The Deadliness of Mass Murderers

The mass murderer history: modern classifications, sociodemographic and psychopathological characteristics, suicidal dimensions, and media contagion of mass murders

Multicide and other mass killings are sufficiently dramatic to excite great interest from clinicians, criminologists and behavioral scientists. This paper revisits the history of the mass murderer, an entity that has progressively distinguished itself from the serial killer. The functional difference between mass and serial homicide is quite obvious, particularly in setting, time, victim status and modus operandi. Classification of these acts requires a number of parameters. The causes of mass murders are multiple and complex: although they rarely seem to be related to psychotic mental pathologies, they are always an expression of suffering that manifests itself in a psychological crisis that is both homicidal and suicidal. Several research teams have studied the sociodemographic and etiopathogenic characteristics of mass murderers and, in particular, the perpetrators of school killings. In addition to prevalent personality traits, these actions often jointly include suicides and homicides, which are brought together in the same psychic crisis. In keeping with the theory of little identity support, previous crimes influenced some mass murderers. Suicides and mass-murders are likely to be imitated. The media appears to play a crucial role in preventing the occurrence of imitation or copycat tragedies. The WHO recommendation regarding how to transcribe suicide and by extension, homicide, in the media is necessary.

Murder-Suicide in Workplace Violence

In an analysis of 105 incidents of workplace violence in the USA from 1982 to 2002, the murderers who killed themselves after the incident killed more victims than those arrested. The workplace violence occurring at schools resulted in significantly more injured victims, but not more deceased victims.

Mass Homicide and Suicide

Abstract. A study of 98 lone, rampage killers in the United States from 1949 to 1999 found that those who were killed by police officers killed and wounded more victims than those who completed suicide who, in turn, killed or wounded more victims than those who were captured. Those rampage killers who completed suicide were less likely to be judged schizophrenic and more likely to be killing present or former co-workers.