I have made a career out of investigating the darkest recesses of the mind.
And as a criminologist and the co-founder of the largest and most comprehensive database of the biographies of mass shooters – dating back over 55 years – you might think that I had become unshockable.
But Wednesday morning’s atrocity, when 23-year-old Robin Westman shot into the Annunciation Catholic School’s morning mass service, hit hard.
Not only did it happen in my hometown of Minneapolis, where I’m chair of the criminology department at Metro State University, but I’m also father to an eight-year-old boy: the same age as one of the two children killed by Westman. Seventeen others were injured, some critically.
Two days on and the questions are myriad as we try to make sense of it all. What could possibly have motivated Westman?
The online ramblings that have emerged as some sort of ‘manifesto’ show a plethora of hatred: antisemitism, racism, anti-Israel, anti-Trump, anti-India.
The antisemitism is something that people have latched onto and, yes, it’s a frequent feature in the psyche of shooters – an often-referenced brand of hate.
But I find that it’s rarely that alone – as is clear with Westman. Westman’s was a cocktail of loathing that speaks to how troubled an individual we are dealing with.
Robin Westman’s online ramblings have emerged as some sort of ‘manifesto’ and show a plethora of hatred
The antisemitism is something that people have latched onto. But I find that it’s rarely that alone
In fact, it’s far more common for a shooter to be motivated by personal grievances than ’causes’ such as antisemitism.
(Although of course there are high profile exceptions such as the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, when right-wing extremist Robert Bowers killed eleven and injured seven.)
If anything, FBI Director Kash Patel has said that Minneapolis was an anti-Catholic attack – which is something that could be linked to Westman’s inner conflict over gender.
Westman was born male and officially changed gender to female at the age of 17.
We can speculate that someone going through such an identity crisis in a Catholic school, and Catholic family, had a difficult time and probably struggled in life.
There are certainly some unusual elements to this shooting – ones that set it apart from others I have studied.
Not least, Westman’s chilling obsession with killing children. Writing in a journal, Westman made it very clear that they, and they alone, were the targets – and the more the better.
Westman wrote, ‘I love when kids get shot,’ and, ‘I love seeing kids torn apart.’ They are hard words to repeat never mind consider.
I can’t help but think that it was part of this shooter’s cynical desire to have the maximum impact. And targeting children is the way to do it – Sandy Hook in Connecticut and Uvalde in Texas are both infamous examples of where lots of children died.
It could not have been lost on Westman that these incidents, focused so clearly on children, hit differently. This was about fame-seeking, wanting notoriety.
It also betrays something about Westman’s hatred – killing innocent children because their lives were so perfect.
It’s also unusual for a mass shooter to pose in an outfit before carrying out an attack and declare, as Westman reportedly did, ‘I look pretty, smart and modest. I think I want to wear something like this for my shooting.’
Of course, this is partly because most mass shooters are men, so looking ‘pretty’ is not a priority. It is, however, very common for them to plan their outfits in detail.
These incidents are frequently intended to be a final act: you’re going out with a bang. It’s a spectacle, the most awful performance.
In the same way that if you’re filming a rap video you need all the tropes – a sports car, women, money – many mass shooters try to ‘look the part’.
Two children were killed, and 17 others injured, when the shooter sprayed bullets through the stained glass windows of Annunciation Catholic Church (Pictured: A parent hugs her son)
There are certainly some unusual elements to this shooting – ones that set it apart from others. Not least, Westman’s chilling obsession with killing children
They reference mass shooters who have preceded them. They want to ‘measure up’.
Natalie Rupnow, the 15-year-old girl who opened fire at Abundant Life Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin last December – killing three and injuring six – wore a t-shirt from the German industrial rock band KMFDM.
A group of which both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine shooters, were avid fans.
The copycat nature of school shootings is really one of the darkest and saddest parts of the phenomenon.
Indeed, there is much more in the Minneapolis attack that is similar to other shootings than sets it apart.
Westman, like many other mass shooters, wrote extensive notes about previous attacks.
‘I have a deep fascination with one man in particular: Adam Lanza,’ Westman wrote in a journal entry on May 23. ‘Sandy Hook was my favorite, I think, exposure of school shootings.’
That’s incredibly important. Anyone who does this is experiencing an internal and existential crisis of self.
And in that state of mind, these individuals look online, see that other mass shooters had similar complaints, and feel: ‘That’s me.’
They go tumbling down the rabbit hole and get obsessed with violence.
Like Lanza, who attacked the Connecticut school in 2012, Westman’s mother worked at the school.
Time and time again the perpetrator is connected to the site of the shooting. They target the people and places they know.
Over 80 percent of school shooters are current or former students. Often, it’s about revenge, or manifesting their grievance.
We tend to get fixated on an immediate motive. Was it a hate crime? Was there a hit-list of individual targets?
In this case we may never find a satisfactory answer to those questions – Westman seemed to hate everyone: black people, Latinos, Jews, Christians, everyone.
The deeper issue for me is how someone gets there in the first place. And how do we catch them before they fall and inflict such unimaginable suffering?
James Densley is the Professor and Department Chair of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Metro State University and co-founder of The Violence Prevention Project Research Center (The Violence Project) at Hamline University. He is the co-author of ‘The Violence Project: How to stop a mass shooting epidemic.’
