Hazing Accusations Against a Sorority
In two separate hazing cases at universities this year, members of Sigma Gamma Rho, an African-American sorority, have been charged with beating their pledges with wooden paddles.
At Rutgers, six members of Sigma Gamma Rho were arrested in January and charged with aggravated hazing, a felony, after a pledge reported that she had been struck 200 times over seven days before she finally went to the hospital, covered with welts and bloody bruises.
Both the university and the national sorority suspended the Rutgers chapter. The charges were reduced to simple hazing, a disorderly persons offense. The trial, originally set for this month, has been delayed because of the prosecutor’s surgery.
In the San Jose State case, Courtney Howard, a former student at the university, charged in a civil lawsuit, filed Aug. 31, that over a three-week period in 2008 she was subjected to progressively more violent hazing from Sigma Gamma Rho members. Ms. Howard claims in her suit that they beat her and other pledges with wooden paddles, slapped them with wooden spoons, shoved them against the wall, and threatened that “snitches get stitches.”
“One of the girls who was a big sister told me it was supposed to be so you can feel what your ancestors went through in slavery, so you will respect what you came from,” Ms. Howard said.
In 2008, San Jose State suspended the sorority chapter until 2016. Four of the sorority members have pleaded no contest to misdemeanor hazing charges, and been sentenced to 90 days in county jail, two years of probation and barred from any further involvement in the sorority.
Ms. Howard’s civil suit charges that the university and the sorority were negligent in investigating and responding to her accusations of hazing.
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Larry Carr, a spokesman for San Jose State, said he could not comment on pending litigation. But hazing is illegal, he said, and the university makes serious efforts to educate all incoming students — and their parents — about how to deal with it.
The Sigma Gamma Rho Web site, too, clearly states the sorority’s anti-hazing policy. “Hazing is wrong, prohibited and unauthorized,” it says. “Members found guilty of hazing will be permanently and irrevocably expelled from Sigma Gamma Rho.”
The two current cases are not the sorority’s only hazing violations. The Sigma Gamma Rho chapter at San Jose State was suspended — that is, stopped from recruiting new members or using university facilities — seven years ago for hazing violations. And two years ago, because of hazing activities, the sorority’s chapter at the University of Texas at Austin was penalized. The sorority has more than 500 chapters, but is the smallest of the four black sororities.
Jonathan Charleston, general counsel to Sigma Gamma Rho, said Tuesday that the sorority had not yet been served with a copy of the complaint, and that the sorority did not comment on pending litigation.
“Any allegations of hazing are taken very seriously and immediately confronted by Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority,” said a statement from the sorority.
Many white fraternities and sororities haze their pledges, too, but there are differences, according to Lawrence C. Ross Jr., author of “The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities.”
“Most predominantly white fraternities and sororities haze around alcohol, but African-American fraternities and sororities typically haze around something physical, violent,” he said.
After the 1989 death of Joel Harris, a Morehouse student, after being beaten on the chest and face — a ritual known as “thunder and lightning” — the nine African-American fraternities and sororities changed their process for taking in new members to try to stop hazing, said Mr. Ross, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha. But the changes drove hazing underground, he said, where it has become more violent, giving rise to more criminal charges and lawsuits.
Angela Reddock, the lawyer representing Ms. Howard, and Mr. Ross both say that hazing has been such a strong tradition in black Greek life that it is hard to end. “I believe this kind of hazing is going on in African-American sororities and fraternities all over the country,” she said. “It’s so deeply ingrained in the culture that I think the only thing that will stop it is if they’re put out of business because their insurance companies drop them.”
In Texas, a Phi Beta Sigma fraternity pledge at Prairie View A&M died last year after collapsing during a rigorous predawn pledging exercise. And in January, the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity stopped accepting new members because of hazing incidents; new members will be accepted again later this fall.
While some students do cross the color lines, in both directions, Greek life remains one of the most segregated aspects of higher education. Ms. Howard said that, as an only child, she had looked forward to forging close bonds with sorority sisters at San Jose State. “I’d heard rumors about paddling,” she said. “But when I went to all the black Greek welcome nights, they made it very clear that they don’t condone hazing.”
And yet, she said, the required “set nights” quickly turned violent.
“The hazing got progressively worse,” Ms. Howard said. “But I thought I could tolerate it, and I just kept going out of fear. They drill into you that if you drop, you’re weak, and snitches get stitches.”
After the fifth night, Sept. 13, the complaint said, Ms. Howard was injured enough that she went to a doctor. On the 10th night, a pledge was knocked unconscious, and the others were told to carry her into the bathroom and wake her by splashing water on her face, but not to take her to a doctor or tell anyone what happened. The paddling began on the 11th night, and continued through the final night, Sept. 29. Pledges were told that they would each be hit with the wooden paddle seven times each night, once for each founder of the sorority.
According to the complaint, both Ms. Howard’s roommates, who saw her bruises, and her mother, reported the hazing to representatives of the sorority and the university. Ms. Howard filed a formal complaint with the university and her mother met with the associate vice president of student life, who, the mother said, told her that hazing had been getting worse at the university, and asked for suggestions for fixing the problem.
That fall, sorority members began to harass her, Ms. Howard said, so she did not return to campus after winter break.
Spree Killing
In subject area: Medicine and Dentistry
Spree killing is defined as the act of killing three or more people in a single event without an emotional cooling off period between the murders, occurring at two or more different locations.
AI generated definition based on: Encyclopedia of Forensic and Legal Medicine (Third Edition), 2025
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Chapters and Articles
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Chapter
Mass Murder
2016, Encyclopedia of Forensic and Legal Medicine (Second Edition)Anil Aggrawal
Spree Murder
‘Spree murder’ – also sometimes loosely referred to as ‘rampage killing’ – is defined as the killing of three or more people in a single event with no emotional cooling-off period in between, but at two or more different locations. The single event can be of short or long duration. In the case of Mutsuo Toi (Table 1), all killings and woundings took place over around 90 min. Charles Whitman, on the other hand, killed over a period of several hours. One night in 1966 he went to his mother’s apartment (location 1), where he shot her, then returned to his house (location 2) and stabbed his wife to death. He later left his house and climbed a clock tower at the University of Texas (location 3), where he started firing at 11.45 a.m. and continued shooting until around 1.20 p.m. From the tower, he killed an additional 15 people. The homicidal event in this case lasted almost a day, but since there was no emotional cooling-off period between the killings, it is classified as a spree murder. Furthermore, even if one killing out of several takes place at a different place, it would theoretically be a spree murder rather than mass murder. Thus the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which took place in December 2012 would be a spree killing (Crichton, 2012). In this multicide, 20-year-old Adam Lanza first shot and killed his 52-year-old mother Nancy at their home. Then he drove to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School and fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members, injuring 2 others in the process. As first responders arrived, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head (Andersen et al., 2012).
Table 1. Differences between various forms of multicides
Similarly, murders on 22 July 2011 by Anders Behring Breivik of Norway were perpetrated at two places – he detonated a 950-kg fertilizer-based car bomb in the government quarter in downtown Oslo, killing eight persons and injuring nine severely (Melle, 2013). Two hours later, he started gunfire at Utøya, an island 25 miles away, killing 69 people, thus murdering a total of 77 people. From 5.21 p.m. until 6.34 p.m. he kept shooting. When an armed police SWAT unit arrived at the island from Oslo and confronted him, he stopped shooting, laid down his weapons, and surrendered without resistance (Syse, 2014).
Two most important variables which differentiate the three major forms of multicide are the cooling-off period in between homicides (variable 1) and location (variable 2). The presence of an emotional cooling-off period between two consecutive killings in serial murders is an important variable. It is this period during which a killer has an opportunity of controlling his behavior and stopping the act of murder. His failure to do so makes the serial killer a much more dangerous criminal. The absence of cooling-off periods in mass and spree murder preclude the possibility of the killer controlling his behavior. Another distinction between serial killers and mass murderers is that while a serial killer painstakingly tries to conceal his crime, a mass murderer has little interest in concealing his crime and indeed may well kill himself after the crime. It has been suggested that mass murderers are often suffering from a mental illness that may be associated with childhood trauma, such as sexual and/or physical abuse. Serial killers, in contrast to this, may show little evidence of mental disturbance, and outwardly they appear quite normal, despite the horrendous crimes they have committed.
Table 2 gives details of some of the most notorious mass murderers of modern times.
Table 2. Some major mass murderers at a glance
Spree and Mass Murders
What Is a Spree Homicide?
Serial murders happen at different locations, but this does not preclude the killing of more than one victim in any given location within the offense series. For example, prior to being apprehended Ted Bundy killed two victims and injured another two at the Chi Omega Sorority in Florida. A spree murder, by contrast, is where the offender kills more than two people over time with no time break between offenses. These crimes must also occur in generally different geographic locations. According to DeLisi, Hochstetler, Scherer, Purhmann, and Berg (2008, p. 38) “surprisingly little is known about offenders who commit murder during a crime spree and the preponderance of work that has investigated the topic centers on the somewhat ambiguous ways that the phenomenon has been defined.”
Spree killers tend to target random individuals, and many of their victims may simply be people who cross their path (Burgess, 2006). Victims who are therefore in the wrong place at the wrong time. Burgess (2006) also states that the identity of these killers is often known to law enforcement, a feature which differs significantly from serial murderers whose identity remains unknown for a period until identified, or perhaps indefinitely, if never caught. The spree killer has no problem with their identity being known, as many times they know and do not care that their life will soon end, either at their own hand or being killed by law enforcement officers who respond to their crimes.
While there is literature on spree murder, the validity of the construct itself has been questioned. This is not based on the premise that spree murder does not exist, but that there are problems in the way it is defined. For example, according to Morton and Hilts (2008, p. 9):
The general definition of spree murder is two or more murders committed by an offender or offenders, without a cooling off period. According to this definition, the lack of a cooling off period marks the difference between a spree murder and a serial murder. Central to the discussion was the definitional problems relating to the concept of a cooling off period. Because it creates arbitrary guidelines, the confusion surrounding this concept led the majority of attendees to advocate disregarding the one of spree murder as a separate category. The designation does not provide any real benefit for use by law enforcement.
The above critique revolving around a cooling-off period also plagues the definition of serial murder as discussed in the previous chapter such that the current authors propose removing it from the definition of that crime. We see that the issue is no different for spree (or mass) murder as the cooling-off period is a conceptual problem plaguing all the mass victim types. The arbitrariness of the guidelines permeates the study of many phenomenon within the social and behavioral sciences and decisions are often made based upon the best guidance offered by theory and literature. The authors do not agree that definitional problems alone constitute ground for removal of spree murder and feel that the only legitimate reason for doing so is if they happened so infrequently we could not learn anything useful from them, or that their low frequency rendered their study unsatisfactory through typical behavioral science research methodologies (Dietz, 1986). But they do happen, and there have been some high-profile examples so we propose that the type is useful and should remain.
As discussed with mass murder in the next main section of this chapter, we found ourselves with a conundrum relating to the definition of spree murder. This conundrum essentially revolves around the difference between an offender’s intent and the actual outcome of their behavior. The intent of the offender in mass victim homicides is to inflect a large number of fatalities, and the choice of weapons and the locations (where there is an expectation of a large number of victims) are reflective of this. Beyond a small number of variables within the offender’s control, such as their bringing a large amount of ammunition and firearms and practicing their shooting, many variables are outside of their control. Victims will find a way to escape the area, can take cover behind protection, and first response police and paramedics may arrive sooner than expected. These x-factors (things outside of the offender’s planning or control) may reduce the total number of victims who actually die. If an offender enters a location with 20 potential victims inside and plans to kill them all but owing to factors outside of their control they only kill one but injure all 19 others. By strict definition they are not a spree killer.
In another hypothetical incident, an offender enters a location with 20 potential victims inside with a plan to kill them all. For whatever reason, emergency services are delayed or do not arrive at the crime scene for some time. One of the victims was shot and killed immediately, 10 escaped injuries, and the other 9 were shot and injured. Those nine all died from their injuries at the scene, though any number of them they may have lived had paramedics arrived sooner. Two very similar situations with offenders who had the same motivation, the same preparation and planning, and the same intent. The only difference was in one particular factor the offender could not control. So why is one a spree killer and the other not? Because of this we propose that the definition for spree murder be at least one victim killed where the offender’s intent was to kill more, where the homicide/s occur within the same general timeframe, and in different geographic locations.
DeLisi et al. (2008) studied 654 homicide offenders from Arkansas (n = 31), Florida (n = 272), Georgia (n = 68), North Carolina (n = 80), New Jersey (n = 39), Ohio (n = 59), Oklahoma (n = 55), and Texas (n = 50). These states were selected because they record information that allowed for identification of the offender, so publicly available criminal records could be obtained. Of the 654 offenders, there were 66 who killed during a homicide spree and 588 who did not. It would be tempting to suggest from this that spree murder makes up about 10% of the total number of murders, but the data does not necessarily show this, and being a convenience sample of a small number of states the data cannot be used in this way. Of this 66 offenders who killed as part of a crime spree, 56% (n = 37) murdered only a single victim, and 23% (n = 15) killed 2 victims. The rest (21%, n = 14) killed between three and nine victims. These researchers also used a control group, and in this 78% (n = 457) killed only a single victim while 15% (n = 89) killed two victims, and 7% killed between three and six victims. This latter group were therefore serial murderers (n = 3) or mass murder (n = 7).
As with other murderers, spree killers are mostly males (95% compared to 5% of females). For their criminal histories, the spree murderers had a more extensive array of past offenses, and these were statistically significantly different to the nonspree murderers. These were homicide (M = 2.02 for spree compared to nonspree 1.32, P = .000), attempted homicide (M = 0.64 vs to 0.18, P = .0000), rape (M = 0.86 vs to 0.14, P = .0000), robbery (M = 2.68 vs 0.54, P = .0000), assault (M = 1.20 vs 0.24, P = .0000), child molestation (M = 0.29 vs 0.04, P = .006), kidnapping (M = 1.56 vs 0.18, P = .0000), burglary (1.15 vs 0.25, P = .0000), and weapons violations (M = 0.82 vs 0.18, P = .0000). The only two offenses that were not statistically significant were carjacking (M = 0 vs 0.02, P = .396) and drug violations (M = 0.11 vs 0.06, P = .409). Both of these offenses were very low in frequency for both groups. The spree murder group committed significantly more prior criminal convictions, having more convictions for robbery and child molestation but fewer for narcotics trafficking and narcotics use.
While there are not a large number of studies on spree killers and the above study was based on a purposive sample, the results and literature indicate they are a homogenous group and are different to serial murderers, mass murderers, and other homicide offenders. But it is also possible that, at least a small population of the spree murder population are different and represent a subgroup of serial murderers.
Rapid Sequence Serial Homicide
Rather than abandoning the classification of spree murder altogether, there may be grounds on which to simply change the classification to a more useful one, perhaps through representing it as a type of an already established and accepted classification (i.e., as a type of serial murder).
Schlesinger et al. (2017) examined 44 cases of serial sexual murder with the aim of studying aspects of these cases referred to as rapid sequence. The study examined those cases that did not fit within the traditional mold of serial offenders, that is, cases where the cooling-off period was shorter than the proscribed weeks or months. These cases are specifically referred to as spree murders (spree killings is used in text, but the implication is the same) where the authors note that the problem is that “the periods between homicides denoting a rapid sequence, or what has been called spree killing, have been vague and not substantially more specific than referring to an absence of a cooling-off period” (Schlesinger et al., 2017, p. 74). All cases involved males and of the overall sample 19 (43.2%) were identified as rapid sequence offenders. Six offenders (13.6%) committed all their offenses in a rapid sequence, 13 (29.5%) committed several rapid sequence sexual murders in one or two clusters, while 25 offenders (56.8%) killed with more than 14 days between offenses.
The six rapid sequence offenders committed their murders at a mean rate of one homicide every 3.58 days (varying between 1.1 and 9.3 days). Two offenders within this group were also suspects in several other unsolved homicides and had committed several rapes also being suspected in unsolved rapes. This may point to a particular type of criminally versatile offender among the rapid sequence offenders, who appear prima facie to align to the Class 2 offenders of Vaughn, DeLisi, Beaver, and Howard (2009), being characterized by higher levels of contemporaneous burglary, rape, and weapons charges, were male, and were more likely to be Caucasian or African-American.
For the 13 offenders who committed their crimes in clusters, 1 killed 5 women in 2 clusters, another killed 4 women in 2 clusters, both killing other women with longer than 14 days between offenses. The remaining 11 killed in 1 cluster with more than a 2-week period between offenses. One offender killed multiple victims on 1 day, all committed additional crimes outside of the cluster, some up to 12 years later.
While the title may be new, the concept of a fast cycling spree murderer is not, and was discussed earlier in the Crime Classification Manual, albeit with a different name (Burgess, 2006, p. 448):
Sometimes there are spree serial killers, a sort of hybrid, where there is a shorter time span between murders, perhaps days, and where the victims may not have a common thread. It is similar to an extension of a mass murder episode; however, the killer moves from one location to another during his killing spree rather than barricading himself in one location, as does the mass murderer. The duration of the spree can be brief as in the case of Wesbecker (nine minutes) or can be much longer as in the case of Charles Starkweather or Christopher Wilder (weeks and months). As a rule, the spree is of shorter duration.
Schlesinger and colleagues rightly point out that the identification of the type of offender is important as it helps establish how often an offender might target victims, and in identifying the specific time span between offenses. They also rightly point out that research in this area is scant, and that theirs is the first study of its type. As such, caution must be exercised before making this classification a part of the broader lexicon on mass-victim crimes at least until such a time as empirical validation can be undertaken. Put another way, we do not agree that at this point the concept of spree homicide [murder] be abandoned in favor or rapid sequence serial murder. At least not until such a time when the evidence unequivocally suggests this is the best course of action.Show more
Chapter
Spree and Mass Murders
2019, HomicideWayne Petherick, Natasha Petherick
Prevalence of Spree Murder
To the best of our knowledge, there have been no attempts made to quantify how often spree murders happen, not the proportion of spree murder to other types of murder, such as what part of the overall number of homicides it is, or how often it happens relative to its cousins, serial and mass murder. Perhaps this is because, comparatively speaking, this type is rare and does not occur with enough frequency to warrant empirical investigation, or perhaps because they occur with such infrequency their small number renders proper empirical study all but impossible. The issue may also be one of classification, as murderers may be classified differently by different authors depending on the criteria they use for victim counts and time between the murders. As such, some spree killers may be counted in the mass or serial murder numbers. One example of this is Andrew Cunanan who started his killings in April of 1997 before killing Gianni Versace in July of that same year. While comparative studies are scant, the research of Delisi et al.’s sample of 66 spree offenders shows that while not common, a number of cases do exist.
The Washington Snipers
Even though this case is slipping from the public’s conscious, The Beltway Snipers are perhaps one of the more notorious and deadly examples of spree killers in recent history. In 2002 the snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo went on what was to become the killing spree they were best known for. However, and unknown to most, their killings started earlier that year in February. On February 16, 2002, Malvo murdered Keenya Cook in Tacoma Washington (Wakeman, 2017). According to an article published in Vanity Fair (Webster, 2004), Cook was the niece of another woman that Muhammad felt had wronged him by siding with his ex-wife. After leaving town it is reported that the pair killed in Florida, again in Texas, and then again in Louisiana, followed by a shooting in Maryland, before killing another in Atlanta (Wakeman, 2017).
These killings all followed what would become a familiar pattern: shooting an average citizen (in one case they shot and killed an FBI analyst) who was going about their life such as visiting a Home Depot or filling up their car with fuel. In one case, following an inquiry from a concerned parent about whether school children were safe, they shot a child being dropped off at school. The snipers used a .223 caliber Bushmaster rifle, like that Muhammad would have used serving in the US Army. While they were given the moniker of “The Washington Snipers” it should be noted that neither of them had achieved that military designation, although Muhammad was apparently qualified in the military as a marksman (the difference between the two classifications is an important one, but outside of the scope of this work).
The homicides received worldwide media attention in real time, with images of the crime scenes, police conducting vehicle checks, and interviews with the public being a common scene on television sets globally. Police Chief Charles Moose hosted regular press conferences and was to come under fire for regularly announcing that police had no new leads in the identification of the offender (at that stage it was believed that the sniper was a lone individual). At one point, Chief Moose introduced geographic profiler D. Kim Rossmo, formerly of the Vancouver Police Department, as aiding in the search for the sniper.
Later, the investigation came under further fire for using military resources with some claiming that such use constituted a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law prohibiting the use of the military for the enforcement of civilian laws (the National Guard is generally exempted as they operate at the behest of state governors). Despite various concerns about this, there are several exceptions to posse comitatus including cases where there is a sharing of information or intelligence between the military and local police. According to Carter (2002), the use of planes in this context did not violate posse comitatus as the planes were flown by military personnel though it was police personnel on the planes that analyzed the gathered information.
The killing spree the pair were most famous for began on the 2nd of October 2002. Muhammad and Malvo had converted a 1990 Chevy Caprice by removing the upright part of the rear seat and cutting a hole in the trunk (also called the boot in certain parts of the world). This provided a shooting platform from which they could target people, partially covering the noise of the shot, and concealing themselves from the view of witnesses while also making it easier for them to pull into traffic and disappear. A timeline of their “sniper” crime spree is as follows (FBI, n.d.):•
October 2: Man killed while crossing a parking lot in Wheaton, Maryland.•
October 3: Five more murders, four in Maryland and one in DC.•
Woman wounded while loading her van at Spotsylvania Mall.•
Thirteen-year-old-boy wounded at school in Bowie, Maryland.•
October 9: Man murdered near Manassas, Virginia, while pumping gas.•
October 11: Man shot dead near Fredrisksburg, Virginia, while pumping gas.•
October 14: FBI analyst Linda Franklin killed near Falls Church, Virginia.•
October 19: Man wounded outside a steakhouse in Ashland, Virginia.•
October 22: A bus driver, the final victim, killed in Aspen Hill, Maryland.
On October 24th, the crime spree came to an end. Despite many red herrings being injected into the investigation, such as the involvement of a white van, many of these being sightings by a well-meaning but incorrect public, information was broadcast about a suspected vehicle that proved fruitful.
The vehicle description and registration information were provided—in an odd twist—by Muhammad. According to Kennedy (2015):
As police had expected, the baffling case was broken by a tip – but in a bizarre twist, the tip appears to have come from the sniper himself.
On Oct. 17, a caller claiming to be the sniper referred to a homicide in “Montgomery.”
A caller also telephoned a Virginia priest and left a similar message about “Montgomery, Ala.,” on his machine, using a code phrase that cops recognized as the sniper’s.
Police then found an unsolved ambush shooting Sept. 21 at the ABC liquor store in Montgomery, Ala. The suspect left a fingerprint behind.
The print was Malvo’s – the biggest break yet for the task force. They tracked him to Tacoma, Wash., and soon had the name of his apparent guardian, Muhammad.
Now they had names, faces, addresses and license plate numbers – including the Chevy Caprice registered to Muhammad at a Camden, N.J., address Sept. 11.
When police electrified the region Wednesday night with the announcement that they were looking for two suspects, Muhammad and Malvo were asleep at the wheel – literally.
A truck driver pulled into a rest stop on I-70 about 50 miles northwest of Washington, around 3 a.m. and saw the blue Chevy Caprice he had heard about on the radio. He called 911 and was told to lock himself in his vehicle and block a rest stop exit ramp as police quietly swarmed the area.
Armed now with this information about vehicle type and registration number, the information was disseminated widely, being the subject of television, radio, and print media. Discussions propagated throughout various branches of these media formats, with a talk show description being overheard by a truck driver who was looking at a vehicle fitting the description as he pulled into a truck stop off the I-70 near Myersville in Virginia. First response police arrived blocking off the exits before moving on the vehicle in which Muhammad and Malvo were asleep. They were arrested on weapons charges and later charged with the killings of the crime spree.
Malvo and Boyd qualify as spree murderers because their crimes spanned time and separate locations. Moreover, should the Schlesinger et al. rapid sequence serial homicide classification be valid, the Washington Sniper homicides could be classified as rapid sequence as the vast majority of the later homicides in October occurred either on the same day or within 5 days, with a number occurring outside of this cluster earlier in 2002.
What Is a Mass Murder?
Mass murder is a broad term describing the homicide of a number of people in a relatively short time frame (Busch & Cavanaugh, 1986). The victim count is three or four (or more depending on the source), with there being no significant separation of time between offenses where the offenses occur at the same geographic location. An example of this type of offense is deaths that occurred at The People’s Temple in Jonestown, Guyana. Originally classified as a mass suicide, investigators found injections sites and gunshot wounds in places where it would be impossible that they were self-inflicted, such as between the shoulder blades (Watts, 2018).
As mass murder is a general term that only encompasses the number of victims (three or four or more depending on the source), that occur at the same general time, and in the same general place, it does not describe, nor is it dependent on, the context of the act or the specific motivation. For example, anyone entering a school and killing three or more people at the same time is a mass murder, as is the husband who kills his wife and three children in their own home. While we would label the first incident a school shooting and the second incident domestic homicides, both are mass murders. It is important to note though, that when compiling official figures on mass murders, some sources exclude family slayings as a type of mass murder, also excluding gang, and drug-related incidents.
While a defining criteria of mass murder is that the killings occur in one place within the same general timeframe, not all agree that the location requirement be strictly followed. Dietz (1986, p. 479) limits the timeframe to 24 hours (without explication), suggesting also that the location is not relevant. It is argued that:
Surely a murderer who kills half the requisite number of victims at one site and then travels to another site where the other half are killed ought to qualify as a mass murderer, as would one who killed a sufficient number of victims while shooting from a moving vehicle or traveling aboard a train, ship, or aircraft. I would therefore ignore location or distance in the definition of mass murder.
While Dietz makes a good point about classification where a minimum victim number is not met, it could be argued that, because boundaries are imposed by the limit of the specific vehicle that a train, ship, or aircraft would represent one physical location. Additionally, it would need to be questioned as to exactly how many of these types of crime involve offenders shooting from a platform like a ship or a plane such that this should be a point of debate. Should the offender kill at multiple locations, then providing other criteria are met the offense would better be classified as a spree murder should there be sufficient space between locations or as a mass murder if, say, the different locations are simply different rooms of the same building or home.
Dietz also touches upon another point, by accident or design, in the final decision of victim count where it is stated that accommodations in victim count thresholds can be made without restricting the definition of mass murder as “the willful injuring of five or more persons of whom three or more are killed by a single offender in a single incident” (p. 480). Throughout the literature various accounts are provided of how many people died, but not always of how many were injured in a given mass murder, as the injured are not central to the definition. The actual number of people killed in a given incident may be largely outside of the offender’s control despite their best intentions to amass as high a fatality count as possible. A loss of the element of surprise, poor marksmanship, misjudging bullet trajectory, or any host of other factors may play a role in the number of fatalities, resulting instead in a number of wounded with actual fatalities falling below a threshold. Put another way, a shooter may enter a location with a view to killing all 20 potential victims present, though for any number of intervening factors only three die as a result, even though a number of others might be injured. A victim count of four dead would preclude this being a mass murder by classifications where the cut-off is four actually deceased. Dietz’ definition of five or more injured with three or more deceased factors in the eventuality that some of those intended to die, do not. What is important here is the offender’s original intent, regardless of their skill in carrying out their plan, that a number of people die in the attack.
Fox and Levin (1998, p. 429) define mass murder as “the slaughter of four or more victims by one or a few assailants within a single event, lasting but a few minutes or as long as several hours.” Fox and Levin also note that the shooting of strangers in a public place by a lone gunman are the most publicized, other types include any number of instances of workplace violence, and the mass killing of witnesses to crime. Geberth (1986) defines mass murder in the same way, as four or more victims within a short time. The victim count of four is also that used by the FBI from their serial murder moratorium, where the murders occur in the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders (Morton & Hilts, 2008). They do not specifically use the term cooling-off period in their definition though.
One of the only articles that justified the reason for establishing victim counts in the definition was The Patterns and Prevalence of Mass Murder in Twentieth-Century America (Duwe, 2004). Without explanation for the timeframe however, Duwe limits the offenses to a 24-hour period. It is then stated that the minimum victim count should be set to four victims killed. This threshold was selected “because, compared to a three-victim requirement, it minimizes the potential for measurement error in the identification of mass killings” (p. 734). While we applaud the justification, we are not sure we agree with the reason itself. A count of four victims is not predicated on any practical reason directly related to the classification of mass murder but is instead intended to allow for more discriminating search of media articles which provided the data for study. In a footnote, it is stated that although triple homicides are newsworthy events, “there is still a greater likelihood that a study using a three-victim criterion would miss media reports on a larger proportion of cases than would one that employed a four-victim threshold” (pp. 734–735). So, this is not related specifically to the classification itself, but only to the study of the phenomenon, then this should probably not play a role in defining the criteria for identifying when the crime has occurred and when it has not.
Given the above considerations we would define mass murder in much the same way as Dietz, in that mass murder is where at least three victims are killed by an offender or offenders, where their behavior indicates a desire to kill more, in a single event at a single geographic location. The question of location is again perhaps an arbitrary distinction, though we would argue that a building is a single geographic location and thus three or more victims in one building would constitute a mass murder, while three or more spanning multiple buildings would be a spree murder. For this reason, we would disagree with Morgenbesser, Burgess, and Safarik (2008) who classify a case study in their article Motives in a Triple Spree Homicide as a spree murder. In short, Steven Santos found a third story window open and entered the apartment surprising the occupant, who was apparently shot by accident when Santos, startled, squeezed the trigger. He then went down the fire escape into a second story apartment where he found an “old lady” sitting in her chair whom he shot before going into the bedroom where the woman’s husband woke up, who too was promptly shot. He was alerted by a knock on the door and proceeded down the fire escape where he was met by police. According to Morgenbesser and colleagues, the crime was classified as a crime spree using the Crime Classification Manual (CCM) definition of “two or more crimes committed in a short period of time at different locations with no cooling off period” (Morgenbesser et al., 2008, p. 117). The current authors presume this case was not classified as a mass murder as it did not involve three or more victims, or perhaps because it spanned multiple locations. However, two points need to be raised here. The first is that the CCM definition given by Burgess (2006, p. 437; the same author on the case study article) is “the killing of three [emphasis added] or more victims at more than one location without a cooling-off period between the murders.” There certainly was not a cooling-off period between these crimes, and we would also take issue with the claim that the murders were in different geographic locations, as they occurred in the same building with only one floor separating them. In fact, we presume they were very close to each other as they even shared a fire escape. To conclude, we believe this case could be better described as a mass murder.
It could be said that there are three main types of mass murder, and that these three types would cover most mass murders. Like many things, there will always be an exception to the rule, though we are confident these three types will suffice. The first are mass casualty crimes that occur in the community. These usually involve targeted violence rather than being spontaneous or impulsive acts. The offenders will go to locations where there is a reasonable expectation of crowd density, and they will usually be heavily armed and equipped. Some may use bombs or diversionary devices to channel or funnel people into “kill zones” to increase the number of people killed in the event. An example of this type of offender is Stephen Paddock who shot and killed a large number of concert-goers in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2017. Not only did Paddock have a mass of firearms, many were modified by the controversial bump-stock attachment that legally allows the adaptation of a semiautomatic weapon into a fully automatic one (we use the term adaptation rather than conversion as they attach to the weapon without modifying the actual sear or block).
The second type is that of workplace mass shootings, where an offender carries out a mass murder at a workplace. This classification includes school shootings. The offender/s in these crimes may or may not be an employee or student at the business or school (though in a school shooting they most likely are), and the motive for the offense is usually revenge in nature. Examples of this type of murder include the mass killings at Fort Hood army base by US Army Major and psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, the killing of 21 at a McDonald’s Restaurant in San Ysidro, California, and the well-known case of Robert Farley who shot and killed seven, wounding four others, including Laura Black who had a restraining order out against him (this case was made into a movie starring Brooks Shields as Laura Black and Richard Thomas as Richard Farley).
The third type includes family massacres, where one person murders three, four, or more family members or people they are associated with. When the parties are related the formal term for this is familicide, and the most commonly conceivable situation or circumstance where this might happen is within a domestic (family or intimate) relationship.
Prevalence of Mass Murder
The prevalence of mass murder will differ according to the type of mass murder being considered. Mass victim crimes occurring in the home may be more common than that which occurs in the community which may be less common than school and other workplace violence.
Acknowledging that the study was not a study of mass killings or mass shootings, the FBI identified 160 active shooter cases between 2000 and 2013 (Blair & Schweit, 2014). This represents an average of 11.4 incidents per year, with 486 killed and another 557 wounded. While the authors acknowledge that it was not specifically a study of mass murder, it is noted that 40% or 64 of the 160 incidents would meet the federal definition of mass killing which is three or more victims in a single incident. Despite their caution that this was not a study of all mass shootings, the identified rate at which these occur is consistent with that found by other authors. In those 160 cases, there were 1043 victims, with 486 killed and 557 wounded. Of the total incidents, all but 2 involved a single shooter, with females being the shooter in at least six incidents, with 40% dying by suicide, where 54 shooters died by suicide at the scene.
Despite criticisms of the study presented previously in this chapter, Duwe (2004) examined the patterns and prevalence of mass murder in the United States. Using media accounts from the New York Times, Duwe found 173 instances from 1900 to 1965, with an increase in the annual figures during the 1920s and 1930s, followed by a sharp increase beginning in late 1960. From this point, it is noted that the rate remained relatively stable for the rest of the century. For the total 99-year period the study covered, there were 909 mass killings overall.
To determine the relationship between firearms prevalence and mass shootings, (Lankford, 2016) gathered international data on the global spread of mass shootings. The dataset on which this research was based on uses a victim count of four or more. All told, 292 public mass shooters were included, though this would have been higher if the victim count of three or more was used in compiling the dataset. On the results, Lankford (2016, p. 192) notes:
Complete data were available for 171 countries, and they averaged 1.7 public mass shooters per country from 1966 to 2012. Approximately 31% of global offenders attached in the United States, whereas 69% attacked other countries. The United States had by far the most public mass shooters of any country, with 90 offenders. Only four other countries even reached double digits: the Philippines (18), Russia (15), Yemen (11), and France (10). Homicide rates, suicide rates, and firearm ownership rates varied significantly by country, as did population size and urbanization. Most countries had a sex ratio that was close to 1:1 (male: female).
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Serial and Mass Murderers
2017, International Encyclopedia of Public Health (Second Edition)Dennis L. Peck, Robert B. Jenkot
Defining Serial Murder
The FBI’s Crime Classification Manual (Douglas et al., 1992) provides a concise albeit controversial definition of serial murder as “Three or more separate events in three or more separate locations with an emotional cooling-off period between homicides.” However, the history of the evolving definition of this phenomenon is itself interesting. Indeed, several definitions of serial murder have been advanced. Among these are the fact that the events we now refer to as serial murders were once identified as stranger murders; this phenomenon was also referred to as chain murder, mass murder and, later, multicide. Introduced into the literature in 1972, the term multicide characterized an individual with a psychopathological personality who committed a number of murders over a period of time.
It is not without reason that the conceptual understanding of serial murder is less than unanimous. Some analysts even debate whether serial murder and spree killings should be subsumed under the mass murder concept given that all of these terms are examples of multiple homicide. Establishing the four victim minimum for the multiple homicide category can contribute an important distinction for murder. What is useful to this assessment is that once the concept came under scrutiny there was enough interest to initiate a rapid change in definition or meaning. Today most analysts agree that three victims killed in rapid succession and linked to a single killer or killers constitute serial murder. Others also argue that the time lapse between the first and last murder must be more than 30 days to qualify as serial murder.
The aforementioned refinement in definition continued until 1985, at which time Steven Egger offered what may be the most comprehensive definition of serial murder:
A serial murder occurs when one or more individuals (males in most known cases) commit a second and or subsequent murder; is relationshipless (no prior relationship between victim and attacker); is at a different time and has no apparent connection to the initial murder; and is usually committed in a different geographical location. Further, the motive is not for material gain and is believed to be for the murderer’s desire to have power over his victims. Victims may have symbolic value and are perceived to be prestigeless and in most instances unable to defend themselves or alert others to their plight, or are perceived as powerless given their situation in time, place or status within their immediate surrounding (such as vagrants, prostitutes, migrant workers, homosexuals, missing children, and single and often elderly women).Egger (1990: p. 4).
To this list of potential victims we can add single women who are out alone, college students, and hospital patients.
Michael Newton suggests that the best description of serial murder may be that promoted by the U.S. National Institute of Justice which, in 1988, defined the term as:
A series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone. The crimes may occur over a period of time ranging from hours to years. Quite often the motive is psychological, and the offender’s behavior and the physical evidence observed at the crime scenes will reflect sadistic overtones.Newton (2000: p. 205).
In an interesting psychological assessment of what was fast becoming known as a growing social menace, Norris wrote:
The serial murderer murders in an episodic frenzy that can strike without warning. He often preys on the most vulnerable victims in his area and then moves on, leaving the police to find the missing persons and search for traces of the scant clues left behind. Because his killing is not a passion of the moment but a compelling urge that has been growing within him sometimes for years, he has completely amalgamated this practice into his lifestyle. It is as though he lives to kill, surviving from one murder event to the next, stringing out his existence by connecting the deaths of the victims. Without this string of murders, he feels he will fall apart, that he will disintegrate psychologically. The remainder of his life is devoted to maintaining the mask of normalcy and sanity.Norris (1988: p. 19).
Finally, in an attempt to further differentiate serial murder from mass murder and spree killing, an operational definition created by researchers assessing serial murderers in Germany; Harbort and Mokros inform their study while indirectly supporting the above statement as:
The fully or partially culpable perpetrator commits alone or with accomplice(s) at least three completed murders, each of which have to be premeditated and characterized through a new, hostile intent.Harbort and Mokros (2001: p. 313).
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Chapter
Serial and Mass Murderers
2017, International Encyclopedia of Public Health (Second Edition)Dennis L. Peck, Robert B. Jenkot
Serial Murder: An Emerging Concept
The concept serial murder/killing had a less than distinguished history until multiple homicide was defined to stand in contrast to homicide in general. It seems apparent that many deaths that could be attributed to serial murderers were not officially documented as such. Outside of the Church recording of births, marriages, and deaths, the recording procedures of the Middle Ages were not well orchestrated. Such organization was to remain undeveloped for many more years until the direction of the so-called moral statisticians was established in the early 1800s. One general area of interest for these moralistic but scientifically oriented individuals was crime, of which murder serves as one important example. As the process of recording important events such as murder became an official government act, more specific information regarding episodes involving suspected serial killings began to emerge.
Although there is a paucity of official data pertaining to historical serial killing, in the contemporary experience the opposite effect is found. That is, once identified either by modus operandi or by name, serial killers gain considerable public attention. In the United States alone, more than 50 individuals are known to have taken the lives of five to more than 100 victims between the early 1900s to the end of the century. In contrast, in the period 1960 to the late 1990s Australia recorded only nine serial killers. In England, during the 1940–85 period, a total of 12 such cases were recorded. Whether based on fact or myth, another interesting datum is based on the belief that each year 5000 or more individuals become victims of serial killers. Others estimate the number of the victims in the United States alone is between 3500 and 6000 victims annually.
Many serial killers are eventually identified and convicted of their crimes; in other instances infamous serial killers have not been identified and their legacy has grown to hold the status of urban legend. Classic examples include the Jack the Ripper killings in several districts of London, England, that occurred during the year 1888 and the Axeman of New Orleans who is thought to have been operating in that city during the 1918–19 period, as well as the self-proclaimed Zodiac killer who stalked victims in the northern California area during the 1970s and 1980s.
