Mind of a Rampage Killer
Can science help us understand why some people commit horrific acts of mass murder?
Aired February 20, 2013 on PBS
Program Description
Showing posts with label murder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label murder. Show all posts
Monday, August 11, 2014
PBS Nova - Mind of a Rampage Killer
This is an excellent documentary focused on some of the rampage killers (almost all teenagers) over the last decade or so. PBS assembles quite a group of psychologists and neuroscientists to help us understand (as best we can at this point) why and how they young men become killers.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Masculinity, Misogyny And Murder: Unpacking A Killing In California (On Point w/ Tom Ashbrook)
I have already commented on this tragedy in two different posts (here and here), as well as sharing a collection of links devoted to this topic (here). I don't really have too much to add, other than to reiterate that these killings cannot be simplified into a single cause or target of blame.
In Elliott Rodger's actions there are a whole collection of factors, most prominent (as if often true and overlooked) is the delusional and grandiose thinking that justified these actions in his broken mind. It's easy to blame guns (he owned all of his weapons legally), or misogynistic, toxic masculinity (he followed men's rights activists [MRAs] and pick up artists [PUAs] on You Tube), but they are only part of the story - they are shadow elements of our culture that rarely get examined in the light of day unless we are forced to do so by some atrocity like this one.
In Elliott Rodger's actions there are a whole collection of factors, most prominent (as if often true and overlooked) is the delusional and grandiose thinking that justified these actions in his broken mind. It's easy to blame guns (he owned all of his weapons legally), or misogynistic, toxic masculinity (he followed men's rights activists [MRAs] and pick up artists [PUAs] on You Tube), but they are only part of the story - they are shadow elements of our culture that rarely get examined in the light of day unless we are forced to do so by some atrocity like this one.
Masculinity, Misogyny And Murder: Unpacking A Killing In California
A vicious, deadly rampage spurs a new look at misogyny and why it matters.
May 28, 2014 | Tom Ashbrook
People gather at a park for a candlelight vigil to honor the victims of Friday night’s mass shooting on Saturday, May 24, 2014, in Isla Vista, Calif. Sheriff’s officials said Elliot Rodger, 22, went on a rampage near the University of California, Santa Barbara, stabbing three people to death at his apartment before shooting and killing three more in a crime spree through a nearby neighborhood. (AP)
What’s in a killer’s heart? We know in the case of last Friday’s Santa Barbara massacre. Because the killer wrote about it at length. He despised women. His unrequited desire turned into a furious hatred. And a plan to kill. A plan he carried out. An overwhelming response followed. A Twitter flood – the #yesallwomen hashtag – women sharing their own stories. Concerns that hatred, entitlement, towards women is woven widely into our culture. Not creating killers necessarily, but haters. Is this true? Where’s the line? And what’s to be done? This hour, On Point: Misogyny. Assessing the damage.
– John Donvan
Guests
Soraya Chemaly, activist and writer. Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Salon, the Guardian, CNN and in other publications. (@schemaly)
David Futrelle, freelance writer who blogs at “We Hunted the Mammoth,” a site that tracks the “Men’s Rights” movement online. (@DavidFutrelle)
Dr. Robert Heasley, professor of sociology at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Former president of the American Men’s Studies Association.From The Reading List
Slate: The Pick-Up Artist Community’s Predictable, Horrible Response to a Mass Murder – “I do not blame the Pick-Up Artist community (or its somehow even more deeply tortured counterpart, the Anti-Pick-Up-Artist community) for the deaths of seven people. The man who committed this horrific crime is responsible for this heinous act. But I was interested to see how these groups are reacting to the news. It is disturbing, if not surprising, that they are using these murders to reinforce their hatred of women and “Beta” men, and to cement their own status at the top of the pyramid.”
The Guardian: Elliot Rodger’s California shooting spree: further proof that misogyny kills — “Rodger was reportedly involved with the online men’s rights movement: allegedly active on one forum and said to have been following several men’s rights channels on YouTube. The language Rodger used in his videos against women – like referring to himself as an “alpha male” – is common rhetoric in such circles. These communities are so virulently misogynist that the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks hate groups, has been watching their movements for years.”
Washington Post: In covering Elliot Rodger, writers aren’t shy about blaming misogyny and the groups that perpetuate it — “people have embraced the term ‘misogyny’ to describe Rodger’s online screeds against women, and they've been more receptive to treating Friday’s killings as a hate crime, the way McDevitt suggests. Sunday night, Gawker’s Jordan Sargeantnoticed that Rap Genius co-founder Mahbod Moghadam posted incendiary annotations to Rodger’s 141-page manifesto. The manifesto had been uploaded to News Genius, Rap Genius’s sister site which aims to annotate and explain the news. Moghadam said Rodger’s manifesto was ‘beautifully written.’”
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Damon's Story ... Son Beaten by Dad
A couple of friends on Facebook (Ed Gamboa via Ryan Ange) posted this video - for which I am grateful. Very sad . . . very touching. The speaker is Mark Lundholm, an addictions comedian.The killing of this child is horrible and sad. But listen to the worldview Damon holds - crying is for "faggots," touch is forbidden, emotions are off-limits. In his home, no doubt, touch = violence, crying = showing pain or defeat, emotions = opening oneself to ridicule and abuse.
As much as I would like to believe this is the exception, I don't think so. So few parents know how to be good parents, and the lower the income level, the more this is true.
It's so simple to teach young parents how to be better parents, but it also requires that the parents have some measure of affect regulation (the ability to not act out anger or frustration, for example, on their kids). Most of them don't have any skills of self-awareness.
I highly recommend two books for parents, or for those who work with low-income parents:
Parenting from the Inside Out, by Dan Siegel and Mary Hartzell.
Theraplay: Helping Parents and Children Build Better Relationships Through Attachment-Based Play (3rd Ed.) by Phyllis B. Booth and Ann M. Jernberg
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Thursday, August 12, 2010
In Crimes of Passion, Women Get Benefit of the Doubt
When one partner kills another (for cheating, or whatever), men get longer sentences than women (the sentence for women is lesser due to perceived "great provocation and mitigating circumstances" in the minds of jurists).
Something is not right with this - it seems as though a murdered woman requires a greater degree of punishment than a murdered man - that somehow her life was worth more than the man's life was worth.
There is probably some evolutionary psychology reason for this, but it's just as likely to be a gender bias that killing a heterosexual woman is somehow worse than killing a heterosexual man - homosexual defendants (male or females) fare little better than heterosexual men.
This needs to change.
In Crimes of Passion, Women Get Benefit of the DoubtNew research finds women who kill their cheating lovers receive shorter sentences than men in the same situation.
New research suggests a woman who kills her cheating husband is liable to get a shorter sentence than a man convicted under the same circumstances. (Filo/istockphoto)Can a woman who kills her cheating husband convince a jury she was justified?
Newly published research suggests it’s unlikely. However, she is liable to get a shorter sentence than a man convicted under the same circumstances.
That’s the conclusion of a study of love-triangle homicides by psychologists Laurie Ragatz of West Virginia University and Brenda Russell of Penn State Berks. Utilizing an Internet survey of 458 people (63 percent men), they explored the various ways ingrained attitudes and prejudices shape our views of criminal defendants.
As they report in the Journal of Social Psychology, Ragatz and Russell presented study participants with a scenario based on an actual Texas trial in 2001. In that case (which resulted in a voluntary manslaughter verdict), the male defendant walked into his lover’s home after being thrown out the day before. He shot and killed her, then shot and wounded her new lover, who subsequently called police.
Test participants were given “jury instructions” stating the defendant was charged with second-degree murder. They were given the option of convicting the defendant on that charge, going with a less-serious charge of voluntary or involuntary manslaughter, or finding the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity.
To parse out levels of ambivalence, the researchers asked participants to rank, on a 1-to-7 scale, the extent to which they find the defendant guilty. They were also asked to choose an appropriate sentence length, from no prison time to 15 or more years behind bars.
For one-quarter of the participants, the gender of the characters in the story were unchanged from the real-life case. For another quarter, they were reversed, so the defendant was female and the victim male. For another quarter, both were females, and for the final quarter, both were males.
Overall, nearly 49 percent of study participants voted for voluntary manslaughter, while 46 percent went for second-degree murder. (Only 2 to 3 percent voted for either involuntary manslaughter or insanity.) Men were 1.65 times more likely than women to opt for second-degree murder.
Heterosexual female defendants were given significantly shorter sentence lengths than either heterosexual male defendants or homosexual defendants. They also scored lower than any other group on the question “To what extent do you find the defendant guilty?” And they scored the highest in terms of satisfying specific legal elements that would justify a voluntary manslaughter verdict, such as great provocation and mitigating circumstances.
“The findings from this study suggest heterosexual female defendants are more likely to benefit from using the provocation doctrine in a crime-of-passion case,” the researchers conclude. While straight women appear to be “just as likely to be convicted as all other defendants,” their punishment — at least to the extent it is determined by the jury — is apt to be less severe.
These findings seem to corroborate the conclusions of University of New Hampshire sociologist Murray Straus, who has argued domestic violence is often looked at as less serious if it is perpetrated by a woman. Specifically, Ragatz and Russell found that “violence perpetrated by heterosexual female defendants toward their unfaithful partner was perceived as more acceptable than violence perpetrated by male or homosexual defendants.”
The study can also be interpreted to support “blameworthiness attribution theory” — the notion that defendants receive harsher sentences when the victim of a crime is female. The researchers noted that “both heterosexual male and homosexual female defendants were found more culpable if the victim was female. Whether the female victim was heterosexual or homosexual did not appear to impact decisions.”
Either way, the results suggest gender-related beliefs play a major role in jurors’ decision-making processes — something that lawyers looking for an advantage, and judges interested in justice, would do well to keep in mind.
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