For MAY 2003 issue

SCIENCE IN CRIME DETECTION-116

What is Mass murder?

‑Dr. Anil Aggrawal

A very shocking incident occurred on 1 June, 2001 (Friday). We all heard that Nepal’s Crown Prince Dipendra gunned down his parents, King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya, and six other members of the royal family before shooting himself. Nobody could understand why he did that, although there were some speculations that his family was against him marrying the girl of his choice. Dipendra was reportedly in an inebriated state when he killed his family members. The King is believed to have threatened Prince Dipendra that he would be bypassed in the line of succession in favour of his younger brother if he did not bow to the wishes of the Queen on the choice of his bride.

The Crown Prince, battled for life in hospital for some days. Till he was alive, he was named the new monarch of Nepal. His uncle and younger brother of King Birendra, Prince Gyanendra, was declared “regent”. Prince Gyanendra was out of town at the time of the shootout.

According to reports, the 29-year-old Crown Prince fired indiscriminately in a fit of rage as the royal family sat for dinner at the Narayan Hity palace around 11 p.m. (local time) on June 1.

The persons who were killed were the 55-year-old King himself and Queen Aishwarya, 51, their younger son Prince Niranjan, 22, daughter Princess Shruti, 25, Princess Sharada Shaha and Princess Shanti Singh, sisters of the late King, Kumar Khadga Bikram Shah, Princess Sharada’s husband, and Princess Jayanti Shah, cousin of the late King, were shot dead. Three others injured in the shootout were Gorakh Bikram (Princess Shruti’s husband), Komal Shah, the late King’s cousin and Prince Dhirendra, the King’s youngest brother.

As the heated exchanges continued, the Prince stormed out of the dining hall but soon returned in battle fatigues with an assault rifle and a pistol and opened fire indiscriminately.

The Queen was reportedly opposed to his decision to marry because of a warning by astrologers that if he got married and begot children before turning 35 his father would die. Many people in this part of the world believe in such predictions. The Queen wanted him to wait for six more years. According to some additional reports, the Queen was opposed his choice of bride, a daughter of a former minister and member of the aristocratic Rana family that ruled Nepal till 1951.

Dipendra thus killed eight persons and injured an additional three before killing himself. Many people may not know but such murders have a name. These are called mass murders. We will talk about mass murders this time.

Mass muder, serial murder and spree murder

Let us first differentiate between these three forms of murder. These are all examples of multiple murders, i.e. multicides. In a case of mass murder, as occurred in the above case, all murders occur at the same place and at almost the same time. In a case of serial murder, as occurred in the famous Jack the Ripper case, all murders occur at different times. The place of murder may or may not be the same. In a case of spree murder, the person runs about and goes on killing people. Thus the time of murder is almost the same, i.e. the murders occur in a single incident, but the murders occur at different places.

To put the three types of murder in a tabular form:

Type of murder Time of murder Place of murder Typical Example Year/day Persons killed

Mass murder Same Same Crown Prince Dipendra 1 June, 2001 9 (including himself)+ 3 injured

Serial Murder Different Same/different Jack the Ripper From 31 August 1888 (the date of first murder) till 9 November 1888 (the date of last murder) 5 prostitutes according to most estimates. Estimates differ though

Spree Murder Same Different Howard Unruh of Camden, New Jersey 6 September, 1949 13 + 3 wounded

It will be difficult to deal with all kinds of murder here. But in this piece, I will take up only the first case, i.e. mass murder. In subsequent issues, I hope to take up other types of murder.

Mass murders occur when several victims are killed within hours or even moments of each other. In many of these cases, an armed person walks into a restaurant, shopping mall, government office or other such public place and begins randomly shooting innocent bystanders. In April of 1990, for example, a man who had been released only one day from a psychiatric institution went into a mall in Atlanta, Georgia, and began shooting everyone in his way.

In recent years, there has been a growing number of cases where a parent or sibling kills an entire family. Additionally, there have been many cases in which people have gone into schools and playgrounds, armed with semi- or fully automatic weapons and shot everyone, including the children.

While there has not been a tremendous amount of research on these crimes, mass murderers do share certain characteristic traits and habits. The killers are usually white males. It is the general experience, that this type of murderer tends to have a low-paying, semi-skilled job, usually involving shift work or other routine type tasks.

Profile

In most cases, there is a particular victim whom has been selected to be murdered, such as an ex-wife, a former boss, a friend. But the killer, when he begins the actual process of the murder, such as entering the building where the victim is located, opens fire on whomever is in the area.

Sometimes, however, a person feels overwhelmed and frustrated by a perceived injustice in his life and simply shoots victims who, although not directly related to the killer, represent what he is mentally fighting against. For example, if a man is fired from a job a week after being arrested for an utterly unrelated matter, he may feel the police caused him to be fired. In the killer’s mind, the arresting police officer came between him and success, so now anyone in a uniform, most particularly a police officer, is his target.

Characteristics

Although their motivations vary from case to case, mass murderers do share some characteristics that may become reasons for the mass murders. Generally, these traits are severe depression, delusional psychosis, violent changes of temperament, alcoholism and the use of pornography.

One telltale sign of depression is mood swings. The person suffering from depression may be extremely happy and energetic one minute and angry or sobbing the next. These rapid changes may occur within a day, an hour or few minutes, and are usually set off by something to which the reaction seems extreme. For example, the person may be joking around and accidentally spill some water on the floor, at which point he becomes extremely angry, curses vehemently and smashes the glass against the wall.

Lack of interest in what’s going on around them is another indication of people’s depression. They become bored with their jobs, their friends, their significant others and sometimes life itself. They don’t want to leave their homes or their bedrooms, they wear the same clothes day after day and they often neglect personal hygiene. Mass murder may be a way of alleviating this boredom.

Similar to their general lack of interest, depressed persons may exhibit a lack of appetite that lasts for weeks. They may eat only their favorite foods or sweets, but even those may become unappetizing to them after a few days.

The mass murderer may also exhibit psychotic behavior, having delusions and losing touch with reality. This may be caused by an organic brain disorder, such as a chemical imbalance or a brain tumor, that impairs his ability for rational thought. Or he could simply be psychopathic, with no sense of his moral or societal obligations. The psychopathic killer is a delusional killer who does not believe what he is doing is wrong.

Mass murderers tend to have violent changes of temperament. For example, a mild, meek person may suddenly become lividly irate and aggressive once certain trigger mechanisms are set off. This often happens because the person has feelings of inadequacy or feels he is being duped by society once again. Michael Douglas’s character in the movie Falling Down typifies this type of personality.

Also, mass murderers often have problems with alcohol abuse. Although it cannot be implied that alcohol causes people to become mass murderers, there is a high rate of alcoholism among these killers. And alcohol does aggravate the symptoms of depression.

There is also a high incidence of pornography being involved in mass murders. Although pornography may not play a major role in the crime itself, it is one of the higher ranking similarities between mass murderers and serial murderers. Police raids of these killers’ homes have often revealed many pornographic videotapes and magazines. Again, as with alcoholism, this does not mean an interest in pornography makes one a mass murderer, but it is nonetheless a common characteristic of these killers.

Motive: Stress

There are some mass murders that appear to be premeditated, as in the case of a Mr. Charles Whitman, who shot at unsuspecting victims from the famous bell tower at the University of Texas in Austin. Whitman carried boxes full of supplies, including food and ammunition, to the top of the bell tower in preparation for his attack on the innocents. Whitman’s crime seems to have been motivated by stress, which is why people under great amounts of stress now joke about “going up to the top of the bell tower.”

At the opposite end of the spectrum, some cases of multiple murders involve killers whose fury was ignited by a trivial remark, a minor insult or a small provocation. Whether brought on by extreme prolonged stress or an offhand remark, however, multiple-victim murderers do so in an effort to regain some degree of control and pleasure in their lives. To the observer, this motivation may not appear rational, but to the killer, it makes perfect sense, given his psychological dysfunction.

Motive: Hatred of Society

Mass murderers often develop a hatred of society, leading to strong feelings of rejection and failure and the anxiety of not being able to survive on their own. These feelings create frustrations for this murderer that inevitably overwhelm him and motivate him to strike back. For many killers, the best way to lash out against a cold, dark society is to destroy its children. Killing children in a school yard provides the mass murderer with not only a much needed sense of power and control but also a way of taking vengeance where it hurts the community the most. Many of these crimes occur in communities with many schools, shopping malls, office buildings and other such crowded forums.

Methods

The mass murderer often believes that killing innocent people will correct all the wrongs in his life. Since this usually occurs to the killer in a sudden epiphany, he does not usually plan the crime months in advance. Once he does decide to commit the crime, however, he often gathers together more than enough equipment to do the job. In other words, the mass murderer quite frequently has boxes and boxes of ammunition and several semiautomatic or automatic weapons to use to kill suddenly and swiftly. In one famous case, the killer had enough ammunition to reload his semiautomatic weapons at least 150 times.

Unlike a serial murderer, who will have enough only to kill the victim and perhaps one or two people at a scene, the mass murderer is prepared to take out as many people as is required to regain his place in the world. He realizes subconsciously that this most likely is his last moment of glory, and he wants to go out with a “bang.” A mass murderer almost never runs out of ammunition or is foiled by a jammed weapon.

This is not to say, however, that all mass murderers are this prepared. There are certainly cases on record in which the killers used only one or two guns and gave up or killed themselves after shooting six or seven people.

Investigation and Capture

Unlike serial killers, the mass murderer seems to give very little thought to his possible capture or death. In fact, many are killed by the police during the attack, while many others kill themselves once they have completed the massacres. In some cases, the offenders surrender to the police and offer no resistance. It is almost as if they are finally at peace knowing they have committed the murders and, they hope, righted all the wrongs in their lives.

In cases where families are murdered, the killer usually leaves many, many pieces of evidence that will lead to his arrest. Perhaps because he has killed his loved ones, the familial mass murderer may on some level want to be caught.

Captions to figures:

001.jpg: The mass murderer often kills him after the killing incident. Here one can see the explosive effect of a close shot to the forehead - 6.5 mm Mauser rifle.

002.jpg: Bullet entrance wound in the palate.

This article has (2209) words

Dr. Anil Aggrawal, M.D.

Professor of Forensic Medicine

Maulana Azad Medical College

New Delhi‑110002