Children Who Kill: Profiles of Pre-Teen and Teenage Killers (22 page)

These killers, who are mainly male, are overwhelmed by parental cruelty or parental demands. Some crime writers believe that children kill their families for financial gain – but a look at many such cases shows that these wealthy parents have also been abusive. The financial motive, if it exists, is very much secondary.

For example, numerous writers have suggested that Wendy Gardner had her grandmother killed in order to enjoy spending her money and partying in her home. But a quick glance at Wendy’s life shows that her grandmother beat her and constantly told her that she was turning into her mother, a drug-addicted prostitute.

Similarly, much has been made of the fact that William Allnutt stole several sovereigns from his grandfather – but William only killed after his grandfather knocked him down for the umpteenth time and threatened to murder him next time. These children didn’t kill to enjoy a few days prosperity – they killed out of terror, desperate to escape further physical pain.

Criminologists and psychotherapists such as Kathleen M Heide have found an overwhelming connection between patricide and child abuse. The children who killed their fathers had been physically and emotionally ill treated and neglected. Some had also been sexually abused. For case studies of children who have killed abusive guardians, please see the chapter Children Who Kill Their Families.

Such killers – who often take out more than one victim – have often been bullied mercilessly for weeks or even years before they finally snap and take a gun to school with them. Most of these killers are male and often the hatred for the institution is so intense that they kill everyone in sight – but some have warned the one or two pupils who were kind to them to stay away from school that day. Kip Kinkel, profiled earlier, was bullied at school and wrote of how much he wanted to kill one particular pupil. Numerous other Stressors occurred at home as he couldn’t be the academic and sporting success his parents craved. Luke Woodham, also
profiled, was endlessly abused at school and mocked at home to the extent that he spoke about ‘being beat his whole life.’ Luke expected to be killed by police at the end of his rampage and Kip planned to kill himself after the shootings, their respective plans being to take as many lives as possible before meeting their own deaths.

These school killers meet most of the requirements for spree killers as laid down by author Pan Pantziarka in his book on the subject,
Lone
Wolf.
That is, the male plans the violence in advance, kills semi-randomly, is controlled during the killing, tries to take out as many people as possible and makes little attempt to escape.

Pantziarka also notes that adult spree killers tend to have a dominant father who crushes the son’s emergent identity. Kip Kinkel perfectly fits this profile. Luke Woodward doesn’t as his father was absent – but Pantziarka notes that another strong-willed male often takes the father’s place. This holds true for Luke who idolised his satanic-games-playing mentor, Grant Boyette. And Grant himself said that he was like a father to Luke.

A tiny percentage of children will, through some chemical imbalance or brain tumour, become mentally ill – and this illness can cause them to kill themselves or others. These are the No Known Fault diseases.

But many children become mentally ill (or at least have their mental health brought into question) because of their abusive backgrounds. Their parents have such strange childrearing methods and such mercurial temperaments that the child can do nothing right. Johnny Garrett and Peter Dinsdale aka Bruce Lee, both profiled, fit into this unfortunate category.

Most of us would find it hard to survive life with one violent parent but poor Johnny Garrett had four such brutal stepfathers – and psychologist Dorothy Lewis noted that it was after abuse from his third father-figure that Johnny’s mind snapped irreparably.

One particularly senseless murder by mentally subnormal boys occurred in Britain in February 1947. Ten boys (all aged fifteen and sixteen) from an approved school decided to kill the headmaster, steal his car and drive away. To this end, they stole three rifles. They were busily loading them when they were apprehended by one of their teachers and promptly shot him in the groin. As he lay on the ground, badly injured, one of the boys reloaded and shot him in the chest. He died within half an hour.

All ten of the boys were quickly traced and stood trial at Stafford Assizes where their headmaster admitted that eight out of the ten had a mental handicap. They were sent to various borstals and prisons. Meanwhile there was an enquiry into the running of the approved school which resulted in it being closed.

Again, children who join violent gangs tend to be children from violent homes. Sometimes the gang acts as an alternative parent, giving them a skewed respect and stature. For the first time, they have a sense of belonging – and, in order to keep their status in the group, they will maim, rape and kill. Such gangs invariably have a leader. They also tend to have at least one member who is reluctant to carry out the murder, and who is likely to confess to the police.

The most widely reported teen gang rape-murders have been American ones, but in December 2001 a gang of thirteen and fourteen-year-old boys carried out a gang rape in the leafy town of Guildford, England. The five youths separated a fifteen-year-old from her friend and dragged her to a car park where they repeatedly raped her, thankfully stopping short – or being stopped short – of murder. They were apprehended and released on police bail.

Such rapes give the group a purpose – after all, they are often comprised of very inarticulate youths who have no employment or hobbies to talk about. J W Messerschmidt’s book
Masculinities
And
Crime
suggests that such acts ‘help maintain and reinforce an alliance among the boys by humiliating and devaluing women, thereby strengthening the myth of masculine power.’

Whether the victim lives or dies is often incidental in such group rapes. One London gang repeatedly raped a tourist then asked her if she could swim. She
lied and said no, at which point they threw her into the freezing dark water. She was able to swim to safety and survived.

But a thirteen-year-old boy from Swansea wasn’t so lucky. He was found unconscious in a car park in January 2002 and later died of his injuries. Six children (four boys and two girls) aged between twelve and sixteen were charged with grievous bodily harm. The six children were bailed to appear later at Swansea Juvenile Court. Meanwhile a seventh child – an eleven-year-old girl – was also investigated for the murder but released without charge.

These are children who perhaps plan to rob or play a prank on a victim but end up killing him or her. Robert Thompson and Jon Venables may fall into this category. That is, they said they planned to take a child and ‘get him lost’ – though it’s more likely that they first planned to examine him sexually. They didn’t initially intend to kill him, believing childishly that if they threw one piece of brick he’d be quiet and they could leave – but ‘he wouldn’t stay down’ and they hit him again and again. They had both been on the receiving end of repeated cruelty and this made it comparatively easy for them to carry out violence.

Recently there has been an alarming increase in children mugging other children for their mobile phones. A home office study released in 2002 showed that most
of the muggers were male and aged fourteen to seventeen whilst most of the victims were aged eleven to fifteen. The muggers picked on a child who was younger than themselves, sometimes just snatching the phone but at other times punching and kicking the owner. In the worst reported case – that of attempted murder – a young man shot a nineteen-year-old woman in the head in broad daylight simply to steal her phone. It’s a safe bet that these young muggers have been hit throughout their childhoods as children who haven’t been hit by their parents usually don’t behave in such an unprovoked violent way.

The victim of such a murder may be from a different religious group, colour or sexual orientation to the child who murders him. Again, though, we invariably find that the killer has suffered during his or her childhood and is passing that hatred on.

Sometimes the actual target (eg homosexual men) is the same target of the violent parents. In other instances, the parents hit and humiliate the child who then goes looking for a safe target to harm, perhaps setting fire to a sleeping tramp or kicking a homeless woman to death. These children are often so young that their names and details are withheld from the press.

But in one Russian case the children were named. Ten-year-old Volodya, thirteen-year-old Vitya and fourteen-year-old Andrie (all with the surname Yakovlev)
were Moscow-based brothers living with their mentally ill mother. They survived in total squalor. In 1994 they admitted to battering several down-and-outs to death, though only the fourteen-year-old was brought to trial. Such children are often so traumatised by their unhappy upbringing that violence is their primary voice.

This author taught adult basic education on a voluntary basis and can remember speaking to the tutor of a youth discussion group. (Attendance at the group was obligatory as it replaced a school academic module that these young men didn’t have the IQ for.) The tutor said that the youths mainly sat in sullen silence but on the few occasions she could persuade them to speak they started every bigoted sentence with ‘My dad says…’ She was baffled that they didn’t have their own voice.

But violent and immature parents simply don’t give their children conversational or action-based options. Instead, every independently-voiced thought or act of their children is battered down. Eventually these children end up virtual automatons, extolling the racist or sexual bigotry that they’ve heard all their lives.

Psychologists say that everyone who attempts suicide has at one stage wanted to kill someone else – and suicidal children are no exception. Adverse circumstances (parental abuse, school bullying or intense
academic pressure) lead to low self-esteem. If the hatred turns completely inward the child will only destroy his or herself rather than the annihilating external source of their misery. Sometimes the pathologist will put this down to accidental death in order to spare the parents additional pain. If the hate is both inward and outward directed then these children are more likely to become spree killers, murdering their parents or the school bullies before turning the gun on themselves.

One particularly unusual suicide took place in January 2002 when a fifteen-year-old schoolboy deliberately flew a light aircraft into a Florida skyscraper. The boy was half Arabic and had sympathies with Osama Bin Laden who masterminded the destruction of the World Trade Centre.

Once again, though, the unhappy childhood comes first and the rationale for violence comes second for the teenager was from a broken home. He had rejected his father’s Arabic name and used his mother’s surname but remained deeply troubled. He was described as a loner who was very shy.

Children who give birth are often terrified of what their parents will say. These youngsters usually suffocate their newborn baby as it utters its first cry. Often they are so in denial about the impending birth that they are in a public place (such as a school toilet or the
restroom in a department store) when they go into labour and commit the infanticide.

One Canadian sixteen-year-old hid her pregnancy until the birth then stabbed the newborn baby to death. Clearly too confused to dispose of the evidence properly, she merely concealed the little corpse in the garage of her family home. When the body was eventually discovered she told police that she was terrified of her parent’s reaction. Sadly, these girls find censure from their parents more frightening than committing murder. Spending nine months in denial at such a young age must put them under a phenomenal strain.

Some of these girls fear intense disapproval rather than physical assault, but in other instances their mothers have warned them that ‘if you ever get pregnant your father will kill you.’ If there has been previous violence shown to her, the girl takes this threat literally.

Children who kill as part of a cult have usually suffered highly abusive backgrounds. Being part of an alternative group – be it based on vampirism, satanism or some other religious belief system – gives them a sense of identity. It’s also a very visible way of rejecting an outwardly more conventional society which has failed them utterly. The so-called vampire killer Rod Ferrell, profiled earlier, fits into this category.

Seventeen-year-old Dylan Klebold, who killed
thirteen people and wounded numerous others at Columbine High School before turning the gun on himself, even sent an email explaining his motivation. It read in part ‘do not try to blame it
on the clothes I wear, the music I listen to… Parents and teachers, you fucked up… I did not choose this life but I have indeed chosen to exit it.’ Ironically, before the note was made public, the media had blamed heavy metal music and violent films.

These are often anger-retaliation rape-murders where the lust is fuelled by rage. This is sex as a weapon. Again, the killers – like Kenny Houseknecht who stabbed a near-naked girl over ninety times then ejaculated on a pair of her panties – have invariably been abused themselves. For fuller details of the Kenny Houseknecht case and this typology, please see the Youthful Sex Killers chapter later in this book.

As well as the ten typologies described in the last chapter, it’s possible to group children who kill by age or by the particular function (such as babysitting) that they were carrying out when the murder occurred. This author also found that some children are encouraged to kill by a family member, usually a violent parent who wants to involve others in his deviancy.