By Dr. Katherine Ramsland
(Continued)
On the Shoulders of Cowards
As for Roberts's particular actions, he may have been inspired by a similar incident in Bailey, Colorado on September 27. Duane Morrison came into a classroom, ordered the boys to leave and lined up six girls at the front of the room. He held them hostage, letting four leave and sexually assaulting the others before SWAT team burst in. Shooting at the final two girls, Morrison fatally wounded Emily Keyes, 16, and then turned his weapon on himself.
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| Duane Morrison |
Roberts had already begun acquiring his supplies the day before, but he surely paid attention to this incident. He may have added some new dimensions to his own plan, and even been further inspired to do it.
Even before Morrison, twenty-five-year-old Marc Lépine did the same thing in Montreal on December 6, 1989, as he went on a rampage through a building at the University of Montreal's engineering school. He targeted females because he believed that feminism had taken all his opportunities and made his life miserable. He'd planned the massacre for months, carefully arming himself, and by day's end had taken fourteen lives and wounded fifteen others before killing himself.
And similar to Charles Whitman, who shot 44 people from a tower in Austin, Texas in 1966, killing 14, Roberts had prepared for a potentially long siege, with a change of clothing, plenty of ammunition, barricades, and even toilet paper. He spent nearly a week gathering supplies. Obviously, he didn't learn any lessons from mass killers before him, who generally shoot themselves or get shot or captured within a few hours.
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| Charles Whitman |
While in his rambling notes Roberts mentioned the death of his infant daughter several years earlier as the source of his present sense of emptiness, that incident may have absorbed and crystallized an entire lifetime of disappointment and evolving hostility. If not that incident, then another would surely have become his touchstone for acting out. His actions mirror those of other mass murderers, along with their perceptions that only a final spate of public violence will satisfactorily resolve their personal pain and bitterness.
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Community Stunned By Milkman's Savage Execution of Amish School Girls
See Crime Library Coverage of Kimveer Gill, Montreal School Shooter
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Colorado Shooting
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