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April 7, 2004 |
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The Basic Question
There is one question asked by everyone, from investigators to victims' families to the public, about violent crime: Why? There are volumes dedicated to the study of motive, one of my books included. We can come close to understanding motive only by recognizing that the question of motive is really a series of questions. For example: Why did a killer choose to kill? Why did he choose his victim(s) over other possible victims, and his weapon(s) and location over other possibilities? Why did he choose to kill when he did?
And the question that is the basis of this article: Why did he choose to kill the way he killed?
Proximity and Satisfaction
There are many kinds of killers. Serial killers may lure, abduct, assault, and then torture their victims for days before killing them. For such serial killers, there is usually a sexual element, and certainly the need to have close, sadistic contact with their victims. Jeffrey Dahmer would fit this category. Serial killers may attack swiftly, from behind or from a concealed position, and kill with a surprise, blitz-style attack. Victims of such killers may die without even seeing their attackers. These killers require up-close contact, and may perform post-mortem acts against their victims' bodies, but they do not need interaction while their victims are alive. California's "Trailside Killer", David Carpenter, is an example of this type of killer. Spree killers kill a large number of people in one window of time, usually as a result of one specific, overwhelming stressor. Such a killer may walk into a former workplace and gun down a handful of people before turning the gun on himself, or open fire on a classroom filled with children. There is chaos and a lot of blood at such a crime scene. This type of killer wants to see his victims bleed. He wants to exact mayhem, even if his fantasy ends with his own death.
There is much more to be said about each of these types, but I'm using these partial descriptions to illustrate the most definitive way the sniper mentality differs from others. Using the type of contact as your point of comparison, you can move outward from the serial killer who needs a great deal of close contact with his victims to those who are more and more removed from those they kill. Mail bombers do not get the satisfaction of seeing their murder(s) take place. Neither do product tamperers, who kill remotely and randomly, unsure at the time they set a poisoned product back on the shelf that anyone will even purchase it. Those responsible for the anthrax mailings and the killers of the future, as imagined on television and in movies, who unleash viruses and other biological weapons on the public, would fit this category.
The Sniper
Then there is the sniper. While he is at a great distance from his victims, who are usually randomly chosen, he will watch as they fall. He does not require personal contact, preferring the clean, long-distance kill. But he would never be satisfied with simply setting in motion the possibility that his actions might cause someone's death, as with the mail bomber and product tamperer. He needs to see the direct cause-and-effect relationship of his finger on the trigger and the crumpling of a victim across a parking lot, on the other side of a river, or-in the case of one Charles Whitman's victims-walking across a street nearly five hundred yards away.
The infamous Charles Joseph Whitman was arguably the most notorious sniper in American history until Muhammad and Malvo terrorized the greater Washington, D.C. area nearly a year and a half ago. I've written briefly about Muhammad and Malvo before, pointedly not speculating about them while the investigation was active. Now, with Charles A. McCoy, Jr., in custody and believed to be the Ohio Sniper, the psychology behind such criminals is once again both fascinating and frightening the public.
Sniper as Assassin
First of all, these guys are assassin-type killers. There may not be social, political, or religious convictions motivating their actions, but the type fits nonetheless. And even in cases where a particular victim is targeted for social, political, religious, or other such reasons, the stated motivation is usually just a convenient way to specifically rationalize an act the individual wanted to commit in the abstract, regardless of who the victim(s) would be.
The assassin is typically a loner, someone who has a lot of pent-up anger and no healthy outlet for or ability to deal with it. Add to that an underlying paranoia, an extreme persecution complex that leads to the belief that the only way to defend himself is to go on the offensive. Get them before they get you, in other words. This paranoia may begin in what is typically a troubled childhood, an upbringing that leads to an emotionally undeveloped adult who, in his isolation, probably keeps a journal or diary, is fixated on weapons, especially guns, and longs to belong somewhere.
But his paranoia will not let his dream of belonging become a reality. Easily obsessed, he cannot accept failure, though his skewed interests and paranoia prevent him from being a success at anything for long. He may, like Whitman, find a loving wife and have what promises to be a happy marriage. But the assassin's inability to contain his anger, to keep from passing on the mistreatment he suffered or witnessed in his childhood, will destabilize his relationships. He may, like Whitman and Muhammad, join the military and excel in certain areas. Or find a job he likes and can do well-at first. But his obsessive, hostile behavior and resistance to authority will reveal themselves. To fuel his obsessive fires, to try to keep himself from failing, the assassin may turn to drugs, like amphetamines, or alcohol. This further blurs his distorted view of society as a whole, in which he is made to suffer unjustly, in his opinion, rather than getting the respect, acceptance, and level of success he feels he
deserves.
The Fantasy Fulfilled
The assassin will fantasize about the stand he will take, and the fantasy will shape itself in his mind until it becomes more than a dream-it becomes his goal. Whitman had long imagined, and even told a friend, that the 300-foot high clocktower on the University of Texas campus would be the perfect place to hold a stand-off while shooting people. In August of 1966, he accomplished his goal, holding his position for an hour and a half, fatally shooting fourteen people and wounding thirty-one others. His murders of his wife and mother the night before were apparently, in his mind, mercy killings. He did not want them to suffer through what he knew he was about to do, as he wrote in a letter left near his wife's body, and did not think the world a place worth having them. While he killed his wife and mother at close range, stabbing both with a bayonet and shooting his mother in the back of the head, he primarily fits the assassin-type category.
But his example demonstrates that in the analysis of violent crime, nothing is black and white.
But, as with all Whitman's other victims, why does the sniper kill randomly? If he is paranoid, and convinced that those in his life are or were out to get him, why doesn't he lash out against those people specifically? Sometimes he does. It has been widely stated that Muhammad planned to murder his ex-wife at the end of the sniper spree, hoping her death would be thought of as random. In fact, it has been said that the entire spree was undertaken with this as the goal. Sometimes there is a symbolic victim or group of victims who take the place of the person or people the sniper feels have persecuted him. For example, Whitman was struggling with school, and had lost his scholarship because of his poor grades. By targeting people on the University of Texas campus, he may symbolically have been attacking the school itself, or those who were not struggling as he was.
It's like the old saying, if you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem. The sniper, in his paranoia, says if you are 't with me-if you have it easier than I do, or if you are not the victim that I am-then you're against me.
As ever, it comes down to the issue of choice. The assassin lives his life in the shadow of others, wishing to belong but unable to. He channels his violence into an interest in guns, and builds a fantasy in which he stands apart from and above everyone, taking his revenge, witnessing his own power and precision unleashed on whomever he chooses. He finally has power, and it is the ultimate power. He doesn't need to do it up close. He sits in judgment, delivering his verdicts and watching those he condemns-for seeming happy, for being in his crosshairs, for nothing at all-fall.
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