984.

That massacre was carried out by James Oliver Huberty, a 41-year-old former welder from Canton, Ohio, who had moved to the area with his wife and children in January 1984. He worked as a security guard until his dismissal one week prior to the rampage.

The McDonald's Massacre began at 4 p.m. and lasted for 77 minutes. Huberty used 2156 rounds of ammunition from a 9mm Uzi semi-automatic (the primary weapon fired in the massacre), a Winchester pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun, and a 9mm Browning HP in the restaurant before he was fatally shot by a SWAT team sniper perched on the roof of a nearby post office. It was a classic "suicide by cop."

Throughout the shooting, which involved the death of mostly Mexicans and Mexican-Americans from 8 months to 74 years of age, Huberty yelled out he had killed thousands in Vietnam. In reality, Huberty had never served in the military.

Fast forward to 1991.

The so-called "Luby's Massacre" was a mass killing that took place in Texas.

On October 16, 1991, George Jo Hennard drove his 1987 Ford Ranger pickup truck through the front window of a Luby's Cafeteria at 1705 East Central Texas Expressway in Killeen, Texas. He yelled "This is what Bell County has done to me!", then opened fire on the restaurant's patrons and staff with a Glock 17 pistol and later a Ruger P89. About 80 people were in Luby's at the time. He stalked down and killed 23 people and wounded another 20 before dying by suicide. It remained the deadliest shooting rampage in American history until the Virginia Tech Massacre.

As I wrote on page 163 of The Copycat Effect: "Before George Hennard crashed his truck into Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, on October 16, 1991 and sprayed it with gunfire, he had watched a documentary video at home about a similar mass murderer, James Huberty, who killed 21 people at a California McDonald's on July 18, 1984." (Hennard watched the tape over and over again.)

Hennard had also a used ticket stub in his pocket to the motion picture Fisher King, (1991) directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams, in which a fan of a despondent shock rock talk host takes the radio commentator's remarks seriously, goes to a restaurant, and opens fire, murdering numerous diners.

On the 11th of October, 1991, five days before the Luby's Cafeteria massacre, there had been a highly publicized "going postal" situation tied to the US Post Office in Ridgewood, New Jersey, which had left 4 dead. The killer in that case, Joseph M. Harris, was arrested wearing a gas mask and bullet-proof vest, and also dressed in black military fatigues, black combat boots and a black silk Ninja-style hood, with a 9-millimeter Uzi handgun, a .22-caliber machine gun with silencer, a samurai sword, three hand grenades and some homemade bombs.

Now we are at the present and another fast food place has had a "random killing." A shooting at a Wendy's in Florida on Monday, March 3, 2008, brings into focus again that shooting rampages do not merely take place at post offices, schools, colleges, malls, churches, and workplaces. They also occur in large gathering spots where people go to eat, i.e. fast food restaurants and cafeterias.

Brian Skoloff of the Associated Press summarized, in part, what tragically happened at the West Palm Beach Wendy's, around noontime on March 3, resulting in 2 dead (including the shooter by suicide), and 4 injured:

Paramedic Rafael Vazquez left a training course on how to help when several people are hurt at once, and went to lunch at a nearby Wendy's. He became exactly the kind of victim he was being trained to save.

As Vazquez stood at the counter waiting to exchange a promotional toy for his child, he was shot point blank in the back by a gunman wearing a jacket, tie and baseball cap. Four others were wounded by gunfire during the lunch hour rampage Monday, and the 60-year-old gunman - Alburn Edward Blake [a handyman and maintenance worker] of West Palm Beach - committed suicide....Vazquez, the slain off-duty firefighter, "probably didn't even see him," said Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue Deputy Chief Steve Delai. Vazquez's wife and child were outside in the parking lot when the shooting began.

Vazquez, 42, was on a lunch break Monday and had been attending a course called "Strategy and Tactics," after being promoted to lieutenant in January. Delai said the course teaches officers how to "manage large-scale incidents like we had today."

Witnesses said Blake entered the restaurant and went to a restroom. He appeared nervous when he emerged and killed Vazquez. He died at the scene without ever uttering a word....Josh Maynard, 30, said he and his 20-year-old brother Jerry hit the floor when Blake opened fire. Jerry Maynard said the shooter held his gun sideways, repeatedly pulling the trigger, and said nothing.....

Researcher Richard D. Hendricks has pointed out this additional detail mentioned in Florida's Sun-Sentinel: "Jerry Maynard couldn't believe the irony of the T-shirt he chose to wear that day. The black shirt bears the name of his friend's band: Witness Murder."

Neighbors interviewed by the media described Blake as a quiet man who "kept to himself."

A 1996 story in The Palm Beach Post revealed that Blake accidentally ran over an 18-month-old girl with his van, leaving her seriously injured. The story said he had a young daughter, himself.

Paul Miller, a Palm Beach County sheriff's spokesman, said Blake had no relation to anyone at the restaurant and no suicide note was found. "We don't know why he picked this location to do this horrible deed," Miller said.

It should be mentioned for clarification that the so-called "Wendy's Massacre" on May 24, 2000, was a brutal killing of five employees and the attempted murder of two others at a Wendy's fast-food restaurant at 40-12 Main Street in Flushing, Queens, New York, as an outcome of a robbery of $2,400, by a former employee and his accomplice.

More to the point here, past school shootings have shown that the suicidal-homicidal rampage-styled shooters often focus on in-school cafeterias, for example, at Aarhus University, Denmark (1994), Thurston High School, Oregon (1998), Montreal, Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal (1998), Columbine High School, Colorado (1999), Red Lion Area Junior High School, Pennsylvania (2003), and Dawson College, Montreal (2006).

Even during the so-called "Port Arthur Massacre" by Martin John Bryant on Sunday, April, 28, 1996, in Port Arthur, Tasmania, he killed the most (20 of the 35 dead) at the Broad Arrow Cafe, a tourist cafeteria. Bryant's rampage was theorized to be due to the coverage of the Dunblane massacre (18 dead, including the shooter by suicide), which occurred at the Dunblane Primary School in Scotland on March 13, 1996. The story had received saturation media attention in New Zealand, Tasmania, and Australia, in particular on the perpetrator. It is thought to have provided the trigger for Bryant to act. This causal factor was, according to Dr. Paul Mullen, a forensic psychiatrist, the "copycat effect."

The workplace rampage shooter, nicknamed "The Cafeteria Killer," was, like the Wendy's Alburn Edward Blake, a man in a business suit who walked in and opened fire at lunchtime. The Cafeteria Killer struck on January 27, 1993, killing three people and wounding three others at Tampa, Florida's Island Restaurant. Just days before, the Kentucky's East Carter High School shooting had left two dead and received national media attention in its wake.

Two other instances of recent "rampage-style" fast food murder sprees are worthy of mention. One was on January 20, 2003, at the Burger King, in Pomono, California, with 2 dead, including the shooter through "suicide by cop." The other example was on March 1, 2000, at the Burger King & McDonald's in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, where 3 died and 2 wounded. The day before, February 29, 2000, a school shooting had occurred at the Buell Elementary School, Michigan, with one young student killed by one of her childhood classmates.

All of these types of copycat incidents reinforce each other. Late in 2007 and early in 2008, media attention to group church shootings, mall killings, and school shootings appears to be on the increase again, and thus it should be no surprise that people in cafeterias and fast food locations have become targets anew.

Sigmund Freud conceptualized suicide as the murder of one's self. Karl Menninger in Man Against Himself (1938) extended the concept: "Is it hard for the reader to believe that suicides are sometimes committed to forestall the committing of murder? There is no doubt of it. Nor is there any doubt that murder is sometimes committed to avert suicide."

Suicides underlie each and every one of these "rampages." The copycat effect is the trigger, and suicide ideation is the key to understanding them more clearly, from Columbine to VA Tech and NIU, and from McDonald's and Luby's to yesterday's Wendy's.

Rampage Ripples

On the half-month anniversary of the NIU shootings, the volume of rampage-style shootings and school violence stories have been on the increase. Yesterday, February 27, 2008, was no exception, with new incidents in Tennessee, Arkansas, and California, sweeping across the nation, from time zone to time zone.

Here is a summary of yesterday's events:

At Bristol, Tennessee, at 11 a.m., on Wednesday, February 27, Rusty L. Rumley, 26, fatally shot four people at a public housing complex, Edgemont Towers on Ash Street, before dying by suicide. The police initially said Rumley was captured shortly after the shooting when he crashed his car about 20 miles away. A short time later they said he was dead and had apparently shot himself. Bristol, considered to be the "Birthplace of Country Music," is on the Virginia-Tennessee border.

At Little Rock, Arkansas, at 2:10 p.m., on February 27th, shots were fired in a parking lot near University Theatre and Stabler Hall, hitting a young man who was walking about 70 yards from the University Theatre. The two suspects who shot the University of Arkansas student left the scene in a "gold vehicle." The victim was transported to a local hospital with injuries.

In South Los Angeles, at 3:15 p.m., on February 27th, at a bus stop, a gunman fired about ten times into a crowd of children and adults. Eight were wounded, including three 10-12 year old girls and a 49-year-old woman who were critically injured. A 12-year-old girl, a 14-year-old boy and two men, ages 48 and 68, had minor injuries. The gunman ran away and has not been found.

Meanwhile, yesterday, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich asked state lawmakers to spend $40 million to raze Northern Illinois University's Cole Hall where five students were fatally shot on Valentine's Day. He suggested it be replaced with a new classroom and memorial building.

"Cole Hall will be torn down, but what happened there will never be forgotten," Blagojevich said at a news conference at the university in DeKalb, Illinois.

NIU President John Peters said he talked to Blagojevich the day after the shooting about what should be done with the building. In subsequent days, Peters said, students and others urged him to push for the building's removal to "consecrate" the site.

Further news yesterday came from MacNeil Environmental. The company is named in lawsuits by Red Lake school shooting survivors, and it denies allegations it failed to provide an adequate crisis plan for the Red Lake School District. Jeffrey James Weise, a 16-year-old Ojibwa who lived on the Red Lake Reservation and attended the school, opened fire at Red Lake High School, killing seven people before shooting himself on March 21, 2005. He had previously killed his grandfather (a tribal police officer) and his grandfather's girlfriend (also a tribal police officer) before going to the school. Fifteen people were wounded during and survived the Red Lake shooting.

Thanks to Todd and Richard for news items and links.

NIU Ripples

As the half-month anniversary of the Valentine's Day shootings approaches on February 28th, a potential date for copycats, campus alerts have occurred in the wake of the Northern Illinois University event. Two-week, one-month, first-year, and then on-going annual anniversaries are worthy of extreme caution for educational and law enforcement officials.

Here are examples of a few recent campus scares:

At Jersey City, New Jersey, St. Peter's College locked down its campus for several hours on February 20, 2008, after the discovery of a message threatening violence at the Jesuit school. At 10:40 a.m., campus security became aware of the handwritten note, taped in the stairwell of an administration and classroom building on the 3,000-student campus. The note referenced the Virginia Tech killings. No danger was found in a massive search of the campus, and an all-clear was called shortly before 3:00 pm.

In Louisville, Kentucky, also on February 20th, Fern Creek Traditional High School was locked down for a few hours after a student told officials she thought she saw someone with a gun on campus. No weapon was found after a campus-wide room-by-room police search, but police said they were looking for a former student based on the witness's description.

At Long Island, New York's Stony Brook College, on February 25th, officials sent out a text message alert at 1:58 p.m., 21 minutes after university police reported to the scene of a sighting. The message said: "There is a report of an armed perpetrator on the academic mall. Remain alert and follow directions of emergency personnel. Go to the Stony Brook Web site for updates." But the first Web site update providing more details was not posted until 2:51 p.m. No one was found.

Confusion occurred, however. Some of Stony Brook College's 23,000 students were told to stay in buildings; others were not told what to do. Campus police responded to complaints about the lack of a lockdown by saying: "It's almost impossible to lock down a city of 40,000 people."

At Decatur, Mississippi, a student was found shot to death in his Neshoba Hall dormitory room at East Central Community College on February 26th, an apparent suicide. The shooting led to a brief lockdown before authorities determined there was not a security concern. Mark McEachern, 23, of Ridgeland, was enrolled at the Decatur campus as a cosmetology student, ECCC President Phil Sutphin said. (Condolences to his family and friends.)

In Fargo, North Dakota, classes were canceled in a downtown building used by North Dakota State University after a man with a gun was reported there on February 26th. Fargo and university police said a 28-year-old suspect was later arrested a few blocks away on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon. Minnesota officials said the man had recently been released from prison, where he served time for robbery and burglary.

At Ferrum, Virginia, a campus lockdown took place on February 26th, and classes have been cancelled for the rest of the week at Ferrum College after a young man with a gun was seen by the housekeeping staff in a residence hall. A search by police was not able to locate the individual. More than 800 of the school's 1,000 students live on campus, but most left for an early spring break.

Ferrum College, affiliated with the United Methodist Church, is less than 50 miles from Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, where a student gunman killed 32 people and died by suicide on April 16, 2007.

Signal Stabbings

Hours before school stabbings left two students dead in China, coincidentally in California, two people were stabbed at a Fullerton theater during a film about brainwashed killers.

The stabbings took place approximately 45 minutes into the showing of the R-rated suspense/horror motion picture, The Signal. The suspect, who was described as a white male, fled out of one of the back doors. The assailant was noted to be a heavy set white man in his late to mid 20s, 5 feet 10 inches tall, with black hair.

"The suspect is still outstanding," Fullerton police Sgt. Jason Schoen said early Tuesday.

Orange County Register reporter Denisse Salazar wrote:

Two men were stabbed and injured Sunday night while watching a horror film at the AMC Theater in Fullerton during what appears to be a random attack, police say. Shortly before 7:30 p.m., officers were sent to the theater at 1000 S. Lemon St. after someone reported finding a bag with what appeared to be illegal substances, said Fullerton police Lt. Tom Basham.

While the officers were at the theater, people started running out of the theater showing "The Signal," including two men with blood on them, Basham said.

Just before people started running out in a panic, two men sitting in separate areas of the theater were randomly stabbed by an unknown man, Basham said.

"He started stabbing at the theater seat and then he stabbed the victim," Basham said. "As he fled, he stabbed another victim sitting near the exit."

Basham said the victims did not know each other or the attacker.

One man suffered a stab wound to the arm, which also punctured his chest, and was taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange. The other man was also stabbed in the arm and was taken to St. Jude Medical Center. Both are expected to survive.

The attacker, who is believed to have been kicked out of the theater earlier, escaped.

No arrest has been made, but police are following some leads.

"The Signal," a horror-comedy, is told in three parts from three perspectives, in which a mysterious transmission invades every cell phone, radio and TV, turning people into killers. One character estimates that "one out of every two people" are impulsively murdering the other one, according to reviews of the film.

Basham said the film was paused while police conducted their investigation. When it was resumed, the first scene was a stabbing, he said.

What I find remarkable is that people remained to watch the rest of the movie after the attacks!

The Signal's three perspectives were written and directed by first-timers David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Jacob Gentry. The film opened in limited theaters starting around Halloween on October 26, 2007.

Considering the underlying behavior contagion theme occurring in the suicidal-homicidal mayhem being triggered by the media, The Signal's plot that citizens are besieged with radio, television, and other broadcast signals that distort reality and turn them into hyper-violent killers is downright chilling.

Thanks to Richard Hendricks for alerting me to this event.

Web Sleuths & NIU

"I call it the death cult of Columbine," Loren Coleman, author of The Copycat Effect, said to The Chicago Tribune. "It lives on in YouTube, in MySpace, in special sites and in all kinds of ways we might otherwise call inappropriate."



This is the era of a new kind of suicide note, pushed along in cyberspace by keyboards and by texting.

Steve Johnson, the Internet critic of the Chicago Tribune, interviewed me extensively last week about Steven Kazmierczak's presence on the web. We discussed how I discovered more about the NIU killer than was being released in the mainstream press, including his identity, his reviews, his work background, his possible teenage abuses, and other items mentioned here at this blog or others. I talked about how this has created another dimension to the copycat effect phenomenon among school shooters.

Hastily and sometimes harshly written goodbye paper notes by someone dying by suicide, research has shown, have been found to exist only 20% of the time. However, Internet tracks of the suicidal school shooters nowadays seem to be evident in almost 90% of the cases.



The Tribune's Johnson interviewed other web detectives, of course, about this topic, and his thoughtful column appears in today's paper:

Within hours of the shootings at Northern Illinois University, Web searchers, working from a couple of details in a media account, had correctly identified the gunman as Steven Kazmierczak.

The assailant, who had not been officially identified at that time, was a former vice president of an NIU student organization, according to an article published on the Tribune's Web site after the Valentine's Day murders, and he had co-authored a scholarly paper on self-injury in prison.

It didn't take much work on the Internet to pin those two details to only one person: Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old from the Chicago suburbs who killed five and then himself in an NIU classroom in DeKalb.

Loren Coleman, a Maine author who has written books about suicide clusters and the "copycat effect" in mass killings, thinks the Web may play a bigger role than many people realize. He may have been the first to name Kazmierczak, at 2:59 a.m. Feb. 15, according to the time-stamp on his blog, well before authorities officially released the name.

But what he wrote next was, in a way, more telling.

"I expect an in-depth examination of Kazmierczak's visible Internet life within hours," Coleman wrote in the post on The Copycat Effect (copycateffect.blogspot.com).

And indeed, it happened just like that, because the search for Internet traces has become such a predictable part of the mass-killer story line. They may get rid of their computer's hard drive, as Kazmierczak appears to have done, but most people, especially people of the Internet generation, leave bits and pieces of themselves around the Web.

"Once you're out there, you're out there," said Gary Price, director of online information resources for the search engine Ask.com, "and even the smallest amount of information that you might not even know is out there" can linger forever. In the wake of an incident, anyone with an Internet connection can go looking for the information, and judging by the traffic spikes reported on sites that bear any connection to killings, tens of thousands do.

Seeing such traces for themselves "gives people more of a feeling of immediacy than four or five paragraphs in an AP article. It's a fast way to get some depth in the story," said Steve Huff, an Atlanta-area writer who turned his Internet hobby of researching crime into a writing gig with Radar magazine and a popular blog, True Crime Weblog (truecrimeweblog.com).

A blog, such as Coleman's or Huff's, will publish information about an incident early on; the blog gets cataloged by the search engines and then the "comments" area in the blog becomes an important arena for additional information, ranging from wild speculation and slander to other, reliable links.

The rise of semi-public social networks MySpace and Facebook, where people can chronicle their actions, tastes and desires, has only deepened the trend.

Although much of the Web sleuthing that goes on is very good, Huff raises an important point.

"For a magazine like I write for now, we've got fact checkers," he said. "As annoying as the fact checking is, it's saving your butt. Bloggers don't have fact checkers."

And another characteristic of the Web is that once bad information is out there, it, too, tends to stay out there, believed by at least some proportion of the people who miss subsequent attempts to correct it.

In the Kazmierczak case, for instance, one Web site, People You'll See in Hell, misidentified a MySpace page as belonging to the killer.

"Bad information can get spread very, very quickly," said Ask.com's Price, a leading Internet librarian who also runs the resourceshelf.com site. "You get excited that you found something and then you start spreading it."

While tracking a killer's traces can seem voyeuristic or ghoulish, it is important to pay attention to the Web, Coleman said, because it is also being used to enshrine killers and, he believes, perpetuate their deeds, especially the high school shootings in Columbine, Colo.

"I call it the death cult of Columbine," Coleman said. "It lives on in YouTube, in MySpace, in special sites and in all kinds of ways we might otherwise call inappropriate."

In some cases, he said, the Web becomes part of the homicide-suicide plan.

"The Internet has become really the new way for these people to get the attention they're seeking, the romanticized, really irrational attention," said Coleman. "As opposed to nice, cool suicide notes, they're leaving Internet footprints deliberately as their suicide notes, as their way to be immortal."

~ by Steve Johnson, Hypertext, "Web sleuths track killer's cyber-prints" Chicago Tribune, February 26, 2008.

Asian School Stabbings

To place the breaking news of today's school stabbing in context, I have created a summary list of recent Japanese and Chinese stabbings. A significant cluster occurred in China during the last half of 2004.



June 8, 2001 ~ Ikeda, Osaka, Japan
8 dead, 15 injured ~ Osaka school massacre. Armed with a kitchen knife, a 37-year-old former janitor Mamoru Takuma trespassed into Ikeda Elementary School attached to Osaka-Kyoiku University and stabbed school children and teachers. Eight children were killed and 15 wounded, among those were 13 children and two teachers.



June 1, 2004 ~ Sasebo, Nagasaki, Japan
1 dead ~ An 11-year-old student, identified only as "Girl A," killed, with a knife, a 12-year-old classmate, Satomi Mitarai, at the Okubo Elementary School.



August 4, 2004 ~ Beijing, China
1 dead, 17 injured ~ Xu Heping, a 51-year-old doorman with a history of mental illness, stabbed several students and teachers in Beijing University's Number One Hospital, killing a child and wounding 17 others, 14 of whom were children.

September, 2004 ~ Suzhou, People's Republic of China
28 injured ~ A man armed with a knife and homemade explosives attacked 28 children at a daycare center/kindergarten.

September, 2004 ~ Shandong, China
24 injured ~ A man stabbed 24 children with a knife at a school.

October, 2004 ~ Beijing, China
2 dead ~ A five-year-old boy and his teacher were killed at a Beijing kindergarten by an adult intruder.

November 26, 2004 ~ Ruzhou, Henan, China
8 dead, 4 injured ~ Yan Yanming, 21, an intruder stabbed eight students to death and injured four others at Ruzhou's Number Two High School in the sixth such incident in China in a four month period. The attacker attempted to take his own life after the killings.

February 17, 2005 ~ Neyagawa, Osaka, Japan
1 dead ~ A teacher was stabbed to death and two officials were injured at Chuo Primary School in Neyagawa, Osaka Prefecture.

May 15, 2007 ~ Maoming, China
2 dead ~ Wu Jianguo, a 17-year-year at Maoming's Number Three Middle School in the Guangdong province killed two classmates.

February 25, 2008 ~ Leizhou, Guangdong, China
3 dead, 4 injured ~ A young man, Chen Wenzhen broke into Leizhou No. 2 Middle School and killed a boy and a girl of Senior Two with a knife and injured four (three students & a teacher) before he stabbed himself and jumped off the fifth floor, dying by suicide.

China: Fatal School Attack

A school attack has occurred Monday in China that has left three dead and four injured. It ended in the suicide of the attacker, as frequently happens in North America.

But unlike USA school shootings, the event was carried out through the use of a knife. Knives and hatchets are a common method for lethal Asian school invasions of suicidal individuals, as gun control laws preclude firearms being employed.

The attack took place this evening, February 25, 2008, at a Guangzhou school in the Leizhou city of south China's Guangdong Province.

The news agency Xinhua gives these further details, via editor Yan Liang:

A young man named Chen Wenzhen broke into Leizhou No. 2 Middle School at around 7:35 p.m. [on Monday] killed a boy and a girl of Senior Two with his knife and injured four before he stabbed his own abdomen and jumped off the fifth floor, said Zheng Jiu, the school headmaster....The four injured, including three students and a teacher who tried to stop the killing, were being treated in Leizhou People's Hospital, local authorities said....The suspect, described as mentally disturbed, was also a Senior Two student. He left school half a year ago for he often suffered from headache and could not concentrate on his study, according to Zheng.

NIU Killer's Web Tracks

Revealing of the hidden and the covert, the twilight language of school shooters, could prevent future tragic incidents.

Late in the afternoon of February 20, 2008, Mike Nizza posted at his blog, "The Lede: Notes on the News" at The New York Times, a short essay entitled "After Illinois Shooting Rampage, a Cold Digital Trail."

Nizza wrote, in part:

The hunt for digital clues in the latest school shooting got off to a promising start last Friday. Hours before the police or news organizations identified the gunman, Loren Coleman of the Copycat Effect took tidbits plotted by a Chicago Tribune article and quickly connected them using the Web.

“Matching the two, you find it is Steve Kazmierczak,” he wrote. “I expect an in-depth examination of Kazmierczak’s visible internet life within hours.”

But the trail went cold without any major discoveries. No hints to Mr. Kazmierczak’s motive, no explanation for why a well-liked graduate student decided to open fire on a lecture hall full of students and then kill himself.

So far, bill of Web particulars includes:

– A small folder of nondescript images uploaded to Photobucket.
– A chat room complaint about Paypal.com.
– His pitch for a top post in a student group.
– His former girlfriend’s MySpace page.

The police investigation has also hit a wall. Chief Donald Grady of the university police force told the Tribune today that Mr. Kazmierczak also “didn’t tell people what he was going to do” and his computer turned up without a hard drive, along with a cell phone missing its main memory chip.

The conclusion was obvious: Mr. Kazmierczak was covering his tracks. Why did he hide it? What’s on that hard disk? What made him do it? The answer may well be lying where everyone first thought to look: buried on a hard disk. Unfortunately, it’s just out of reach, and seems likely to stay there.

Nizza continues on, talking about Virginia Tech's Cho, but I want to stop here and address the "messages left behind" and the alleged Internet invisibility of Steven Kazmierczak.

Kazmierczak did leave his footprints on the Internet, but it may have not been in "manifesto" form, as with the Finnish school shooter or the Virginia Tech killer. It also was not like the Red Lake school gunman or Dawson College killer, both of whom left overt exchanges in online hate and neo-Nazi forums.

No, Kazmierczak was more subtle, visiting sites, such as Amazon.com, and leaving reviews or critiques.

In a forthcoming Chicago Tribune article next week, more will be revealed. Stay tuned.

I agree with the editorial decisions being made to slow down the nature of the information-sharing that occurs after a school shooting. There is absolutely no reason to rush to print this material in the mainstream media immediately after such an event.

But the unfolding of the twilight language to be revealed in all of this, in the long run, assists in predicting future shootings.

Kazmierczak on O'Reilly

Bill O'Reilly (on the right) who only recently has thrown around the word "lynching" in conjunction to Michelle Obama, may allegedly have been part of the reason for the rage inside the man who turned his guns on the students at Northern Illinois University on Valentine's Day.

Apparently undiscovered by most investigators or even Bill O'Reilly observer Keith Olbermann (on the left, above) of MSNBC's "Countdown," the NIU shooter Steve Kazmierczak wrote a critique of O'Reilly's book Culture Warrior online, giving a clue as to things that set him off.

Kazmierczak did leave behind some Internet footprints, after all. He was a reviewer of a few items, such as the O'Reilly book, at Amazon.com.

Here is what Kazmierczak wrote on January 1, 2008, about O'Reilly's tome, which campus shooter Kazmierczak gave just two stars out of five:

The main problem I have with Culture Warrior is that O'Reilly writes like he talks-in short talking points and with a harsh tone. This is not to say that this is a bad thing, but it can grow annoying at times, particularly since even though O'Reilly has several advanced degrees, he writes like a first year undergraduate.

O'Reilly starts off by claiming that the contemporary culture war in this country cannot be framed in terms of liberals and conservatives. He then proceeds to claim that there are many shade of gray, and that boiling down such a complex issue into two sides is essentially a misguided approach to understanding the underlying issues at stake here.

However, O'Reilly immediately begins to frame this 'battle' in terms of secular-progressives (or SP's, O'Reilly abbreviates them since he uses the term probably more than 100 times in this book) versus traditionalists. In other words, he apparently he has done the very thing that he claimed he wouldn't do in this book which is essentially to frame this issue in terms of mutually exclusive aims, goals, and categories. Rather than use liberal v. conservative, O'Reilly substitutes these categories with SP and traditionalists, respectively, despite his claims to the contrary. By the end of the book, he flatly states that one side is just and the other is not, which is quite bizarre. O'Reilly's success with this book and with his show is due to his mastery of the cardinal rule of politics... you have to pander to all sides, even while twisting the knife into the back of the side you wish to defeat. In more pragmatic terms, the use of smoke-screens to cloud your ambitions and allegiances is always the safe and most successful route to traverse.

Despite O'Reilly having earned two master's degrees from prestigious universities, he must have skipped out during his statistics and research methods courses, as his use of anecdotal evidence is appalling and dishonest. Refraining from footnotes or any type of citation format, O'Reilly attempts to portray isolated events as epidemics and anecdotal stories as the universal truth. The most disturbing thing of all is that O'Reilly understands the power he wields, and abuses it to further his sales and unclear and somewhat contradictory agenda.

Yes, it's an enjoyable read, but O'Reilly is quite devious and makes use ad-hominem attacks more often than not, often against the usual suspects, (i.e. the ACLU, Howard Dean, Vermont judges, socialists, etc.). Seriously, smear merchant this, smear merchant that--it gets old after the first few chapters. Truly, the genius is O'Reilly is that he is a captivating media figure, often distorting politics and social issues through his manipulative posturing on countless issues. The same can be said of this book.

Dates & Dark Matters

On February 9th, I wrote: "Look for major surprises in school shootings and similar mass rampages...."

On February 14th, the NIU campus shooting occurred. More events are coming.

Will an assassination attempt be next? Another rampage shooting?



I have a strong track record for predicting.

What do I see on the horizon?

Few take notice.

Dates

A blogger at Circle of 13, however, quoted me heavily on Sunday, February 17, 2008, in "Valentine's Massacre (Again) In Illinois":

Loren Coleman...noticed a change in pattern. “Change is in the air. And danger,” he wrote on Feb. 9, 2008. There have been “shifts in rampage shootings.” And, warned Coleman, “Look for major surprises in school shootings and similar mass rampages for this spring, unfortunately. Look again, too, to the months of March and April, with the red zone of the ten days from April 16 through April 26, 2008, as especially dangerous.” (“Shootings Shatter Gender Barrier,” by Loren Coleman. )

Coleman's “Red Zone” of ten days between April 16 and April 26 coincides with the April 19 special marker. On that day, in 1993, the Waco Massacre final event occurred. Also on April 19, 1995, the Oklahoma City Bombings traumatized the nation.

Of course, the patterns are hiding in plain sight.

"Circle of 13" remembers Oklahoma City and the Waco Massacre, but April 19th is also Patriot's Day (Revolutionary War) and the date the Nazis entered the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943.

April 20th is Hitler's birthday; Hitler died by suicide. Also, it is the anniversary of the Columbine school massacre, which ended in two suicides.

In 2008, April 16th will be the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech killings of 32 and the suicidal death of the shooter Cho. Vulnerable suicidal individuals who are thinking about homicide will be triggered by all the repeats on cable television as April 16th gets closer, and for ten days, through the anniversary of Columbine. The days through April 26th could be a dangerous time.

The ending date I penciled in for this year's red zone is April 26th. That date is Hitler deputy Rudolf Hess's birthday, still celebrated by neo-Nazis in some locations in Germany. Hess officially died by suicide in 1987.

On April 26th, 2002, in Erfurt, Germany, the school shooting with the highest body count before VA Tech occurred when Robert Steinhauser, 19, went to the Johann Gutenberg Gymnasium (a secondary school), stalked the halls, and killed 12 teachers, an administrator, two students, one policeman, and wounded 10 other people before he killed himself. Seventeen people died.

Dark Matters

Now some concern must be expressed about other new dates: February 22 and April 11th, 2008.

Double digit dates always seem to be attractive in this new age of domestic terrorism, which is only, after all, another label for school shootings, mall rampages, and urban bombings.

February 22nd, 2008, is the release date for a presidential assassination film, Vantage Point. What concerns me is the obvious worries in the air in this year when some politically unique choices exist. Due to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, assassination fears are being expressed on the internet rumor mills.

It will be noted that before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the book and movie Manchurian Candidate (film, 1962) were popular. (Director John Frankenheimer's birthday is February 19, 1930.)

The idea of a brainwashed assassin ~ literally a Manchurian candidate ~ gained much favor among theorists by the actions of Sirhan Sirhan before and after the Robert Kennedy assassination.

Will the release of Vantage Point cause a more overt discussion of assassination in the USA? Will it trigger some unfortunate behavioral reactions from someone on the edge? February 22nd is rapidly approaching, at week's end. No doubt, the U.S. Secret Service should take note.

April 11th, a Friday, will see the wide release of a new indie film, Dark Matter, starring Lui Ye, Meryl Streep, and Aidan Quinn, by New York-based Chinese opera director Chen Shi-Zheng. The movie was originally delayed last year because of the killings by a Korean-American at Virginia Tech. Dark Matter stars an Asian character, a graduate student, who goes on a "shooting rampage" at a Midwestern university. It was announced after the NIU shootings that the movie was going ahead with its originally scheduled release date.

Dark Matter is more powerful than most narrative fiction films because it is based in reality. It is loosely the story of Gang Lu, born in Beijing, China in 1963, who was a graduate student in physics at the University of Iowa. On Friday, November 1, 1991, using a .38 caliber revolver and also carrying a .22 caliber handgun, he shot and killed five people on the Iowa campus in Iowa City, seriously wounded another, then died by suicide.

Writer Jo Ann Beard later wrote an acclaimed personal essay based in part on the Gang Lu killings. The article "The Fourth State of Matter," was originally published in The New Yorker in 1996.

The Sundance award-winning film Dark Matter will now appear on the 11th of April, at theaters around the country. The 11ths of the months are already touchy, so this "school shooting" movie coming out on this date, considering what just happened at NIU, has to be viewed as a new red flag.

Dark movies. Steven Steve Kazmierczak (kaz-MUR'-chek) seems like he stepped out of Donnie Darko. River Phoenix's last movie, Dark Blood remains unfinished. I've already noted that July 18th, 2008, when The Dark Knight opens, the cultural spill over from Heather Ledger's final Joker may have some kind of unknown impact. I don't really know.



Dark Forces

Dark forces move these people who kill in our midst.

A former professor says Steve Kazmierczak was a "gentle" and "quiet guy." Yes, the "nice guy next door" story is one we've heard before. There are two sides to every story, and some of them are very dark. Dark matters. Dark nights. Dark knights, indeed.



A woman who worked at a Chicago psychiatric center where Kazmierczak was admitted after high school says Kazmierczak used to cut himself. He wrote a paper on self-injury (parasuicidal behavior) in prisons. His cutting himself was parasuicidal; he was in that mental health facility for a year.





Kazmierczak came to NIU with his gun in his guitar case, yet another scenario seen in the movies, such as Desparado. Karzmierczak, the dark knight dressed all in black, felt, it appears, he was in a movie.

Let me just end here with the chilling tattoo from the arm of this Northern Illinois University shooter. (Let me hasten to mention I am not anti-tattoo, as I merely see the practice as a new cultural reflection of many creative young people.) I only wish to point out that with this specific shooter, Kazmierczak decided to obtain on his right arm the pictured tattoo, depicting a character in the horror movie, Saw. Tattoo artist Jason Dunavan said Kazmierczak got it in the last five to six months.

It may be significant that the "Jigsaw Killer" in these Saw movies requires horrific self-mutilation (an extreme extension of Kazmierczak's own cutting and interest in prisoner self-injury) of his captives:



In these dark days, it appears we all are becoming captives of the suicidal mutilation of our culture.

NIU Blame Game

The NIU shootings have caused an outpouring of wall-to-wall coverage, complete with conflicting theories about the shooter being on drugs, off drugs, abusing video games, practicing with a specific game, and, of course, about less guns in general vs more guns (as in students being defensively armed).

In the beginning, everything from shouting the breaking news to screening archival footage of Columbine, VA Tech, and even Charles Whitman at the Texas Tower on your television set were thrown at you in this visual mix. Then the "blame game" began in earnest, especially at faux news locations. (The videos below are mere examples of the recent state of affairs.)

Despite all the claims you will find on television or in blogs that (1) "every school shooting" since Columbine has involved young men on meds, (2) only since drugs being used for psychological problems have there been school shootings, and (3) all these drugs make people suicidal, none of those absolute claims can be proven. The reality is (1) suicidal people are suicidal before meds, (2) not all the shooters have been on medications, and (3) school shootings existed long before the advent of pharmaceuticals being used for psychiatric interventions.

Short-term memory seems to be at work here as most "blame game" advocates make factually incorrect statements, like "school shootings began ten years ago." Most drug and video game theorists and their supporters seem to generally tie the beginning of school shootings to Columbine in 1999, or only mention the "celebrity" school shooting events of the last decade. There is no sense of history, reality, or data with most of these pronouncements of blame.

Blaming drugs, blaming video games, and arguing about gun control are all blind dead end alleys.

Of course, we saw this forced blaming before, during VA Tech, for example:

Welsh Cluster Continues

Remarkably, authorities have increasingly ignored the obvious links between the suicide cluster deaths sweeping Bridgend, Wales.

Reporters from the UK have talked with me often about the situation. Last Monday, I was interviewed by Times Educational Supplement correspondent Madeleine Brettingham, who is writing an essay on the situation.

Other articles continue to appear as the sad toll of death mounts.

On 17 February 2008, Scotland On Sunday published an article entitled "As the suicides of these two cousins brings the toll to 16 in one small area, a shocked community is asking why them?" by Dani Garivelli.

The article reads, in part:

It was the news the people of Bridgend least wanted to hear. In a town where suicide seems to be spreading like a contagion, two more young people had taken their own lives within hours of each other.

Kelly Stephenson, 20, was found dead in a locked room on holiday in Kent on Valentine's Day. She had just been told her cousin Nathaniel Pritchard, 15, was critically ill in hospital after "self-harming" and was unlikely to pull through. Pritchard died on Friday, when his life support machine was turned off. The pair lived just 14 houses from one another and were said to be "very close".

They seemed to have everything to live for. On her Bebo site, Stephenson, who called herself Baby-Girl-Kelly, says: "I just love to live life to the full. Always up 4 a laugh and I don't like takin things too serious," although she did admit her greatest fear was losing those she loved. A keen footballer, she had just signed for Porthcawl Lightning Strikers.

Pritchard, too, seemed to have plenty of friends around him.

Their deaths – just a week after 18-year old Angeline Fuller killed herself – bring the grim toll of young suicide victims in Bridgend to 16 in the last year. All were aged between 16 and 27 and all hanged themselves.

The scale of the deaths, and the similarity in their execution, has sparked panic in the 40,000-strong town.

Terrified of fuelling the phenomenon, those in authority have increasingly sought to deny any link between the deaths. Both Mark Walters, coroner for Bridgend and the Glamorgan Valleys, and South Wales Police have played down the notion that the spate is any more than a freak coincidence.

Campaigners, too, have lowered the shutters in the face of the tragedy, with the suicide prevention charity Papyrus going so far as to urge newspapers to stop reporting the deaths.

Yet, it takes an act of supreme will to see such a high number of suicides in such a short space of time as anything other than a sign that something is seriously amiss in the Welsh town.

Although there is no common denominator connecting the 16 people who have taken their own lives, most have been a friend or acquaintance of at least one of the previous victims. Stephenson, for example, knew both Gareth Morgan, 27, and Liam Clarke, 20, who hanged themselves last year.

...

After some of the suicides, remembrance walls made up of virtual bricks were erected on dedicated sites, leading some to speculate that the thought of securing "virtual immortality" was driving some of these vulnerable young people to take their own lives.

Bridgend MP Madeleine Moon is not one of those who wants the deaths to be played down, although she would prefer it if they were reported in less sensational terms. But she believes her constituency is like a microcosm of Wales at large, where the suicide rate has been disproportionately high for many years.

"This is not the time for delay," she has said. "This is the time for action. I do not want to be talking to journalists about further deaths. (I] want to talk about success and how wonderful Bridgend and Wales are to live, to work and raise a family in."

There is nothing in particular about Bridgend that marks it out as likely to have more than its share of teenage suicides. Like most towns in South Wales, it suffered economically as the coal mines closed, but recovered more quickly than some, with job opportunities opening up as multi-nationals moved in.

But then, there is often no obvious reason for the suicide clusters which have cropped up from time to time throughout history. Researchers have long acknowledged that suicide can be "catching", with those who have lost a loved one in this way more at risk of taking their own life.

Sigmund Freud held a conference on the phenomenon in the 1920s, researcher David Phillips christened it "the Werther effect" after Goethe's book, The Sorrows Of Young Werther, which is said to have inspired several young men to shoot themselves in the 18th century, and sociologist Loren Coleman wrote a book on it in the late 1980s.

In the last six months alone, two distraught mothers have committed suicide months after their teenage daughters killed themselves. Suicide clusters are also common in closed communities such as prisons, psychiatric hospitals, military barracks or schools, or in small towns where people are more likely to know each other. Four friends in Cromarty, in the Black Isle, killed themselves within the space of 12 months in 2004-05.

What is less clear is what lies behind such clusters. Dr Stephen Platt, of Edinburgh University's Research Unit in Health and Behavioural Change, says research suggests a large number of factors have to combine in specific circumstances for a spate of copycat suicides to occur. Underlying social problems, the way people interact and the poor mental health of those involved may all play a part.

"There is certainly evidence the risk of imitative behaviour after a suicide can be affected by the community response to it – if suicide is romanticised or normalised in any way it can lead to imitative behaviour," says Platt. "Studies of non-fatal suicidal behaviour (self-harming), initiatives that allow the victim to gain either extra attention or services by their action has increased rather than decreased the problem."

Shortly after Bonnie McClelland's son Timothy killed himself, two of his friends followed suit. "As a parent, your heart is already shattered. But then, to look into the eyes of your friends and see the pain that your child has caused, is something you carry in your heart forever," McClelland, who lives in Tampa, Florida, said.

In the year following Timothy's death there were 29 teenage suicides in her local area. "When a suicide happens, it's like a book has been taken off the library shelf. They open that book and it gives them the direction of what to do."

The 16 young people who killed themselves in Bridgend came from very different backgrounds. Eighteen-year-old Dale Crole, the first suicide victim, had recently been freed from a young offenders' institution and lived with his father, with whom he was said to have a volatile relationship.

Zachary Barnes, 17, had left school to work on the Amelia Trust Farm near Barry, but hoped to become a fitness instructor. Natasha Randall, also 17, who used the name sxiwildchild, studied care and childhood studies at Bridgend College.

What united them, beyond individual friendships, was that they all came to see suicide as a viable solution to whatever difficulties they were experiencing.

With no evidence whatsoever that these youngsters encouraged each other to commit suicide, it would be irresponsible to refer to their deaths as a pact or a cult. The personal circumstances of those involved are too disparate – and the links between them too tenuous even to refer to them as an epidemic.

Yet, it is clear from the Bebo messages sent in the wake of every tragedy – many of which could be seen as normalising or glamorising suicide – how the self-inflicted deaths have impacted on the entire community.

There can now be few young people in Bridgend who do not know someone who knows someone who has died; and few parents who are not frantically worried about their own teenage children's emotional well-being.

It is easy to see how mounting publicity and hysteria could leave the vulnerable at greater risk of following suit. Yet, those closest to the tragedy – from parents to politicians – seem at a loss as to what is happening or how to stop it. "It's like a craze – a stupid sort of fad. They all seem to be copying each other by wanting to die," said Melanie Davies, whose son Thomas killed himself in February following the deaths of his friends, Dale and David.

...Bridgend braces itself for more tragedy.

Valentine's Killer

Lots of attention, needless to say, is being given by the media to the Northern Illinois University shootings on Valentine's Day. I've posted my thoughts about that so-called "rampage": here, here, and here.

Besides all the other "Valentine's Dangers," there is another case worth mentioning that centers on this date.

It will be recalled that Stayner carried out his initial murder spree (or at least the one we know about) over Valentine's weekend in 1999, and used Bigfoot to talk to the park ranger he killed.

The following was sent to me by a relative (I'll withhold the name) of Yosemite Killer Cary Anthony Stayner. Stayner said he saw Bigfoot and sent me drawings of it.

This following note, at some level, is downright chilling:

I would like to add as a family member to Carey Stayner, as long as I could remember Carey was out running [and] climbing mountains. I remember when he first had told me and my brother of what he had seen [the Bigfoot], he would go very blank in the face as if he was being very serious or like somebody was watching him. He would tell us about the smell the creature had and that it was alot bigger than him. We were very young but we knew he wasn’t playing a joke on us. I remember when I went to Camp Green Meadows in the 6th grade he told me to stay close to all the teachers and no matter what don’t go out at night. He never really seemed the same to me after he had seen Bigfoot. So to me, maybe that’s what drove him mad? You never know.

+++

For another one of those strange coincidences, please note the significance of Valentine's Day in the legacy of the Stayner family, a Mormon family who had been touched before on Valentine's Day:

Stayner family's woeful history
San Francisco Examiner 26 Jul 1999 L5
By Zachary Coile and Matthew Yi: Examiner Staff

Merced, California ~ When an FBI agent called Assistant Sheriff Henry Strength on Saturday morning looking for a criminal record of a possible suspect in the murders at Yosemite, he asked for the name Cary Stayner. Knowing the name sounded familiar, Sheriff Strength went to work. He had been a young patrol officer in l972 when 7-year-old Steven Stayner was kidnapped from the streets of Merced only returning home on Valentine's Day in 1980, when he walked into a Ukiah police station along with another 5-year-old abductee, Timothy White.

Steven Stayner was an instant hero and the l4-year-old later became the subject of the NBC miniseries "I Know My First Name Is Steven." "It was a shock," Strength said. Steven's brother, Cary, 37, was the prime suspect in the killing of a Yosemite naturalist and an FBI prime suspect in several other murders.

Shock was a familiar reaction to residents of Merced, a San Joaquin Valley city 100 miles from San Francisco. It was here that Steven Stayner was considered a hero for escaping from a child molester in l980. He later joined the LDS Church, married and had two children, only to die at age 24 in a motorcycle accident, nine years after he escaped.

When 7-year-old Steven was approached by Ukiah hotel clerk Kenneth Parnell, the boy was asked if he wanted to donate something to a church. "I said, 'Well, yeah. I think my mom might donate something.'" Steven told authorities years later. "He said, 'OK,' and gave me these booklets and he asked me if I wanted a ride home." "And I said, 'Well, it's just a little ways, I can walk.'" "He goes,'OK. Don't worry. I'll just give you a ride home.' "And I go," 'Well, OK,' "and so I got in the car."

This began the seven-year nightmare in which Parnell held and sexually molested Steven. He forced the boy to call him "Dad", telling him that he was no longer wanted by his parents.

Years later after returning home and putting his life back together, Steven Stayner married at age 24. With two children, he and his family joined the Mormon Church. Assistant Sheriff Strength said Stayner was on the waiting list for a job as a county jail guard.

On September 20, 1989, Steven was riding his new Kawasaki motorcycle without a helmet in the rain. He skidded trying to avoid a car and fatally struck his head. After Steven's death, his parents sold the family home and moved.

"They did mention about finally getting a chance to get out of here," said Ennis Mayberry, 36, who bought the house from the Stayner 10 years ago. "They said they wanted to get away and wash away some bad memories."

In December of 1990 the family was dealt another blow, but not its last. Jesse "Jerry" Stayner, 42, Cary and Steven's uncle, was shot to death in his Merced home. The murder remains unsolved.

"I was just talking to someone about this. We were talking about the Kennedy family, and all the bad things that have happened to them," Sherriff Strength said. "Then you have Steven Stayner get kidnapped, and then he comes back and gets killed in a motorcycle accident. Then his uncle gets killed in a homicide. And now this. It happens to all families, I guess."

These are the facts as noted by the media, although they may be confused in their correct chronology, as you can see from the comments below.

Valentine's Dangers

My book, The Copycat Effect, is dedicated to my maternal grandmother, who died in a Valentine's Day murder-suicide.

I penned that dedication this way:

For
Nellie Gray,
The grandmother I never knew,
as she was killed during a murder-suicide
on Valentine’s Day, 1940.



In my book I wrote an entire section entitled the "Significant of Dates," and began with one special example, St. Valentine's Day. I reprint below what you will find in my 2004 book about February 14th on pages 246-247:

Dates are important, anniversary events especially so. Suicides, murder-suicides, murders tend to clump around dates of loss for at-risk victims.

One such date is one that most people assume should be associated with happy feelings, but it is not. That is Valentine’s Day. For many people, it’s a day that speaks more to emptiness and loss than to joy and love.

One cultural event seems to point to this feeling: the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” of February 14, 1929, in Chicago. On this day the alleged henchman of gangster “Scarface” Al Capone murdered seven members of the George “Bugs” Moran gang in a North Clark Street garage. Colorful names, a memorable day, the windy city, a grand crime, and huge headlines have made this event enormously “infamous” in history. Books and movies have fueled the copycat effect of this date.

A year after “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,” Ben Hecht...authored Scarface(1930), which was made into a Howard Hughes produced, Howard Hawks directed movie (1932) about the North Clark Street killings. Hughes supposedly asked that Scarfacebe "realistic, as exciting, as grisly as possible." Censors blocked Scarfacefor two years before Hawks got it to theaters.

How does culture make a 1929 event into currency for a future generation? Through the movies and other media, of course. Some Like It Hot(1959) had Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis playing two Chicago musicians who witnessed the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and are forced to cross-dress as women in order to hide from Al Capone. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre(1967) starring Jason Robards portrays the event in docudrama style.

But beyond fiction, real murders and murder-suicides have also been linked to the specific Valentine’s Day 1929 gangland murders. The gangland and other ripples from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre certainly demonstrate an awareness of the twilight language of the event.

The individual most often identified as the organizer of the Moran gang killings was Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn, one of Capone's most trusted men. McGurn (whose real name was James DeMora), an expert with the Tommy gun who had an “eye for the ladies,” especially for blonde women, was killed on the eve of Valentine’s Day, 1936. A nickel was put in McGurn's right hand and, next to his body the killers left a humorous valentine card.

Sometimes personal histories reinforce the negative Valentine’s Day link. My grandmother was killed by her second husband on Valentine’s Day, 1940, in Illinois, in a murder-suicide, as my future mother, a 12 old girl, looked on in horror. The copycat effect sometimes hits close to home.

During the 1980s, St. Valentine’s Day was a focus of teen suicide clusters around the United States, and many families felt the impact of the day.

Earlier in the book, I described a teen suicide cluster in Peekskill, New York. I mentioned on February 4, 1984, Robert DeLaValliere, 13, hanged himself in Depew Park, and then I wrote:

Did another teen then imitate DeLaValliere? Ten days after his suicide, 14‑year‑old Justin Spoonhour picked a tree in back of his home and hanged himself. Spoonhour lived in Putnam Valley, five miles north of where DeLaValliere died. His mother graphically described in a People magazine article how she found her boy. "I turned my light on and saw Justin hanging from a tree,” she wrote. "His eyes and mouth were open, and his tongue was swollen and protruding." As we have noted, this was Valentine’s Day in Peekskill.

Elsewhere in The Copycat Effect, Valentine's Day figures as a touchstone for understanding the context of violence in which we find ourselves. I noted:

In 2002, National Review online editor Jonah Goldberg, a conservative, commented on liberal Senator Patrick Moynihan’s 1993 essay, “Defining Deviancy Down,” to make some points about the media’s normalizing of terrorism. Goldberg’s and Moynihan’s insights apply here, in understanding how the media makes “celebrities” of events, which then serve as cultural icons that are held up for emulation by followers. In this way, copycats are produced. Calling the essay “one of the most influential articles of the last decade,” Goldberg notes that “Moynihan argued that deviancy - crime, mental illness, out-of-wedlock births, etc. -- had become so rampant, had so thoroughly soaked into the culture, that we simply had to redefine the abnormal as normal to cope.”

“Moynihan's most famous example was the St. Valentine's Day Massacre,” noted Goldberg. “That event was a major turning point in American history, credited with helping to convince Americans to abandon prohibition…The actual details? Four gangsters murdered seven gangsters. In the early 1990s, Moynihan noted, Los Angeles suffered from the equivalent of one St. Valentine's Day Massacre every weekend. And, of course, we can say much the same about suicide bombings in Israel.”

Now, the events at Northern Illinois University at Cole Hall, by a man who lived in Urbana, Illinois, will be a new marker of sorts, sadly.

We are slowly moving to the point in our American cultural history in which a school shooting every month during the academic year is seen as normal, with some even more dangerous times of the year when they come in waves. Why are we settling for this? Why has a sense of inevitability in copycat campus, mall, and other "rampages" come into these times?

Certainly, for some of us, St. Valentine's Day, named after a mystical martyred saint of ancient Rome, will always be seen as a potentially dangerous date ~ and perhaps future scholars will point to Columbine, VA Tech, and NIU as the most unfortunate of milestones.