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A mass murder (massacre) involves the murder of large numbers of people either by a state or an individual. This should not be confused with serial killers, who usually tend to kill one person (or perhaps two) at a time.
The largest mass killings in history have been attempts to exterminate ethnic and other groups; for more about this subject see genocide. This article refers to non-genocidal mass killings.
Although "genocide" does not necessarily require actual killing, only acting on a plan to exterminate an ethnic group, mass murder by definition involves killing a large number of people.
Mass murder by the state R. J. Rummel, a political scientist, coined the word democide to cover mass murder by a state. Some killings commonly viewed as genocide are actually democide or mass murder because they involve killing for political or cultural reasons.
Examples include:
Some people also regard the bombing of urban areas during wartime to constitute mass murder by the state.
Mass murder by terrorists In recent years, terrorists have performed acts of mass murder as acts of intimidation, and to draw attention to their causes. Examples of major terrorist incidents involving mass murder include:
Mass murder by individuals Outside of a political context, the term "mass murder" refers to the killing of several people at the same time. Examples would include shooting several people in the course of a robbery, or setting a crowded nightclub on fire. This is an ambiguous term, similar to serial killing and spree killing.
The USA Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a mass murder as: "[involving] the murder of four or more victims at one location, within one event."
Most mass murderers fall into one of three categories: family annihilators, firearms enthusiasts or disgruntled workers.
Family Annihilators, as the term suggests, slaughter their immediate family. In a typical instance, a husband kills his wife and children and then takes his own life, quite often when they are under mounting financial or other pressures. An example is Robert Mochrie, a Welsh businessman who was suffering from depression and financial problems when, in July 2000, he battered to death his two sons, two daughters and wife before finally hanging himself.
It can also, in rare cases, be a child (usually a male adolescent) who kills his parents and siblings. One example is Sean Stevenson, a 16-year-old from Washington State who, on New Years Day 1987, shot to death his parents and raped and killed his 18-year-old sister. He was caught after boasting of the murders to his girlfriend and inviting her to flee with him to Mexico.
Firearms Enthusiasts are obsessed with guns and the military. They massacre people who are strangers, albeit linked to them by being members of the same geographical community (most of this type of mass killer go on the rampage locally.) Because they nearly always commit suicide or continue killing until the police are forced to shoot them, the state of mind of such mass killers, and the trigger that sets them off, are hard to determine. In terms of body-count, the worst such killer in the USA is George Hennard who, on October 16, 1991, shot 22 people to death in a fast-food restaurant in Killeen, Texas, before shooting himself. 35-year-old Hennard, a former member of the US Navy, was said to be a misogynist (the majority of his victims were female) and heavy user of cannabis, although his exact motives are a mystery. Despite its strict gun laws, the UK has also seen a number of such cases, such as the Dunblane Massacre in 1996.
Disgruntled Workers is often a misnomer, as most perpetrators are ex-workers. They are dismissed from their jobs, usually for good reason, and subsequently turn up heavily armed and slaughter their former colleagues. In the 1980s, when two fired postal workers carried out such massacres in separate incidents in the US, the term "going postal" become adopted as slang for someone who snaps and goes on the rampage.
These definitions are evidently outdated and do not take into account the phenomenon of school massacres by students, such as the Columbine Massacre, where alienated youths rampage through their schools killing fellow students and teachers alike.
There are also mass killings that are seemingly unintended, at least in terms of pre-meditation. In 1990, Julio Gonzalez set fire to a New York nightclub after having a row there with his girlfriend. 87 people died in the blaze (Gonzalez's girlfriend survived.)
Some mass-killers may have financial motives, whereby the killings are either unintended as a result of a robbery going wrong, or are incidental to the primary crime of theft. One of the most bizarre cases was that of Sadamichi Hirasawa, who poisoned to death 12 bank workers by cyanide during a robbery.
Unlike serial killers, there is rarely a sexual motive to individual mass-murderers, with the possible exception of Silvestre Matuschka, an Austrian man who apparently derived sexual pleasure from blowing up trains with dynamite, ideally with people in them. His lethal sexual fetish claimed 22 lives before he was caught in 1932.
Mass Murderers - Howard Unruh (Camden, New Jersey, 1949)
- Jack Gilbert Graham (Denver, Colorado, 1955)
- Charles Whitman (University of Texas Shootings, Austin, Texas, 1 Aug 1966)
- Harry Roberts (police killer, London, 1966)
- Richard Speck (murdered eight student nurses, Chicago, 1966)
- John List (Westfield, New Jersey, 1971)
- Denis Lortie (National Assembly of Quebec, May 8, 1984)
- James Oliver Huberty (McDonald's Shootings, San Ysidro, California, 18 Jul 1984)
- Jeremy Bamber (farmhouse family murders, Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, England, 1985)
- David Burke, (PSA Flight 1771, San Luis Obispo, California, 1987)
- Patrick Edward Purdy (Cleveland Elementary School Shootings, Stockton, California, 17 Jan 1989)
- Marc Lépine (École Polytechnique Massacre, Montreal, Quebec, 1989)
- Kenneth French, Jr. (North Carolina, USA - 1993)
- Colin Ferguson (LIRR Massacre; USA, 1994)
- Baruch Goldstein (Hebron, 1994)
- Thomas Hamilton (Dunblane massacre, Dunblane, Scotland, 1996)
- George Hennard, opened fire on diners in Killeen, Texas
- Martin Bryant (Port Arthur Massacre, Australia, 1996)
- Mohammad Ahman al-Naziri (Sanaa massacre, Sanaa, Yemen, 1997)
- Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden (Jonesboro massacre, Jonesboro, Arkansas, 1998)
- Larry Gene Ashbrook (Wedgwood Baptist Church, USA, 1999)
- Susan Eubanks (Vista, California, 1999)
- Buford O. Furrow, Jr. (Los Angeles, California, 1999)
- Michael Ryan (Hungerford Massacre ,Berkshire, England, 1987)
- Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (the Columbine High School Massacre, Littleton, Colorado), 1999)
- Byran Uyesugi (Xerox Murders, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1999)
- Mamoru Takuma (Osaka school massacre, Osaka, Osaka, Japan, 2001)
- Robert Steinhäuser (Erfurt massacre, Erfurt, Germany, 2002)
- Hanadi Jaradat (Haifa, 2003)
In addition, Brenda Ann Spencer attempted a mass murder at an elementary school in San Diego, California, 1979. She only killed two people guarding the students that she targeted. Eight students and a police officer were injured.
Mass murder in warfare The wrongful killing of large numbers of civilians or prisoners during war is called a war crime, although it may also be genocide if the proper ethnic motivation is present, as in the killings which occurred in the breakaway republics of the former Yugoslavia (e.g. Srebrenica Massacre) or in the killing of the Pequot in colonial America.
See also - atrocities - genocide - going postal - list of massacres - murder - serial killer - spree killer - state terrorism - war crime - Mass deaths and atrocities of the twentieth century
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