Inside a mass murderer’s mind

By Kevin Toolis, HeraldScotland.com

Why rage killers such as Derrick Bird go on the rampage – and who they kill first – is the key question to understanding events such as Cumbria.

Outwardly Bird, a quiet divorced taxi driver who liked motor sports and holidays in Thailand, was Mr Normal.

But his trail of carnage, the targeted killing of his twin brother David and the family solicitor Kevin Commons, and other taxi driver colleagues, as well as the random drive-by shootings, point to a deeply enraged, calculating and destructive individual.

The apparent trigger for Bird’s killing spree – a trivial argument with fellow taxi drivers over queue-jumping – was just the catalyst for a pre-planned revenge fantasy. Although they are frequently described as rage killers, mass murderers such as Bird carefully plan their onslaught for months, even years, beforehand in readiness for their day of revenge. Every workplace slight just adds another would-be victim to their secret fantasy list of victims.

There is always a hierarchy of victims – with those they hate the most being the first to die.

Inside, they decide there is no way out and begin plotting out what they see as their day of reckoning Like the first murderer of the Bible – Cain – Bird was inwardly consumed by a life-long jealousy of his more successful, more accomplished non-identical twin. Whether it was true or not Bird came to believe that his brother David, born five minutes before him, was the chosen one – unfairly lavished affection and love by their parents while he was cast out. David was always first and Bird believed he was last.

A bitter family dispute over their mother’s estate and his discovery that their father Joe had secretly given David £25,000 shortly before his death would have been the final confirming instance that he had been cheated yet again.

Like the 1996 Dunblane killer Thomas Hamilton, Bird was a classic under-achiever – his every failure magnified by his twin brother’s success. Cumbria police say Bird’s body was covered in self-harm scars – a physical map of his self loathing for his own perceived life failures.

And the reported family dispute over the will would have been the final blow to man who had come to believe the whole world, including the Inland Revenue, was out to get him. Rage killings always have planned and random elements within the killer’s rehearsed scenario. Once the killing spree starts other victims – such as Bird’s drive-by killing of 66-year-old Jane Robinson who he beckoned over to his car – are just picked out at whim as an enactment of the power fantasy.

American criminologists classify spree murderers such as Bird as the ‘lethal employee’ killer – after a whole series of rage killings within the US Postal Service.

‘Going postal’ – shorthand for a spree killing – stems from a notorious August 1986 mass killing by postal worker Patrick Sherrill who killed 14 co-workers in Edmond, Oklahoma. There were at least 20 similar mass slayings in US postal centres from 1986 to 1997.

Like Bird, Sherrill had been close to his mother, but was seemingly unable to sustain emotional relationships with women.

According to some reports Bird, after his divorce, frequently flew to Thailand for holidays. Thailand is still a notorious sex trade destination – where tourist bars are full of emotionally dysfunctional Western men buying sex from Thai prostitutes.

Both Bird and Sherrill were probably mildly autistic and were likely to be confused by normal workplace banter and social interaction. Bird seemingly rarely spoke to his passengers and found small talk difficult with strangers.

Psychologists believe that most rage killers suffer from what is called a “heightened sense of personal sovereignty”. Any setback, any reverse, even a mild reprimand at work is seen and felt as an attack on their core sense of self. Inwardly they believe they are being persecuted.

Sherrill, nicknamed Crazy Pat by local children because of his oddball behaviour, first killed his supervisor in revenge for being reprimanded over the late delivery of mail and began firing at random on fellow employees.

Scotland’s only mass killer, Thomas Hamilton, was a paradigm example of this personal sovereignty complex. After he had been refused permission to use local council premises for his boys’ clubs – because of concern over his sexual behaviour – Hamilton wrote to the Queen complaining of the ruin of his reputation.

His killing of 16 primary schoolchildren, and their teacher, was his revenge on the community that had rejected him.

The run-up to a murder spree also follows a familiar pattern. The killers’ lives begin to spiral out of control as they are engulfed in a mixture of debt or work-related problems. They begin to feel overwhelmed, trapped, but are too emotionally isolated to ask others for help. Inside, they decide there is no way out and begin plotting out what they see as their day of reckoning.

Hamilton carefully timed his murder mission – refusing to pay his council tax, maxing out his credit cards and emptying his bank account.

Frequently the killers actually tell other employees about their intentions – but no-one believes them. Bird supposedly told other taxi drivers after his late-night argument that “there is a going to be a rampage”. Sherrill warned a female postal clerk who he liked to “stay away from work tomorrow”.

The key element in all rage killings is access to weaponry. Psychologically it is not hard to understand how a gun can become a prop in a life spiralling out of control. Virtually every male-centred TV cop show and Hollywood movie re-runs the same hero-with-a-gun-defeats-the baddies plot. The gun is not just a killing tool but a means of obtaining justice and respect.

The movies are tapping into a common human fantasy that we can somehow transform our lives instantly by a powerful magical device and become a somebody.

Sherrill was a part-time hand-gun instructor with the US National Guard – the only role in his life where he achieved the position of authority he craved.

Rambo-like, the gun restores the rage killer’s power and rightful place in society. Every time they practise on the firing range they are preparing for their final commando-style “mission”.

In reality, Bird’s failed life was no different from hundreds of thousands of other frustrated middle-aged divorced men. There is no key distinguishing factor, and no way to predict, who will one day “go postal”. What matters is the access to guns, not the internal anguish.

The last “victim” of the rage killer is almost always themselves – their suicide. In their fantasy their mission is complete and so they go out in a blaze of glory, as heroes, before being captured. Bird abandoned his vehicle and took to the hills as if he was some wartime sniper on the run from the Nazis rather than the Cumbria Constabulary. But his final act was never in doubt – a bullet to the head from his own gun.

There is no place in the rage killer’s fantasy for an explanation for their actions, a courtroom trial and the inevitable lifetime behind bars. Their killing spree is always really an extended act of suicide by someone who believes there is no longer any purpose in living.

Sickeningly, as he shot and killed at random Bird was for a brief few hours a happy man – who at last felt he was in control of his life, and the lives of those he was taking with him.

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