Spree Killers

Practical Classifications for Law Enforcement and Criminology

Mark Safarik, Katherine Ramsland

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367370008
• eBook ISBN: 9781000727456
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Criminal Law

Spree Killers: Practical Classifications for Law Enforcement and Criminology is the only exhaustive, up-to-date analytical book on spree killers, standing apart from those dedicated to mass murderers and serial killers.

Multicides have traditionally been categorized as double, triple, mass, serial and spree—while, mass and serial have been further divided into subcategories. Spree killing, which involves the killing of at least three persons at two or more locations due to a precipitating incident that fuels the urge to kill, remains a poorly defined concept. In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) eliminated this term from its multicide nomenclature in 2005, but the authors examination of 359 cases involving 419 spree killers from 43 countries shows that not only is there enough diversity among spree killers to form classifications—similar to those devised for mass and serial—but also that subtypes offer distinct utility for identification, tracking, and warning potential targets.

Spree Killers outline the designation of spree killer specifically and thoroughly. In addition to looking at existing literature, specific cases, and the behavioral patterns, it offers a fully worked up profile for the typology. The behaviors and motives for spree killers align in six categories, which are detailed in full. The book provides unique insight for police, forensic, and investigative personnel into what to look for to respond to, and—in some cases identify and stopping—certain types of spree killings.

Chapter 1

Spree: A Muddled Concept

In Australia on April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant used a semiautomatic rifle to kill the two owners of Seascape guesthouse before he drove to the Port Arthur tourist area. He entered a crowded café. In about 15 seconds, the troubled 28-year-old fatally shot 20 people and wounded 15. He went out to the parking lot to shoot more. He got into his car, drove a short distance, shot again, stole a car, took a hostage, and returned to the guesthouse. From there, he shot people driving by and killed his hostage. Overnight, the police surrounded him. When the building eventually went up in flames, Bryant emerged and was arrested. Police found three bodies inside. Bryant’s total number of victims was 35 dead and 23 hurt or wounded. He was not suicidal, but he was mentally ill, had a low IQ, and had suffered recent stresses. Some criminologists call him a mass murderer; others say he is a spree killer. He qualifies as both. Therein lies confusion.

Crime experts tend to place offenders in distinct categories to study their maturation, motives, and behavior. They develop criteria and make comparisons for analysis among categories. However, some cases fit more than one. In addition, not all experts agree on the criteria for these categories. As they publish their research, confusion develops. This only increases as categories get changed, dropped, or renamed.

Such is the case with a category of multicide known as “spree killing.” Some lists include just two murders in two locations, but this overlaps the FBI’s current definition of serial killer, so more distinguishing criteria are needed for qualifying as a spree. Some think that a spree killer requires at least four victims, making it overlap the criteria for mass murder. In addition, some killers are mass murderers or serial killers who then go on a spree, or spree killers who then become one of the other two. To further complicate matters, some crime experts use “rampage” killer, which combines mass and spree killers in a single category. Yet there is reason for keeping them distinct. In this book, we will sort through the discussions and standardize the definition while providing a database of more than 350 spree cases involving more than 400 killers from 43 different countries that we analyzed for categories, subcategories, and trends.

After 2005, the FBI stopped using the spree category, due to its lack of utility for law enforcement. We believe this reasoning was based on input that failed to fully examine spree incidents. We think it is worthwhile to consider reestablishing its use. To appreciate our position and to see why we also think it’s important to further refine the spree concept, we must first understand what led to the FBI’s decision.

Twists in the History of a Concept

Although it was once the case that any type of incident that involved a number of murders was called “multiple murder,” “multicide,” or “mass murder,” eventually it became clear that distinctions were needed to sort out different types (Douglas, Burgess, Burgess, & Ressler, 1992). Multiple murders, or multicides, have traditionally been categorized as double (2), triple (3), mass (4 or more), serial, and spree. Mass and serial have been further divided into multiple subcategories. Nevertheless, over the years, the definitions have shifted.

Since the focus of this book is on the FBI’s approach, we show how the Agency devised and revised the multicide concepts. Initially, classifications were based on psychological disorders, but in 1973, the National Advisory Commission mandated the development of criminal classification programs throughout the American justice system (Megargee & Bonn, 1979). Offender personality and behavior were considered important aspects of this effort, but the proffered tools from the psychiatric community (usually personality assessments) failed to focus on crime. When the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit formed during the 1970s, the agents developed the Crime Analysis and Criminal Personality Profiling Program.

Ressler and Shachtman (1992) describe the few criminological ana­lyses available at the time. Among them were accounts by prison psychiatrist Marvin Ziporyn on mass murderer Richard Speck (Altman & Ziporyn, 1967) and by criminology professor James Melvin Reinhardt (1960) on the case of spree killer Charles Starkweather (detailed later in this book). Describing the “remorseless ego,” Reinhardt offered a theoretical framework for understanding the type of offenders the agents would one day be tracking. In Santa Cruz, California, over the course of 2 years, psychiatrist Donald Lunde (1976) had the opportunity to examine a mass, a spree, and a serial killer up close: John Linley Frazier murdered five people at the Ohta home, Herbert Mullin murdered 13 people in 4 months, and Edmund Kemper picked up and killed six female hitchhikers, plus three relatives and an acquaintance. For psychiatric insight, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM), then in its revised third edition, defined an array of psychological conditions from anxiety to depression to psychosis. However, diagnosis required background in psychiatry, and this manual did not work well for forensic purposes.

Although serial murder has been observed for many centuries, the modern iteration of the term, serial killer, has been attributed to former FBI criminal profiler Robert Ressler, who utilized it to describe repeated killings over time by the same offender as serial in nature. Redefining this descriptor in the early 1980s ushered in an era of extensive research and publication by the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. These agents began to study repeat killers through cases they examined for attendees of the FBI National Academy and by traveling to prisons to interview the offenders regarding their crimes. The FBI defined the characteristics of serial murder as three or more victims occurring in three or more locations. These killings were considered separate events with a “cooling off” period between the events. The key aspect differentiating serial murder from other types of murder was the “cooling off” period or temporal separation between the killing events. Unfortunately, the concept of cooling off remained undefined. It could be brief, such as a few days or weeks, or it could last months, even years; it was a period of time that the offender would be inactive before he or she acted out again in another separate but distinct event from previous killings.

They defined mass killings, more commonly referred to as mass murder, as four or more victims killed at one location. The “cooling off” period did not apply because the murders had occurred as a single event. The presence or absence of a cooling off period differentiated serial murder from mass murder.

Researchers and law enforcement recognized that a category of murder existed between serial and mass that appeared to have characteristics of both: the spree killer. Prior to the FBI defining this category, the use of the term had not evolved to the point where it described a separate and distinct category of multicide. When Reinhardt studied Charles Starkweather at the end of 1959, he referred to the behavior as “chain-killing.” The term, while appropriate, did not catch on. For several decades, “spree” was often used to describe aspects of serial and mass murder. Within the serial concept, it referred to the continuation of murders over time, and within the mass concept, it described the annihilation of multiple victims over a short period or in close locations.

In a review of literature that has specifically addressed the spree killer phenomenon (Casteldon, 2011; Cawthorne, 2009; Cimino, 2010; Crockett, 1991; Jensen, 2015; Mellor, 2013; Newton, 1992: Pantziarka, 2002; Parker, 2012), nearly every book has included both mass and serial murder cases in the category. Despite focusing on the specific topic of spree murder, many of these texts fail to provide a clear definition or to offer a way to look at different types of sprees. Rarely do they distinguish spree adequately from serial or mass. Only Newton addresses the various FBI categories of multicide.

However, this blending of concepts became – and still is – confusing, so the FBI tried again, this time delineating spree murder as separate and distinct from serial and mass murder. Spree murder was defined as two or more victims murdered in one event that takes place in two or more locations. Because it was considered one event with the murders linked together, there was no cooling off period. Thus, spree murder appeared to be a hybrid crime, sharing multiple locations with serial murder yet being a single event like a mass murder. This seemed to work until the FBI later changed its definition of serial murder (see discussion below).

The FBI’s research helped to support the development during the early 1980s of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC). Munn (1992) describes it as an agency that assisted law enforcement with multidisciplinary expertise in behavioral analysis and data processing for “unusual, bizarre, and/or repetitive violent crime” (p. 309). Staffed with psychologists, crime analysts, political scientists, sociologists, and police specialists, it focused on teaching, consulting, and research. Initially, it contained three units: the Behavioral Science Services Unit, the Special Operations and Research Unit, and the Investigative Support Unit. Agents underwent trainings in the Criminal Investigative Analysis Program (CIAP) and the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP). The support services were offered free to domestic and foreign agencies.

NCAVC behavioral analysts conduct detailed analyses of complex violent crimes from a review of the behavioral, forensic, and physical evidence in order to understand what happened during an incident; how the event(s) unfolded before, during, and after the crime; and why the offender engaged in these activities. The review evaluated many attributes from both a chronological and temporal perspective. The goal was to provide law enforcement agencies tasked with investigating complex crimes a better understanding of offender motivations and behaviors in order to assist with the investigative strategies. This analysis aimed to help identify the offender and resolve the case.

The agents analyzed crimes and crime scenes, and performed a comprehensive victimology. They looked at police reports, autopsy protocols, and victim information to develop critical characteristics (a profile) of the type of person who might have committed the crime or series of crimes in question. They also offered suggestions for investigation, apprehension, search warrants, and interviewing strategies when suspects were taken into custody. If a case went to court, the NCAVC personnel offered strategies for prosecution and jury selection. As Munn put it, “Data are collected and assessed, the situation is reconstructed, hypotheses are formulated, a profile is developed and tested, and the results are reported back” (p. 310). The effectiveness depended on the quality and quantity of data available.

When Supervisory Special Agent and profiler John Douglas et al. (1992) heard an offender brag that he could fake any mental illness described in the DSM, he came up with a plan to turn the informal concepts the agents used into formal categories, with a standardized numbering system. He joined with profiler Robert Ressler and Allen and Ann Burgess to develop The Crime Classification Manual (CCM), published in 1992. Other members of the Investigative Support Unit also contributed material.

“With CCM,” Douglas wrote, “we set about to organize and classify serious crimes by their behavioral characteristics and explain them in a way that a strictly psychological approach such as the DSM has never been able to do” (p. 347). Behavioral evidence provided the distinguishing factors, so that the investigative legal community could focus on those items most relevant to their work. To use the manual, an investigator had to know information about the victim, crime scene, and the nature of the relationship or exchange between the victim and the offender. They had to know the number of crime scenes involved, the type of environment, the number of offenders, the body disposition, potential evidence of staging, undoing, and depersonalization and items that might be missing (such as something removed from the victim(s) as either a souvenir or trophy). They would need to know the cause and manner of death and the evidence of sexual assault, if present and whether activity engaged in by the offender was related to his modus operandi (MO) or ritualized (need-driven) behavior.

The CCM defined the multicidal types. Mass murder was based on four or more victims in one location involving a single incident. The other categories were defined as:

A spree murder involves killing at two or more locations with no emotional cooling off period between murders. The killings are all the result of a single event, which can be short or long duration. Serial murders involve three or more separate events, with an emotional cooling off period between homicides.

(Douglas et al., 2013, p. 12)

No minimum number of victims was identified for a spree killing, but at this time, the minimum number for serial murder was three. (This would change.)

As an academic in criminal justice, Steve Egger (1998) called for a clearer definition of seri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• About the Authors
• Chapter 1 Spree: A Muddled Concept
• Chapter 2 Anger and Revenge
• Chapter 3 On a Mission
• Chapter 4 Deadly Desperation
• Chapter 5 Mental Illness
• Chapter 6 Robbery and Thrill
• Chapter 7 Movement in Tight Locations
• Chapter 8 Mixed Multicides
• Chapter 9 Spree Analytics
• Chapter 10 Intended Spree
• Chapter 11 Unique Circumstances
• Chapter 12 Tips for Law Enforcement
• Index