Doctor Stone commented on spree killers and mass murderers. As laypeople many of us use these terms loosely but in the trade of forensic analysis they have specific definitions used by experts. Spree murder refers to killing a number of people in spurts over a period of a few days or weeks;sometimes longer. Often spree killers operate alone but couples have been known to operate as spree killers including Bonnie and Clyde as one example and Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate as another. Starkweather and Fugate are less infamous than Bonnie and Clyde but they killed eleven people during a month long shooting spree in Nebraska during 1958.
Mass murder refers to the killing of four or more persons at one time, all within a day. Two of the most infamous mass murders in American history are used as examples.
Charles Whitman committed the Texas Tower murders at the University of Texas in Austin in Austin on August 1, 1966. He killed fourteen people there plus his wife and mother who he killed before climbing the tower. His case has gained more attention over time for numerous reasons.
Sometimes we use the word massacre when mass murder alone won't suffice. The Saint Valentine's day massacre of seven men in Chicago by members of Al Capone's gang using an ambush and hundreds of rounds of ammunition is called a massacre to convey the one-sided slaughter of the men.
Stone laid out several facts about mass murder. I will paraphrase a bit to lay them out. He reviewed several hundred mass murders since 1900.
First, he found that guns are the preferred weapon in the vast majority of mass murders. They are tools for killing, and for killing a lot of people as rapidly as possible they are very effective tools. This is not a commentary on gun control legislation, it is merely a statement of fact: mass murderers use guns far more than other methods and they are often more effective than most other methods.
Second, the average number of victims is eight. Some have far more and many have less but the average just happens to be eight.
It is noteworthy that MOST mass murderers seek to kill as many people as possible and the degree of evil we consider their crime to hold reflects this - up to a point. At some point it seems that people shift from individuals to statistics. If a killer shoots three people, a mother and two young children, it is a horrific crime, a grave injustice, but if a government bombs hundreds or thousands of people or a corporation contaminates a river poisoning thousands these acts are met with indifferent shrugs.
There is a very rare type of mass murder in civilian life. In the military killing unintended people, including innocent civilians, men , women and children is accepted as "collateral damage." But in Mass murder it is treated as especially heinous. One example to illustrate this point is Jack Gilbert Graham whose case will be examined soon.
Third, mass murder is almost without exception a man's crime. Doctor Stone found just six examples of mass murder carried out by a woman in his review of hundreds of cases.
Doctor Stone next described serial killers. He made it clear that it is important to distinguish between spree killers, mass murderers, and serial killers. Further, he emphasized that there are different kinds of serial killers and we should take great care to be very clear about which exact kind of serial killer a particular person is when describing both the perpetrator and their crimes.
Serial killing as Stone wrote encompasses those cases where murders are separated by fairly long periods of time, typically weeks or months. That is far different from spree killing and mass murder.
Another important fact is that when people hear about serial killers they most often picture serial sexual killers. Doctor Stone described serial sexual homicide in detail in a later chapter and he pointed out that other categories of serial killer exist.
There are also "Angel of Death" killers. These people are in hospitals and medical professions and they play God with patients lives, often poisoning them and deciding which patients live or die under their care. Besides these two types there are several nonsexual types.
We have mothers who smother one infant after another at intervals over a long period, often a year or more passes between murders. There are also misanthropic men who kill men, women, and children at intervals over their general hatred of mankind, with no sexual element to the crime. Stone pointed out that thet there are several one of a kind types as well, which he described in a later chapter.
I wanted to at least cover the definitions and basic descriptions he provided for the various types of killers and his descriptions of the different kinds, so we have a foundation to start from.
Regarding spree murders Stone gave two examples for contrast. At one end of the spectrum he has Archie McCafferty. For anyone interested numerous books and articles have been written about McCafferty. The book Never To Be Released by Paul Kidd is one for anyone who really wants to know his story. Archie McCafferty was born in 1949 in Glasgow Scotland.
Archie McCafferty fits the profile of many killers as he was in and out of reformatories and jail many times as a child and young man and was considered an "incorrigible juvenile delinquent" by authorities. He had thirty five convictions by the age of twenty-four, some for stealing cars and assault. As a child he had gotten into trouble for truancy, cutting girls' hair, strangling cats and dogs, burglary, vandalism, and tossing snakes and mice to scare people. He an explosive temper and used LSD, angel dust, heroin, marijuana, amphetamines and barbiturates.
Archie met a young woman at twenty-three, fell in love, and got married. He met Janice and for a few months he gave up crime, got a regular job and seemed to settle down. He unfortunately was abusive towards his bride began cheating on her. He became obsessed with killing her and even went to a psychiatric hospital voluntarily to rid himself of his evil thoughts. For a year he wasn't arrested. He had a son, Craig, in 1973. He was still doing drugs and drinking but according to Janice he was settling into family life.
Tragically the good times didn't last. Six weeks later Janice claims she rolled over and accidentally killed little Craig in his sleep. Archie claimed he took anything he could get his hands on, including LSD and angel dust. He claimed to have gone to the cemetery and witnessed a vision - he said he saw twenty year old Craig telling him "Kill seven, Dad, and I'll come back to life!"
Archie gathered a group of teens and started killing strangers, hoping that when they reached seven his son would come back to life. They killed three people and Archie was arrested, ending the spree. Archie got three life sentences and was still certain he needed to kill four more people. He was placed in a padded cell. He was nicknamed Mad Dog McCafferty and for many years prison authorities and psychiatrists agreed: he should never be released.
McCafferty had a few unusual twists and turns in his story. He met a woman who was visiting another prisoner, Mandy. Amanda Queen. She visited Archie for sixteen years. He claimed to have softened and to no longer have vengeful fantasies. The prison authorities allowed him to participate in prison work programs and they were convinced he was reformed. They would allow his release on one condition - he had to return to his native Scotland.
He was released in 1997, married Mandy and they settled in Glasgow, even having two children eventually. The tabloid press hounded him ruthlessly and relentlessly. When his first child was born they ran the headline, "Mad Dog Has Pup." Mandy eventually took the children and moved to Australia to escape the constant negative attention. Archie McCafferty doesn't blame her.
In fact Archie met Doctor Stone in 2007. Doctor Stone was surprised to find the Mad Dog he had read about to be in his opinion reformed and to regret his crimes. Doctor Stone sees positives in McCafferty after meeting him and spending time with him. He sees his request for the death penalty at his trial as a sign of genuine remorse and his proclaimed rehabilitation as also genuine. Before meeting Archie McCafferty doctor Stone was skeptical about him, but after this experience he feels that McCafferty was properly released, from the perspective of reform and public safety.
Stone pointed out that if he had never met McCafferty he would have opposed his release but he is glad he met him and changed his mind.
"I'm grateful for the chance to have met him and to have seen myself that the evil some men do need not last a lifetime." (page 147)
"I believe there are people who, besides having committed evil acts at some point in their lives, are truly incurable. But my experience with Archie McCafferty made me aware that we cannot rush to judgement about who these "truly incurable" people are. " (page 148)
Doctor Stone went into more detail about psychological aspects of McCafferty and the influence different people and events may have had on him. I don't know that his conclusion about McCafferty actually being reformed or the general idea of such heinous offenders being eventually released in some cases being the right thing to do is even correct. So, you might wonder, why did I include both the crime by Archie McCafferty and the extensive case that Stone made that the system, the authorities and even he himself would have advocated against ever releasing McCafferty because of his history and crimes but that in meeting with him Stone reappraised the situation and changed his mind completely?
I had to include this case, probably more than any other, not because I agree with Stone (which I don't) but because it is the best evidence and argument Stone himself has presented FOR the release of people who I would likely never release.
To really understand something as John Stuart Mill pointed out in his book On Liberty, we must examine the best arguments and evidence both for and against an idea. I would be dishonest if upon finding this argument I didn't present it, regardless of my personal opinion.
At the other end of the "reformable" spectrum we have the next person Stone described. Charles Manson is about as far from a good candidate for release as we can imagine. Regarding Manso described him as a psychopath when he ordered the murders by his followers and still a psychopath at seventy-five.
Manson like many of the worst men society produces had a truly horrible childhood. It is not meant to excuse his crimes, it is just a fact. He was left by his mother when she went to prison, then upon release she traded him for a glass of beer when he was five. At nine Manson was sent to a reformatory for theft. He escaped and the end of his childhood and all his adolescence in and out of jails and institutions.
Manson was racially motivated in his planned killing spree. He despised black people and felt if given the proper example they would engage in a race war and wipe out all white people, except Manson and his followers, who they would accept as their rulers. Not exactly the most airtight of schemes, but good enough for Manson.
I have met a few people who like to romanticize Manson as a folk hero and say he never killed anyone. They usually love the fantasy of never-ending partying and having sex with beautiful young women at will. Okay, let's look a bit at the description Manson himself gave of his life. He claimed to have gained his deep hatred of black people when he as a young boy was repeatedly held down and raped by the older boys, who were often black, in the reformatories. Being sodomized by older boys and men unfortunately is a detail in the biographies of many of the worst killers in history.
Living in a society that expresses indifference or amusement at your frequent anal rapes is not the best motivation for a healthy attitude in prisoners in my opinion. The media and culture has no problem acknowledging the phenomena but treats it as an amusement with " Watch out for Bubba" and "Don't pick up the soap! " jokes, so people KNOW men and boys are routinely sodomized in reformatories and prison but the message inmates get regarding this horrific violation is almost universally " Fuck You, No One Cares!" This response is regardless of how minor an offense might be, how young an offender is and whether the offender is actually guilty or not.
I make this note now because we can never know how many monsters we are making by tolerating or ignoring or even embracing the conditions we have in prison, besides what does it say about us that we react in such ways to these atrocities?
Manson has a special infamy that stands the test of time. Doctor Stone noted that people remain fascinated by Manson over forty years from when his crimes occurred. Prosecutor and author Vincent Bugliosi (considered by many to be THE Manson expert) wrote, " The very name 'Manson' had become a metaphor for evil...He has come to represent the dark and malignant side of humanity; and there is a side to human nature that is fascinated by pure, unalloyed evil. " (page 151)
Stone described the analogy with Hitler. He wrote that - If Hitler is Evil with a capital E then Manson is Hitler with a small "h." A fitting description as both got followers to kill for their blood deep hatred, as Stone called it.
Stone moved on to mass murder from spree killers at this point. He attempted to catalogue all the mass murderers in the twentieth century but have up when his list reached several hundred and was continuing to grow.
Stone described the fear a mass murderer generates as being different than a serial killer. A serial killer might still be out there but a mass murderer can be anyone and strike anywhere, killing strangers at random with no warning. They can kill our family at a park, our children at school, our friends and family at work. They cannot be guarded against by walking in groups at night or avoiding bars. They cannot be avoided by having a chaperone or sticking with a group of girlfriends at a party.
Stone pointed out that we fear mass murder far more than we should. Mass murder accounts for only a tiny fraction of murders but the press sensationalizes it routinely and despite school shootings being even rarer than Mass murder in general we fear both far more than more likely deaths. It is a combination of our nature as individuals and our communication socially.
Stone pointed out that a few things help our fear of mass murder to be exaggerated. We have a much larger population than we used to so the mass murderers we have now seem to be more because there are simply more of every type of person. Additionally he described a period when most mass murderers were mob related, so if you were not in the mafia your chance of being killed in a massacre of mob members was extremely low. You might read gruesome headlines about the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre but you probably mentally noted that people you know and care about personally are never in these mob massacres, so you didn't worry too much.
In looking at mass murderers we can look at the example that gave us the phrase "Going Postal." Patrick Sherrill on August 20, 1986 in Edmond, Oklahoma gave us the famous incident. He was about to be fired from his job at the post office and he brought a number of guns to his job and killed fourteen co-workers before turning the gun on himself. He of course was a friendless loner with no known family and no one came to claim his body. Sherrill was a member of the National Guard and other than his large him collection nothing else was particularly notable about him.
He brought a bad reputation to postal workers who Stone pointed out are no more likely to commit mass murder than other employees of large corporations.
Stone broke down mass murderers into categories for us. We have disgruntled workers (including the self-employed whose businesses fail) at about 20 percent, rejected lovers (including stalkers who don't actually have a relationship with the victim) at about 8 percent, hate crime killers are about 11 percent.
Less common are individuals who are obviously psychotic, the cornered cult leader, and rarest of all to Stone is the man who murders a crowd to hide one murder.
At this point Stone described several truly atrocious mass murderers in Thomas Hamilton, as a disgruntled killer, Dale Pierre as a viscous and sadistic killer but the one I want to give a little attention is Jack Gilbert Graham, He didn't seek revenge or to eliminate witnesses to a crime.
He tried to murder one person and to do it in such a fashion that his one target would be lost in a crowd. He He was the beneficiary of a large insurance policy taken out on his mother. He has snuck a large package into her luggage, claiming it was a present for Christmas. His mother got onto a flight and the present, which was twenty-five sticks of dynamite attached to a timer and a detonator, exploded, killing all forty five people on her flight.
It came out that Jack had been charged with forgery and one of his victims had newspaper clippings about his crimes in a safety deposit box, he also had copper wires at his house along with detonating primer caps. He recently purchased twenty-five sticks of dynamite and a timing device.
He eventually admitted to his crime, murdering forty five people to get the inheritance from killing one, his mother. When asked about his crimes and if he had remorse he said "As far as feeling remorse for these people, I don't. I can't help it. Everybody pays their way and takes their chances, That's just the way it is" ... "The number of people to be killed made no difference to me; it could have been a thousand. " (page 163)
To my mind Jack Gilbert Graham was a man beyond redemption. I advocate that we never release men (and far more rarely women) who sink to these depths of depravity.
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