Rampage Killer



"Rampage Killer" is an umbrella term for Spree Killer or Mass Murderer, a person who kills multiple people in a short period of time, with no cooling off period or a very brief one. There are only minor differences between the two terms, as detailed below.

Definition
The rampage killer has usually become alienated from society and no longer feels any connection with the rest of humanity. They may feel that the world has come crashing down on them and that the only solution is death. They will feel that their own lives are over, and aim to take as many people with them as they can. Another type of rampage killer (the so-called "classic type") is the "killer-on-the-run" type, someone who commits murders or potentially deadly attacks while evading capture by the law. Examples of this type include Andrew Cunanan, Allan Legere, and Florence Rey.

Once their killing spree is over, subjects of this type most often either commit suicide or force law enforcement to use deadly force against them ("suicide by cop"). They prefer death over the prospect of indefinite incarceration or institutionalization.

The mass murderer, while being nearly identical, differs in the fact that their murders will occur in one place. A spree killer may "visit" multiple locations, sometimes over the course of several days.

Victimology
Both types may target a certain demographic, or even specific targets. These may include fellow students who gave the subject a hard time, a college professor who gave them a bad grade, or a group of bullies. The Columbine massacre is a perfect example of getting revenge on bullies (though this fact was never confirmed as being official).

Mass murderers, specifically, may include car and suicide bombers and other types of bombers and terrorists who commit their murders with a single act.

Alternatively, either type may commit multiple murders for no apparent reason other than the desire to kill.

While rampage killers usually select their victims at random, there are cases where certain aspects of the victims appeals to the perpetrator, such as age, weight, hair color, facial shape occupation, race, etc. It may be a displaced memory or the effect of a traumatic event that mostly happens in childhood. This is how criminologists usually connect different strings of murders together.

Modus Operandi
Unlike serial killers, spree killers most often use firearms or similar weapons. Mass murderers most often use explosives, firearms, or biological/chemical weapons in the case of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the Japanese terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo.

Spree Killers

 * Mark Barton, the Georgia spree killer and family annihilator
 * Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks
 * Martin Bryant, the perpetrator of the Port Arthur massacre
 * Reginald and Jonathan Carr, perpetrators of the "Wichita Horror"
 * Seung-Hui Cho, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre
 * Andrew Cunanan, the San Diego spree killer
 * Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, the perpetrators of the Starkweather-Fugate murder spree
 * Andrew Kehoe, the Bath School bomber
 * Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre
 * John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, the Beltway snipers
 * Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr., the Kansas Jewish community center shooter
 * Elliot Rodger, the Isla Vista spree killer
 * James Swann, the Shotgun Stalker
 * Howard Barton Unruh, the schizophrenic Camden spree killer
 * Jeff Weise, the perpetrator of the Red Lake massacre
 * Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower Sniper

Mass Murderers

 * George Geschwendt, a family annihilator
 * Nidal Malik Hasan, the perpetrator of the 2009 Fort Hood massacre
 * George Hennard, the perpetrator of the Luby's massacre
 * James Holmes, the perpetrator of the Century Theatres movie theater massacre
 * James Huberty, the perpetrator of the massacre at a San Ysidro, San Diego, CA McDonald's restaurant
 * Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre
 * John List, a family annihilator
 * Jared Lee Loughner, the perpetrator of the Safeway supermarket shooting
 * James and John McNamara, the perpetrators of the Los Angeles Times bombing
 * Timothy McVeigh, the perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing
 * Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, two family annihilators
 * Richard Speck, a serial rapist who raped and murdered multiple nurses
 * The Tylenol Killer, the perpetrator of the Tylenol scare, who was never caught
 * Byran Uyesugi, the perpetrator of the Xerox massacre

On Criminal Minds
Rampage killers are investigated several times by the BAU, though not on a basis as frequent as serial killers.

Notable examples of spree killers are Eddie Mays, Roy Woodridge, Owen Savage, Norman Hill, Darrin Call, Raymond Donovan and Sydney Manning, Luke Dolan, Rodney Harris, Clifford Walsh, Frank Cosgrove, and Lester Turner.

Notable examples of mass murderers are Adrian Bale, Chad Brown, Randy Slade, Colin Bramwell, Hayman Vasher, and Mitchell Crossford.

Female Rampage Killers
Female rampage killers are extremely rare. In Public Enemy, however, Morgan incorrectly states that rampage killers, unless they are school shooters, are always middle-aged males. Documented examples include:


 * Sylvia Seegrist: Opened fire at a Springfield, Pennsylvania, shopping mall on October 30, 1985, killing three people and wounding seven others before being disarmed by a shopper John Laufer (who mistakenly assumed Sylvia shooting to be a prank, as it was close to Halloween). The individuals killed included two men, Ernest Trout and Augustus Ferrara, and a two-year-old, Recife Cosmen. She was 25 years old and had been diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia ten years earlier.
 * Brenda Spencer: Used a .22 rifle and fired at the staff and students of an elementary school across the street on which she lived, killing two and wounding nine, on January 29, 1979, while she was still 16. She is currently serving time in a San Diego prison and has been denied parole four times.﻿ When asked why she did it, she simply said that she doesn't like Mondays and that killing "livens up the day".
 * Amy Bishop: Shot six colleagues, three of whom died, with a 9mm handgun February 13, 2010 shortly after learning that she had been denied tenure. She was arrested and indicted for the shooting and is currently in custody. The authorities also reopened the case of her fatally shooting her brother years earlier, an incident which previously was believed to have been an accident. In June 2010, she was charged with first-degree murder of her brother, nearly 24 years after the shooting occured. In 1993, Bishop and her husband were also suspects in a case in which a pair of pipe bombs were sent to a Harvard Medical School professor.
 * Jennifer San Marco: Killed a neighbor, then went to a mail processing plant, where she killed an additional six before shooting herself in the head on January 30, 2006. She was apparently motivated by severe paranoia and bigotry (San Marco was a known racist, and with the exception of neighbor Beverly Graham, all her victims were minorities).
 * Laurie Dann: Opened fire in an elementary school on May 20, 1988, after several failed poisoning and arson attempts at numerous locations, killing eight-year-old Nicholas Corwin and injuring five other schoolchildren. Dann then broke into a random home, taking the occupants hostage and seriously wounding one of them. After a standoff with police, she committed suicide by shooting herself in the mouth. It is believed that had her poisoning and arson attempts succeeded, she would have become the most prolific female rampage killer in modern history, and possibly also one of the deadliest rampage killers.
 * Sherie Lash: A former Native American tribal leader in northern California who shot five people during a tribal meeting on February 21, 2014, killing four of them, including the current tribal leader. She then grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed a sixth person who survived. She was subdued and arrested by responding police officers.