Va. Tech shooting

[shakeybrainsurgeon]

By the way, I don't think this man was schizophrenic...I see no flight of ideas, no blunted affect, no evidence that he hears auditory hallucinations or attributes his behavior to external agencies. He is either a sociopathic personality disorder or severely bipolar (he had severe depression, a Christ complex and often spent hours writing screeds).

This is important...schizophrenics are rarely dangerous (unless put in operating rooms or in a cockpit or something) and can be treated and lead product lives. Bipolar disease is also treatable and can be compatible with normal lives. Sociopathy and other personality disorders like borderlines are not really treatble and much more dangerous. Moreover, psychosis can be a legal defense, personality disorders don't qualify as legally insane--- they know right from wrong.

Personality disorders manifest early (killing animals as a child)...schixophrenia and bipolar disorder may not appear until the person is in their 20s or older. Thus, if this killer had a sociopathic personality (which I suspect he did), look for further stories of his aberrant behavior as a child and high school student.

One prediction: given his rants against Christianity, the fact that Koreans are all catholic, his ruminations over pedophilia...when things die down, his family is going to allege he was abused by a priest as a child. True or not, it might explain some of his writings and would give his family some shred or sympathy (and defense against litigation or even a chance for litigation themselves). In his play Richard McBeef he overtly mentions the pedophilia of Catholic priests...is his choking of his step father symbolic of some distant event.

 

[james croft]

People cannot anticipate the unimaginable. We are blindsided by earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorist attacks and mass murders. People need to realize they are responsible for their own security as well as their families welfare and make smart decisions. I keep emergency supplies, survival gear, and other necessities to be able to get by in a bad situation. You cannot be prepared for every eventuality but try to prepare for the most likely.

I was deeply troubled by the killings at Tech. I am a Tech alumni, as well as a state L.E. officer. I had officers I worked with at the crime scene call and report that there were 29 dead at one building when CNN and other networks were reporting 1 dead and 9 wounded. I think I have some good insight into the dynamics of the massacre.

No doubt the cops will get the blame for not acting sooner. The truth of the matter is the police cannot provide protection for everyone at anytime. I have investigated a lot of shootings, been in shooting situations as well as being shot myself. There is no warning and it is over very quickly. Those that survive are better prepared or have luck on their side. Unless you are equipped to protect yourself, have the proper mindset to act aggresively, your only protection will be to depend on luck. That is not something I am willing to do.

YBYSAIAH

 

[H2Andy]

i said it a while back, but i believe he was likely abused as a child, after reading his play

not necessarily sexually

i also agree with you that there is a personality disorder at work here, and maybe even psychosis, or at least a psychotic episode?

 

[shakeybrainsurgeon]

I agree Andy, that he had psychotic features. The essense of psychosis lies in delusional beliefs and he clearly had those (a belief that the world was against him, that he had a Christlike obligation to die for his "brothers and sisters"). Bipolar disease and personality disorders can have psychotic features, but are not true psychoses like schizophrenia. The core pathology here, however, is sociopathy...the most dangerous and refractory diagnosis in the DSM.

At the heart of the problem ... how to stop a suicidally depressed sociopath in a free society from going on a rampage like this, if not with a gun, then with a propane cylinder (see Columbine), or an SUV (recent), or a knife (as happened in England)? Under present mental health law and given current privacy issues, fear of litigation, etc, it is nearly impossible. And we know that and that's what makes episodes like this all the more frustrating and terrible.:shakehead

 

[letterboy]

Suggest locking this thread....

Dude. . . :shakehead

 

[Skull]

I pulled the post because I needed to refresh my thoughts on it. The bast-d who commited the crime some 30 yrs ago was a real creep and I was only ..what 13yrs old myself ..just a year older than his oldest son Richard , I believe Donald jr and the infant was Christina. You know this prick shot the baby in her crib ..seven GD times ..a 20 month old infant ...man he was a real

This is the only news article I could find ...reporters memories upon retirementI lifted the story as follows

Erie-Times News
"Most gruesome story: Covering the 1975 Chism murders — in which Donald Lee Chism shot to death his estranged wife, their three children, and his estranged wife's father — was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. Of all the stories I've covered, it left the deepest mark.

I had been on the job two years by then and thought I was tough — I had seen the coroner picking human brains off the street and putting them in clear plastic baggies after a car accident at Peach and Miller streets. I had been caught in one police shootout with a man barricaded in his home. And I had covered many other murders.

But as I stood on the sidewalk, a light snow falling, the deaths of the children touched a place inside me I never knew existed. I waited for the bodies of the children to be carried out of the house, and when they were, under sheets, the image burned itself into my mind.

For more than a year I tried to put myself into Donald Chism's mind to see how a man could kill his wife and children.

Most valuable lesson: From the Chism murders, I learned that you can't figure out, by trying to identify with someone or their circumstances, why they do what they do. Some people are of a different species, and to try to get inside their heads is like trying to get into the heads of chimpanzees at a zoo. Some people are just plain nuts, and trying to get into their heads is like trying to enter a food blender."



The memory which strikes me most is this SOB wore yellow tinted glasses ..in a very Jim Jones type of fashion. MOF they always reminded me of the color of a Vanilla Phosphate .. for those of you old enough to have enjoyed one. The day my old man jacked him up in the fountain store, I was sitting at the counter with my buddy Rick and my old man was just laying into Chism about a rumor Chism was spreading concerning my dad ...mind you my dad just got off duty and was really fired up ...at my worst as a kid (I was the blacksheep for sure) I don't ever remember pissing my dad off as much as Chism did. His final words to Chism were ..." if you say another thing I'll drive those yellow glasses into your yellow head.".. This was probably 2 weeks before he killed his family and I distinctly remember Chism was visably shook up by my old man ...He was physically shaking and his hands were trembling and he had his right hand in a splint which (get this) bound his first and middle fingers ...later he used that as an alibi as proclaiming he couldn't have pulled the trigger. Needless to say the evidence was overwhelming ...not to mention the finger prints on the weapon he hid inside of a cubby-hole in his attic. BTW the splint was a prop ...

Chism drove a powder blue Continental with a white two tone top ..I remember cause the police questioned me whether the car was in the driveway that morning and I said no ..he had parked it down the street around the corner..ugliest GD car I have ever seen. Chism and his wife had seperated ...basically she finally kicked him out ...I'm telling you he was a very evil guy who always came on to us in a weird sexual way and even tried to seduce a few of my friends to go into his basement to watch "stag films" ... my one buddy told me later he was really on to him. Course my buddy ended up doing time for armed robbery and trafficing in narcotics ....some neighborhood I grew up in ...wonder to this day how I got out intact!

I still cringe to the point of stressing when I think that had I peaked into his window what carnage I would have seen and would Chism have seen me (the animal sat there in the blood and bodies till the fountain store opened and then ran over there to tell the proprieter , the owner was the first one on the scene and called the Police) ..

Funny thing like I posted last night when my woodshop teacher pulled me aside (he was very close friend of my dad) he just said you need to get home there was a murder on your street/block ... I said in a very flip manner .." it was probably Chism" ... then again like I said there were plenty of road signs along the way. Chism was in and out of the mental ward several times. You get the story.

 

[airsix]

Unless you are equipped to protect yourself, have the proper mindset to act aggresively, your only protection will be to depend on luck. That is not something I am willing to do.

YBYSAIAH

James, I enjoyed reading your post - and your viewpoint. 'YBYSAIAH' had me stumped for a bit, but after some digging I found the answer and along the way learned a bit more about the war of Northern aggression.

-Ben

 

[ScubaTexan]

Skull,

Was Chism executed, or is he serving life in prison?

 

[Skull]

served 5 consecutive life sentence if my memory is correct...died several years back, ironically contracted AIDS in prison however I believe he died of prostrat cancer.

 

[fisherdvm]

, the fact that Koreans are all catholic, his ruminations over pedophilia...when things die down, his family is going to allege he was abused by a priest as a child.

Chritianity is a minority in Korea. Protestant christians is 8%, Roman Catholicism is 6%. I wouldn't be too fast to point a finger at a catholic priest.