James Spencer
/ego2/spencermania/
orangeboy_25@hotmail.com
/ego2/spencermania/
orangeboy_25@hotmail.com
Behold the childhoods of killers. (The Providence Journal)
Froma Harrop.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2000 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service
Thursday marks the first anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School. Not since a domestic terrorist blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City has any news story so sickened the public. On April 20, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold tore through the high school in Littleton, Colo., killing 12 fellow students and a teacher, before turning the guns on themselves. The nation stood aghast.
Over the last several years, America has experienced more than a few deadly demonstrations of teen-age fury on school grounds. But there was something about Columbine that set this particular event apart. Far less attention been focused on similar anniversaries in Jonesboro, Ark.; Edinboro, Pa.; Pearl, Miss.; or Springfield, Ore.
Why did the Columbine shootings soar so much higher on the national horror index? It probably has something to do with the seeming mystery behind the killers' extreme act of violence.
Several of the other adolescent gunmen came from socially troubled families. For example, the mother of Mitchell Johnson, one of the Arkansas rampagers, took him hundred of miles away from his father, then married an ex-con. Other children suffered in single-parent families. A number of the kids lived in less-than-ideal economic circumstances.
Some had a documented history of mental illness. Kip Kinkel, the 15-year-old Oregonian who murdered both parents, killed two students, and wounded 23 others, was the best example. He was seeing a psychiatrist for violent behavior. In class, he read a passage from his diary about plans to "kill everybody.'' He afterward told police of hearing voices in his head. While we were shocked that a boy from what seemed like a fine home would go on a massacre, at least his act wasn't a bolt out of the blue.
But Littleton was more of one. Harris and Klebold were college-bound kids each living with both parents in upper-middle class luxury. They held after-school jobs. Sure they socialized with kids who wore black raincoats and put blue spikes in their hair, but that was a popular teen-age style. Otherwise, there were no flashing lights to warn of impending disaster. Only after the two completed their mass murder/suicide did police find a tape in which the boys threatened to kill hundreds of people to "kick-start a revolution.''
However, author Richard Rhodes insists that a personal road map of Harris and Klebold would have shown where they were headed. Childhood experience can predict future criminal behavior. That controversial view was developed by criminologist Lonnie Athens, the subject of Rhodes' book, ``Why They Kill.'' After many years of conducting in-depth interviews with violent criminals, Athens finds a consistent pattern of abuse and violence in the subjects' backgrounds. He sharply discounts such factors as mental illness or poverty as the cause of crime.
Athens studied the histories of Perry Smith and Richard Hickok, the drifters who in 1959 murdered the Clutter family in their Holcomb, Kan., farmhouse (the basis of Truman Capote's book ``In Cold Blood''). He followed the personal history of Lana Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane, who grew up amid Hollywood splendor. In 1958, Crane stabbed to death her mother's boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato. In all cases, the murderers had survived a childhood characterized by abuse and adults who had coached them in violence.
Rhodes rejects the notion that media contamination _ say, the sadistic music of Marilyn Manson and other pop figures _ has anything to do with the high school killing sprees. Children all over America listen to this music, he says, and grow up to be doctors and lawyers. Rhodes devotes a chapter to the extraordinary violence common in Medieval Europe, where the only media outlet was the local cathedral.
It may be hard to completely ignore the role of mental illness in violent crime. However, Rhodes and Athens do supply a more plausible explanation of the Littleton massacre than others have.
According to Athens, there is no such thing as a "senseless act.'' If you examine the twisted backgrounds of brutal criminals, you will conclude that acts of extreme violence that seemed senseless to the examining psychiatrist made perfect sense to the people doing the killing. There could be something to this. And a closer look at the childhoods of Harris and Klebold might take some of the mystery out of what happened a year ago in Littleton, Colo.
*NOW YOU READ SECOND ONE YOU*
A remarkable lesson in true forgiveness.
Joanne Jacobs.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1999 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service
Dennis and Judy Shepard have every right to hate Aaron McKinney. He kidnapped their son, robbed him, beat in his skull with a .357 Magnum and left him tied to a fence post on the Wyoming prairie in freezing weather.
But the Shepards believe that hatred killed their son Matthew, a 21-year-old college student who was gay. They want to persuade Americans to reject hatred, cruelty, ignorance and intolerance. So they've shown the way by seeking mercy for the man who showed no mercy to their son.
McKinney's accomplice pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty. McKinney, who struck most of the 20 blows, tried to avoid full responsibility by blaming ``gay panic.'' The judge wouldn't allow it. The jury convicted McKinney of unpremeditated murder, kidnapping, torture and robbery. Because the homicide occurred during a felony, the 22-year-old high school dropout could have been sentenced to death.
McKinney's lawyers offered a deal: He'd serve two consecutive life sentences and give up all rights to appeal.
Prosecutor Cal Rerucha refused to meet with the defense team. Dennis Shepard walked out after a few minutes. Judy Shepard stayed and listened. Then she persuaded her husband and the prosecutor to accept the deal.
The next day in court, McKinney said he was sorry, that he felt shame for his actions.
Dennis Shepard spoke eloquently of his love for his son, his anger, his difficult decision.
``Good is coming out of evil,'' Shepard said to McKinney. ``You made this world realize that a person's lifestyle is not a reason for discrimination, intolerance, persecution and violence. ... My son has become a symbol, a symbol against hate and people like you, a symbol for encouraging respect for individuality, for appreciating that someone is different, for tolerance. I miss my son but am proud to be able to say that he is my son.''
Shepard said that he and his wife believed in the death penalty. So had Matthew. They'd discussed it after white supremacists murdered a black man in Texas by dragging him behind a pickup.
``I would like nothing better than to see you die, Mr. McKinney,'' Shepard said. ``However, this is the time to begin the healing process. To show mercy to someone who refused to show any mercy. Mr. McKinney, I am going to grant you life, as hard as it is for me to do so, because of Matthew.''
After the sentencing, the prosecutor spoke to reporters outside the courthouse. He said Judy Shepard had changed his determination to seek the death penalty. ``She said Matthew stood for tolerance,'' said Rerucha. ``She told me it would be wrong at this stage if the motive was revenge rather than forgiveness.''
``I will never get over Judy Shepard's capacity to forgive,'' Rerucha said. ``There is praying, and there is living a religion.''
Some calling themselves Christians couldn't forgive Matthew Shepard for being gay. Led by a Kansas preacher named Fred Phelps, they showed up at his funeral _ at the church where he'd been an altar boy _ with ``burn in hell'' and ``no tears for queers'' signs.
In an NBC interview in February, Judy Shepard showed compassion even for them. ``I feel sorry for them that they are so consumed by such a hate. It must color their whole life.''
The family received many messages of sympathy and support from religious leaders and believers, Shepard added.
Once a shy housewife, Shepard is now speaking out against homophobia. She's appeared in a documentary and in ads now showing on MTV, and joined her husband in supporting hate crime laws including sexual orientation.
When she asks people to see the humanity in those they hate, Judy Shepard speaks with authority. And with grace.
x x x
On the same day that Matthew Shepard's parents moved beyond hatred, Benjamin Matthew Williams wallowed in it, telling the Sacramento Bee he'd murdered two gay men because their sexuality violates God's laws.
Williams and his brother, both white supremacists, are charged with the two Redding murders in July and are suspected of firebombing three Sacramento synagogues in June.
Asked about the firebombings, Williams replied, ``I don't feel like saying I did it right now.'' He added, ``I kind of regretted they didn't burn to the ground.''
The Shasta County District Attorney's Office plans to seek the death penalty against the brothers.
Williams said his execution would make him a ``Christian martyr,'' inspiring more attacks on gays, Jews and minorities.
Williams has no shame. He claims that he followed a ``higher law,'' apparently one higher than the commandment, ``Thou shalt not kill.''
The prospective martyr sees it like this: ``So many people claim to be Christians and complain about all these things their religion says are a sin, but they're not willing to do anything about it. They don't have the guts.''
Ah, yes. So many people claim to be Christians.
*NOW YOU READ THIRD ONE*
Police acknowledge they may never know motive behind bizarre slaying.
April Adamson; Myung Oak Kim.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1999 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service
Alone in his room for days at a time, the scrawny teen retreated into a fantasy world of violent video games and Dungeons and Dragons.
Donald Anthony Traub, known to family and friends as Donny, preferred his computer screen to playing sports with neighborhood boys. The only time he ventured out was to shoot fake guns at other kids in the woods.
He was a middle-school honor student, one of his former classmates and neighbors recalled Thursday. But his source of pride was in the mall arcade, where he could beat anyone at Street Fighter II, a complex game that involves dueling against an imaginary opponent.
When he played Street Fighter and other video games, friends were struck by his sinister smile.
It was the same smile Traub, 23, gave reporters after he was arrested Tuesday and charged with killing a woman outside a Warminster grocery store.
``I recognized it in a heartbeat,'' said Patrick Cohen, 21, a childhood friend and former neighbor of Traub who last saw him a few years ago at the Willow Grove Park mall arcade where they went as middle- schoolers. ``It was that same twisted smile.''
As police Thursday tried to determine a motive for the bizarre shooting of mother-of-two Karen Lee Hordis, 42, they acknowledged that they may never know what spurred the violent act.
But psychologists raised the possibility that something triggered Traub to act out his fantasy world.
``He may have felt he was part of the game when he left the house,'' said Los Angeles psychologist Robert Butterworth. ``Some deviants are triggered by these things. Maybe he got so into the games he had a delusion he was in the game.''
Sources say that since his arrest Tuesday, Traub is considered the ``prime and only suspect'' in two similar shootings last year in Warminster and Horsham.
Donna Holbrook, whose mother lived near Traub's father in Warminster, was shot in the face and neck Aug. 19 as she got out of her car to go to work in Horsham. On Aug. 24, Shawn Vanorder was shot in the back and leg as he rode his bicycle to work on Street Road in Warminster.
Hordis was shot five times Tuesday morning as she loaded groceries into the trunk of her white Ford Taurus at the Giant supermarket in Warminster.
She died instantly of wounds to her head, shoulder, back and chest from Traub's .38-caliber snubnose revolver, police said.
In Traub's Willow Grove boarding house Thursday, a stockpile of violent movies and books offered a glimpse into the mind of the alleged killer.
Sources say investigators who searched Traub's $65-a-week apartment found two dozen videotapes of violent movies, and two dozen books, including ``Mein Kampf'' by Adolf Hitler.
Police found a copy of ``Hannibal,'' a book about fictional serial killer Hannibal Lechter, and several ticket stubs for the movie ``Summer of Sam,'' about a 1970s serial killer in New York.
They also found a badge and hat from Wells Fargo in Valley Forge, where Traub was once a security guard.
Hordis' murder ``hits home like a silver bullet because this can be anybody,'' said Bucks County District Attorney Alan Rubenstein. ``The most frightening killings are those where there is no apparent motive. This victim had no common threads to the other victims.''
When police stopped Traub's red Oldsmobile shortly after the shooting, he told them: ``I am the one you want. I did it.'' Then, in court, he told reporters: ``I didn't shoot anyone. I just carried a gun.''
(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)
Traub, 23, is a William Tennent High School dropout who wore combat boots and trenchcoats, kept to himself and frequently exploded in fits of rage, neighbors said.
Traub, who had no prior criminal record, was denied bail and detained at the Bucks County prison.
*FOURTH ONE TO FOLLOW*
