A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders

18: Who Killed Charles Whitman

18 Who Killed Charles Whitman? 272 I In 1985 two sociologists from Northeastern University, Jack. Levin and James Alan Fox, completed a "comprehensive exploration of the characteristics of and the circumstances which precipitate mass murder," producing a work. entitled Mass Murder: America's Growing Menace . In 1994 they followed up with Overkill: Mass Murder and Serial[Cilling Exposed. In the foreword of Mass Murder noted defense attorney F. Lee Bailey wrote that Americans k.now little about mass murder and that much needs to be done to understand and prevent it. I In their work Levin and Fox present a composite profile of a mass murderer : a white male, in his late twenties or thirties, whose motives to kill include mone~ expediency; jealousy, or lust. American mass murderers, hardly ever career criminals but sometimes with a history of property crimes, often commit their murders following lengthy periods of frustration. For some, like Charles Whitman, guns become a solution to this frustration and are seen as the "great equalizer ."2 Of course, people are classified as mass murderers only after they have committed the murders. Hence, the prevention of mass murders could only be accomplished through predicting who will become one and intervening before the crime. That requires the identification of variables found to have a cause-effect relationship with mass murder. Levin and Fox candidly admit that their profile of a mass murderer fits hundreds of thousands of individuals and that attempts to make the profile more detailed subtract from its accuracr Moreover , the more prevalent character traits of mass murderers tend to be hidden. Like other mass murderers, Charles Whitman battled feelings of powerlessness and a lack of accomplishment, a brand of impotence Whitman thought made his life not worth living." Accepting any of the sources of frustration as an excuse for his actions is to suggest a cause-effect relationship which should manifest itself in many hundreds of other individuals. Trying to identify potential mass murderers through observable physical features and societal status continues to be folly because they run the spectrum of looks and conditions, from the charming and the attractive, like Whitman and Ted Bundy; to the ugl~ like Richard Speck, Some mass murderers have homes and some are drifters . Some are married and some are single. They include tall and short, rich and poor, urbanites and country boys, literate and illiterate . They love and hate kids, dogs, their parents, their neighbors, and their country Trying to identify childhood characteristics associated with individuals who grow to be violent is also fraught with danger. For example, the MacDonald Triad-which includes bedwetting, firesetting, and torturing small anirnals-denotes a group of common characteristics in children who grow to become violent adults. The triad has often been attributed to poor parenting. But many well-adjusted, nonviolent adults were children who wet their bed and liked to play with fire; some might even have been cruel to animals. Yet few become mass murderers." In general, predicting the behavior of individuals is extraordinarily difficult and inexact. (Predicting the behavior of groups of people is much easier. For example, insurance companies can predict the losses of particular groups very accurately.) Usually, predictions for individuals are accurate only when they are based on measurements under standardized conditions and when the measurements are similar to those of the predicted behavior. Exams, like college admissions tests, pose questions that duplicate the thought processes and the problems examinees will later face in college. A test's design and content result from a great deal of science and data. It can be altered and field tested; its effectiveness can be measured and demonstrated . On the other hand, there is no "test" for mass murderers (or for most other anti-social behavior). While teams like the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit have amassed information on known mass murderers, the relative infrequency of the crime and the lack of direct measurements makes prediction problematic. In predicting mass murderers, there would be four possible outcomes : 1. False-Positive: Someone who is predicted to become a mass murderer but does not become one. 2. True-Positive: Someone who is predicted to become a mass murderer and does become one. 3. True-Negative: Someone who is predicted not to become a mass murderer and does not become one. 4. False-Negative: Someone who is predicted not to become a mass murderer and does become one. The accurate prediction of...