Identifying the Behaviors of Mass Murderers

Matthew Q. Ellis* and Jeffrey A. Daniels

Department of Counseling and Learning Sciences, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506

Presentation Category: Oral-Behavioral & Social Sciences (Oral Presentation #42)

Student’s Major: Geology

Mass attacks seem to be ubiquitous on the news, but most previous research focused on the characteristics and motivation of mass murders hasn’t been successfully implemented in preventing violence. Instead, it has been used to mitigate violence once it has begun. Our research focuses on a 10-stage process of direct behaviors that a grievance-motivated mass murderer is hypothesized to progress through, starting at the initial grievance, and ending at the final attack. By studying the stages a mass murderer will likely progress through, we hope to identify places where we can intervene and prevent a mass attack from occurring. To test our process, we used a Wikipedia database of rampage killers and a database from the Police Foundation of averted school shootings and conducted an initial review for cases motivated by a grievance. From this we identified 39 and 41 cases respectively. We then conducted a more thorough reading and narrowed our cases to 37 and 25 respectively. We identified the motivation, perceptions, crisis variable, indirect factors, and direct behaviors of each case. Our analysis showed three key moments in a mass murderer’s progression. First, is the development of a normal grievance to a fatal grievance; second is the crisis that exacerbates said fatal grievance; and third is the 5th stage, researching, because most successful interventions take place before this stage. While it is crucial to intervene at any point possible, we have found these three key events to offer the most appropriate moments to intervene at or before.

Funding:

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: WVU's Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP) & accompanying HONR 297-level course