Book Excerpt - The Killing Frenzy: Profiling Mass Murder

Mass murder is a significantly complex phenomenon as to defy a simple definition.  A general definition can be given as the murder of a number of victims at one time and in one place.  The keys of further definition that should be taken into consideration are the number of victims, the location of the murders, the time of the killings, and the distance between murder sites¹⁸.

Authorities argue over the number of victims to the exact minimum number that constitutes mass murder.  Some have stipulated four as the minimum number of victims necessary^9&15, while others set the number at three²⁰.  The other complicating factor with the overall number of victims is when injured victims are factored into the definition.  Is it mass murder when only two persons are killed but 20 are injured and saved by medical personnel? 

Other factors in the general definition are time and location.  Generally accepted is the definition of at one time and in one place.  But, it is too limited in scope not to recognize that incidents may occur at slightly different times and also at different locales and still constitute mass murder. Charles Whitman killed his wife and mother at each of their homes the night before he climbed the University of Texas at Austin’s campus clock tower and began shooting.  He killed 14 and wounded 31 more, and is recognized as one of the United States’ worst mass murders²⁶.  Rarely though does a mass murderer go from one location to another when murdering²⁰.

It may also be that the murderer meets the criteria for fitting into more than one definition of multicide.  Charles Whitman killed more than three people at different locations at different times, which would also define him as a spree killer.  Douglas and Olshaker⁹ define a spree killer as someone who kills a number of victims at different locations over a short period of hours or days.  But Whitman is known as a mass murderer, for that was the most horrendous part of his crimes.  This is the distinction between mass murder and a mass murderer.  Mass murder is the act itself. A mass murderer is the person who commits that act of mass murder.  They may also commit other offenses, but that act of mass murder makes them a mass murderer.

For the purposes of this book, the definition stated as generally accepted by Holmes & Holmes²⁰ will be used.  Mass murder is the killing of a) three or more people, b) at one time, and c) in one place.  



You can find this title at Amazon at http://amzn.com/B0163JZG0U


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P. O. Doe





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