Mass murders defy falling homicide rate

by Joel Achenbach - Jul. 24, 2012 11:38 PM
Washington Post

The United States is a less violent country than it was two decades ago. The homicide rate, which hit a peak in the early 1990s at about 10 per 100,000 people, has been cut in half to a level not seen since the early 1960s.

But there has been no corresponding decline in mass murder -- these sudden, stunning eruptions of violence with multiple victims, often perpetrated by gunmen who researchers refer to as "pseudo-commandos." Such a killer, clad in body armor and with a small arsenal of firearms, struck Friday in Aurora, Colo., leaving a dozen dead, 58 wounded and a nation horrified.

And mystified: Why does this happen? How can we stop it?

The statistics on mass murder suggest it is a phenomenon that does not track with other types of violent crime, such as street violence.

It does not seem to be affected by the economy or by law-enforcement strategies. The mass murderer has become almost a stock figure in American culture, someone bent on overkill -- and, so often, seemingly coming out of nowhere.

The United States experienced 645 mass-murder events -- killings with at least four victims -- from 1976 to 2010, according to Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox. When graphed, these incidents show no obvious trend. The numbers go up and down and up again. The total body count: 2,949.

Beyond the raw data, there is the psychic toll. Mass murder, when amplified in the news media, turns a big country quickly into a small one and turns faceless body counts into real people enduring real pain and real tragedy.

For some, the news bulletins from Aurora brought back terrible memories.

"This is personal to me," said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat whose husband was murdered in 1993 by a spree killer on the Long Island Rail Road and who is pushing legislation to ban large ammunition magazines such as the type used in Colorado.

"When something like this happens," McCarthy said, "it brings us back to a terrible day that we can't help but remember. It's just something that will never, never go away."

Aurora's nightmare defies comprehension, not only because of the scale of the carnage but because, so far, there is no clear motive. Many killing sprees are driven by grudges or a desire for revenge. The victims are bosses, co-workers, family members or fellow students, as was the case at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Columbine High School in 1999.

Some attacks are driven by a political ideology and can be properly described as terrorism.

At the moment, the Aurora massacre remains inexplicable even by the standards of other mass killings.

"It looks about as a senseless as you can get," said Gary LaFree, a criminologist at the University of Maryland who tracks terrorist attacks. "It is spooky."

The issue of motive may become clearer when authorities release more information about the suspect in custody: 24-year-old James Holmes. He said nothing in his one appearance in court, looking groggy and dazed. His classmates did not know him well. Any psychiatric history is unknown.

There is a Hollywood-violence element to this latest mass killing. The Aurora killer picked a movie theater and a midnight screening of the summer's most hyped movie, "The Dark Knight Rises." The closest thing to a narrative explaining why Holmes would have targeted the theater is that, according to law-enforcement sources, he told police he was the Joker (one of Batman's foes).

That detail has not been officially confirmed. But Randolph Roth, a professor of history and sociology at Ohio State University and author of "American Homicide," said that if the Joker angle is true and the killer was emulating some kind of fictionalized violence, the case may echo John W. Hinckley Jr.'s attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Hinckley was fixated on the movie "Taxi Driver."

If Holmes is "living inside the Batman movie the way Hinckley was living inside 'Taxi Driver,' " Roth said, "this makes perfect sense to him, even though it makes no sense to us."

Some researchers have also questioned whether violent video games play a role in mass murders, but there is no evidence for such a link, said Christopher Ferguson, a forensic psychologist at Texas A&M International University.

Mass homicide is not a new phenomenon in this country. Criminologists speak often of Howard Unruh's rampage through the streets of Camden, N.J., in 1949 and Charles Whitman's sniping from a tower at the University of Texas in 1966.

Mass killers are known to copy their predecessors, according to Fox, the criminologist. The Aurora massacre, for example, has elements in common with the pseudo-commando attack last summer in Norway.

Anders Behring Breivik first detonated a fertilizer bomb in Oslo -- emulating American terrorist Timothy McVeigh's 1996 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City -- killing eight people. Breivik then went to an island full of young campers and, one by one, shot and killed 69 of them.

Law-enforcement authorities say Holmes crafted a similarly elaborate scheme. First, authorities say, he booby-trapped his apartment with explosives. Then, they say, he used a timer to blare loud music starting Thursday night at midnight, just as the Batman movie was starting.

That, they say, could have been an attempt to lure someone into the apartment and trigger an explosion, a diversion that would occupy police before the theater attack.

Read More @ Source

Criminal Stories Here