Piece Of Art

Of course, my question to the American Psychiatric Association is...what took you so long? APA Urges Media To Stop Airing Graphic Cho Materials    Today [28 Apr 2007] the American Psychiatric Association (APA) sent an open letter to the news media urging them to stop airing the disturbing writings, photographs and video that NBC News reportedly received from Cho Seung-Hui, who committed suicide after murdering 32 students and faculty and wounding at least 29 others at Virginia Tech. The letter was signed by APA President Pedro Ruiz, M.D., and contained two enclosures: a World Health Organization report, entitled "Preventing Suicide: A Resource for Media Professionals," and a study from American Behavioral Scientist, entitled "Media Contagion and Suicide among the Young" "Media Contagion and Suicide among the Young" and authored by Madelyn Gould, Ph.D., of Columbia University and colleagues. The full text of the letter is as follows: On behalf of the Americ...

Did you know there was a violent school incident on April 24, 2007, only a week and a day after what happened in Blacksburg, Virginia? An intriguing reaction to the talk of copycats and predictions of further copycats a week after VA Tech appears to be developing within the editorial rooms of the US media: Silence. Don't talk about it. Maybe people won't know there are copycats? Decades of research and common sense are confirming that the copycat effect exists. You can read several examples on this blog and in my book, of course. Nevertheless, in the wake of VA Tech, the American media appears to be pulling back from exploring the fact that examples of the multiple varieties of murder-suicides and school violence are occurring. Or are they consciously not reporting on active school violence and will be less graphic during the next school shooting? Is this the same media that said the people have the "right to know" when justifying the posting of the Cho images, w...

Cho Seung-Hui, as The Smoking Gun discovered, used the email address Blazers5505@hotmail.com and bought his ammunition clips on eBay. We know what gun store he used to purchase his guns. The Smoking Gun also posted the eBay pages showing that Cho apparently won the auctions on 37 rubber duckies (36 small ones, one large) from the online auction site. Some talk show hosts are using this piece of information in warped ways to ridicule Cho, joking about Cho playing with the bright yellow plastic ducks in his bathtub. I have a more sinister possibility for their use. What if the rubber ducks were used for target practice? As every little tidbit on Cho is rolled out, reporters are making it sound like Cho was engaged in product placements. We are hearing about every mundane detail on Cho's purchases, of late. Cho used the USPS, not UPS or FedEx to mail his package. He bought the chains he used to keep the doors closed from Home Depot. Cho played the song "Shine" all the ti...

It is easy to be unhappy with the headlines in the New York Post . Today is no different - "Sick Homages From A Student of Psychos" - but reporter Jill Culora did an excellent job getting all her facts correct after she interviewed me for this story: Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui plagiarized other school-shooting psychos in a twisted show of one-upmanship. He used the Internet to research and learn from infamous school killers, including Columbine HS's Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Duane Morrison of Bailey, Colo., and Kimveer Gill of Montreal, experts said. In photos he sent to NBC News, Cho is seen wearing a black baseball cap backward, just as Harris wore in published images. In others, Cho strikes poses disturbingly similar to those of Gill - who posted photos of himself online before his rampage last September at Montreal's Dawson College that killed one student and injured a dozen. Gill's profile on the social-networking site VampireFreaks.com shows him...

For those that have my book, The Copycat Effect, you will note that it is dedicated to my maternal grandmother, Nellie Gray, who was killed in a murder-suicide on Valentine's Day 1940. Yesterday ended with another murder-suicide, on the anniversary of Columbine. It was another murder-suicide in a week that began with the VA Tech murders-suicide. What did the cable news and other media outlets do with it? They let us know for hours and hours, with helicopters overhead showing a building, a SWAT vehicle in mud, and "danger" that there was a police standoff at NASA in Clear Lake near Houston, Texas. Another suicidal person in Clear Lake had taken the world media stage, I said to myself. (In my book, I write of Clear Lake, Texas, as a primary suicide cluster of the 1980s.) Commentators filled air-time with speculations yesterday about this Clear Lake event being horrible to watch, as it unfolded in the wake of VA Tech. But they kept it on television until it ended with...

What does "420" mean? April 20th? Or something deeper? High school student Jeff Weise, an Ojibwa, killed ten, including himself, at the Red Lake Ojibwa Reservation in Minnesota, on March 21, 2005. A great admirer of Columbine, it was discovered that Weise left references to Columbine throughout his online presence. For example, he employed a username, which translated to "Abandoned 420." Columbine and 420 Obviously, one meaning of "420" is directly linked to the Columbine date, as "4/20" is April 20, the anniversary of the Littleton, Colorado shootings. This date is also Adolf Hitler's birthday. The Columbine shooters, Klebold and Harris were extremely conscious that it was Hitler's birthdate, and often spoke German to each other, while walking around in long black trench coats, videotaping themselves. Copycat Weise left messages on such sites as nazi.org. Weise wore a dark trench coat to school all year round, and had a swastika fa...

Columbine School Shooting, April 20, 1999 There were 15 people killed in the Columbine High School massacre. Remember all the names of those who were lost to the violence: * Cassie Bernall, 17 * Steven Curnow, 14 * Corey DePooter, 17 * Kelly Fleming, 16 * Eric David Harris, 18 * Matthew Kechter, 16 * Dylan Bennet Klebold, 17 * Daniel Mauser, 15 * Daniel Rohrbough, 15 * William David "Dave" Sanders, 47 * Rachel Scott, 17 * Isaiah Shoels, 18 * John Tomlin, 16 * Lauren Townsend, 18 * Kyle Velasquez, 16

NBC News got a package in the mail. I'm sure you've heard the news. Columbine is now confirmed to be part of the mental process of the VA Tech shooter. NBC's and MSNBC's unfolding of this story demonstrates they have rather wholehearted published the VA Tech shooter's photos, some of his words, and his video. The way they have teased the public (e.g. "Turn in at 6:30 to see the exclusive video"; "See different photographs on MSNBC following NBC Nightly News"; "There will be more revealed on The Today Show in the morning") is so obviously a draw for higher rating. This is about the bottomline, when news becomes entertainment, a grab for more ad revenue. Death sells. If it bleeds, it leads. This is exactly the level of glorification of school killers that I have recommended against for several years now, and brought to together in my book. The Columbine killers, I was not surprised to hear, were noted in the VA Tech shooter's ma...

Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing has a good overview of the Virginia Tech shooting today. It appears 33 dead are confirmed, including the shooter (described in some reports as an Asian male with a black hood). Sadly, I saw this coming. In an article based on an email I sent to a Canadian TV reporter Bridget Brown on September 18th and her followup interview, CTV noted that Expert predicted 'cluster' of school shootings , on October 3rd, 2006. In that article, I was quoted as noting the psychological process that these shooters appear to be "competing for the highest body count." Sadly, we've seen that come true today. Also, the news item from last fall noted: "He says that while the Pennsylvania shootings may not be the last in this cluster, the copycat crimes will likely slow down as we near winter. He says spring, and the anniversary of Columbine, could be enough to spark another cycle of tragedy." Again, my prediction of a reigniting of the school shooti...

New accounts from Gresham, Oregon, have noted that a Tuesday, April 10 school shooting appears to have been triggered by the shooter's viewing of the recent National Geographic Channel's "The Final Report: Columbine." That individual, Chad Antonio Escobedo had watched the Columbine documentary and decided April 7 that he would do a shooting at his school because he was angry, according to the new court documents, as reported by KPTV, KATU-TV, and Oregon newspapers. A 15-year-old boy charged with attempted aggravated murder after a shooting shattered some windows at a high school told police he was influenced by a television documentary on the 1999 Columbine shootings in Colorado. Chad Antonio Escobedo appeared Wednesday afternoon in Multnomah County Circuit Court to face two counts of attempted aggravated murder along with two counts of assault and two counts of unlawful use of a weapon. Ten students suffered minor injuries from shattered glass in the Tuesday afternoo...

National Geographic Channel will broadcast their hour-long documentary, The Final Report: Columbine about the April 20, 1999 shootings at Columbine High School, on Tuesday, April 3, 2007, at 10 PM Eastern Daylight Time. The program will also be repeated on Saturday, April 7, and Tuesday, April 10, 2007. Here is their overview of the program: It was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history: the Columbine High School massacre. On April 20, 1999, two teenage students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, carried out a shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado killing 12 students and a teacher, and wounding 24 others before committing suicide. Did they have a methodical plan? What warning signs were missed? As the eighth anniversary of this tragic day approaches, The Final Report investigates the full story with the help of former students, journalists, FBI special agents, the district attorney and the killers’ own diaries and home videos. National Geo...