As Dave Cullen notes in Newsweek, mass murderers often exhibit early warning signs. A 2002 study by the Secret Service found that, over the previous 26 years, 81 percent of school shooters had overtly warned someone of what they would do.
Before he allegedly opened fire on a Colorado movie theater, James Holmes appeared to have a creepy online dating profile that hinted he would go to prison. From disturbing pictures to stalking students, see the early signs of trouble from other accused killers.
James Holmes allegedly killed 12 and wounded close to 60 people when he opened fire on a crowded movie theater in Aurora. Shortly before the shooting, a man who appeared to be Holmes opened an online dating profile that included the eerie question, “Will you visit me in prison?” The profile also noted, “I spend a lot of time thinking about the future, mind (equals) blown.” A spokesman for Match.com confirmed to the Associated Press that the profile was created before the shooting, but wouldn’t say whether or not the company believes the profile belonged to Holmes.
The terrifying shooting that left at three people dead and three people injured at Chardon High School in Ohio was made all the more disturbing by the discovery of a chilling note the suspect posted on his Facebook page. T.J. Lane, the accused shooter, left a post on Dec. 30, 2011, that described an imaginary massacre by a lonely man of “all those ones he detests, within their castles, so vain. Selfish and conceited. They couldn’t care less about the peasents they mistreated.” Lane ended the entry with “Die, all of you.”
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Seung-Hui Cho perpetrated one of the worst school massacres in history when he shot and killed 33 people at Virginia Tech in 2007. But there were patterns of disturbing behavior throughout his life. One professor later recalled that Cho often was taking pictures of students with a camera phone under his desk, that many of his classmates were afraid of him, and that he submitted many disturbing writings. While a middle-school classmate said that in response to the 1999 Columbine shootings, Cho wrote a message in his notebook, “to the effect of … ‘F’ you all, I hope you burn in hell.’” Equally disturbing, in 2005 Cho had been accused of stalking two female students and was subsequently sent to get psychiatric treatment.
Virginia State Police, File / AP Photo
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School that killed 13 people. But unlike some other situations, the Columbine case had very clear warning signs, which may have been ignored. Harris maintained a hit list of students he wished to kill, which he posted on his website. One student, Brooks Brown, recalled, “When I first saw the Web pages, I was utterly blown away. He’s not saying that he’s gonna beat me up, he’s saying he wants to blow me up and he’s talking about how he’s making the pipe bombs to do it with.” Harris and Klebold also showed off their stash of weapons to friends long before the attacks. In February 1999, just two months before the shooting, Klebold turned in a story about an assassin who wears a trench coat, shoots students, and bombs a city. His teacher called it “the most vicious story” she’d ever read.
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Jeff Weise killed nine people when he went on a shooting spree at Red Lake Indian Reservation in Red Lake, Minn. on March 21, 2005. Weise previously had threatened to kill himself—a threat that had landed him in psychiatric treatment. But he also drew pictures of guns and bodies, which he frequently showed to his classmates, and he had once written a story about a shooting massacre. Weise also was a very active presence on the Internet, where he often posted disturbing messages and stories. His step-aunt later said of Weise, who also killed himself: “The clues were all there. Everything was laid out, right there, for the school or the authorities in Red Lake to see it coming. I don’t want to blame Red Lake, but did they not put two and two together?”
On March 24, 1998, Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, pulled the fire alarm at Westside Middle School, near Jonesboro, Ark., and opened fire on evacuating students and teachers, killing five. Johnson apparently was a gang wannabe, and frequently talked about killing animals. And he allegedly threatened students before the massacre. One student overheard Johnson saying, “Everyone that hates me, everyone that I don’t like, is going to die,” and another heard him say, “I have a lot of killing to do.” One day before the attack, Johnson told students that the next day they would find out if they “live or die.”
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In 1991 Gang Lu, a graduate student in the University of Iowa’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, met with professors about his dissertation and began shooting. Lu eventually killed five people, including a fellow student who had won a prize he coveted. The department has a famously competitive and stressful doctoral program; acquaintances said Lu felt extreme pressure in the months leading up to the attack. Lu also was known to have disturbing temper tantrums. Most telling were his recovered letters, in which he laid out his plans and his belief that guns were an appropriate way to address grievances. Lu’s former roommate recalled, “He had a very bad temper and saw himself as No. 1. He had a psychological problem with being challenged.”
Richard Sonnen planned to go on a shooting spree at Prairie High School in Cottonwood, Idaho. He had figured out where to set bombs around the campus and had made his own hit list of people he wanted to kill, including his mother, Elaine. Elaine Sonnen recalled that growing up, “he could be anywhere from just a really helpful kid to a monster. A terrifying monster,” and she had suspected that he might plan a school shooting when he was younger. When Elaine discovered the hit list, she sent Sonnen to a mental institution for the next 16 months. Since then he has been released and takes medication to treat his symptoms. Sonnen has called his mother the “greatest person in the world,” though Elaine says “he still has a lot of anger towards me.”
Jared Lee Loughner famously went on a shooting rampage on Jan. 8, 2011, in Tucson, Ariz., that left six people dead and 14 others injured, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Upon searching Loughner’s home, investigators found a paper with the words “my assassination,” “Giffords,” and “I planned ahead,” written on it. Loughner also kept a letter that Giffords had written to him in 2007, after he attended one of her events. His classmates at a Tucson community college later recalled his very “disturbed” behavior that eventually got him suspended. One classmate wrote in an email before the shooting, “The teacher tried to throw him out and he refused to go, so I talked to the teacher afterward. Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon.”
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Anders Breivik shocked the world when he planned and carried out attacks in Norway that killed 77 people on July 22, 2011. Court-ordered psychiatrists later declared him insane. But Breivik’s mother, Wenche Behring, suspected that he was insane at least five years before that. When he moved back in with Behring in 2006, he became obsessively interested in history, and he “believed all the nonsense he said,” and though he refused to eat his mother’s food, he would sit unusually close to her on the sofa. In April 2011 while he was planning the attacks, he started wearing an antiseptic face mask whenever he was in his mother’s house, and later called a doctor to complain that his mother had somehow infected his sinuses.
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