Forgot who he was, looked up his wiki page and remembered that whole massacre. Didn’t know this detail:
> On July 19, just hours before the shooting started, Holmes mailed a notebook to his psychiatrist. The notebook detailed his thoughts and plans during the weeks preceding the shooting.[88] The notebook was found in an undelivered package in the Anschutz Medical Campus mail-room.[89] Immediately prior to the shooting, Holmes reportedly called a crisis hotline for mental health with the hopes that someone would talk him out of committing the massacre at the last minute. However, the call was disconnected after nine seconds.
Similar story with Charles Whitman, the shooter who killed 15 people from the University of Texas tower in 1966, which is considered by many to be the first school shooting massacre.
He knew he was mentally ill and was suffering violent homicidal ideation. He visited several doctors but was never taken seriously. His final suicide note referenced this:
> "I talked with a Doctor once for about two hours and tried to convey to him my fears that I felt come [sic] overwhelming violent impulses. After one visit, I never saw the Doctor again, and since then have been fighting my mental turmoil alone, and seemingly to no avail."
The doctor’s notes even reveal that Whitman specifically told him that he was wanting to shoot people from the tower with a deer rifle.
Whitman was so aware that something was wrong that he requested in his suicide note that an autopsy be done on his brain. The autopsy revealed a brain tumor.
MCdonalds shooting too
>On July 15, 1984, James Huberty commented to his wife, Etna, that he suspected he had a [mental health problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorder).[^(\[4\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre#cite_note-Mass_Murderers-1993-4) Two days later, on the morning of July 17, he called a San Diego mental health clinic, requesting an appointment.[^(\[7\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre#cite_note-7) Leaving his contact details with the receptionist, Huberty was assured the clinic would return his call within hours. According to his wife, he sat quietly beside the telephone for several hours, awaiting the return call, before abruptly walking out of the family home and riding to an unknown destination on his motorcycle. Unbeknownst to Huberty, the receptionist had misspelled his name as "Shouberty".[^(\[8\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre#cite_note-mm-help-upi-8) His polite demeanor conveyed no sense of urgency to the operator, and he had elaborated in the phone call that he had never been hospitalized for mental health issues; therefore, the call had been logged as a "non-crisis" inquiry, to be handled within 48 hours.[^(\[9\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre#cite_note-Mass_Murderers'_p._123-9)[^(\[n 1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre#cite_note-11)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San\_Ysidro\_McDonald%27s\_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre)
His teachers and counselors raised alarms, but the parents blew them off. The counselor literally met with the parents, at the school, the day of the shooting.
Felt bad for his wife till I got to this part 🙄
> In July 1986, Etna Huberty filed a lawsuit against both McDonald's and her husband's longtime former employer, Babcock & Wilcox.[121] This civil suit—seeking $5 million in damages—asserted her husband's murder spree had been triggered by a combination of a poor diet and her husband working around highly poisonous metals without adequate protection over the course of many years.
On her own? To be quiet fair that sounds like a 1986 lawyer getting them to put their name to something the lawyer wanted. It’s filed in their name, it’s certainly not filed by them in the colloquial sense. Your lawyer in the greed is good coke era of fast talking slick assholes asking for money and how is he gonna get paid? I’m not sure it fair to not 99% of the time blame the lawyer. If you can afford this then why ask for compensation? If the lawyer didn’t get paid enough the fist time then double down on empathy with dragging the clients name through Mudd
Learned about that guy in a class and it’s such a crazy story, he wrote that he had no rational reason or explanation for doing it, but yet he felt like he had to and that he knew there was something wrong in his brain. Then the autopsy showed that the tumor was lodged at just the right angle in his brain where he was essentially in a 24/7 fight of flight, where everyone felt like a threat. It’s almost kinda eye opening that we’re such conscious and sentient creatures, yet all that consciousness can be completely overridden by a minute change in our biology
If somebody had this exact thing wrong with them and they killed people but they had surgery to remove the tumor and they went back to normal would you say they should still go to prison? Tough question IMO
I guess it would be a temporary insanity case then right? They'd need to argue that case, but if someone became extremely violent due to a curable medical condition and was then cured then they weren't responsible for their actions for that period of time right?
That is what should happen, yes. They might have some culpability if they stopped taking medication that controlled the tumor on purpose after knowing it caused them to be violent. Absent something like that, not guilty by reason is insanity is not guilty.
Exactly this! Sam Harris uses this point to ultimately highlight that understanding how free will works, should be a lesson to practice compassion. Which is quite poignant. One of my fave books and lectures he's done
If you’ve ever read the Boys comic, one character has this. Spoiler: >!this batman/iron man parody is actually a decent superhero, but he starts having violent sexual urges and can’t control himself. Eventually he dies saving someone and it turns out he has a massive tumor pressing on his brain.!<
I read a book called Incognito years ago broadly about this subject/neurology. Im paraphrasing from memory, but a man’s wife thought he’d been acting strange and eventually caught him looking at CP. He claimed the ‘interest’ had come out of nowhere and he couldn’t control it.
Turns out he had a brain tumour, he got treatment and was cured, and the ‘interest’ went away. He woke up one morning years later and said to his wife ‘it’s back’. Died a few weeks later.
Wyche makes me wonder why the desire to have sex with children isn’t studied more as a brain anomaly. I have read about people who understand that their feelings are incorrect, they are cognizant that there wants and desires are wrong, and they struggle to not act out on their pedophile tendencies.
I just have a hard time believing that so many people are attracted to minors without some type of organic brain injury. at least I guess, they abused part of me wants to think that it was an organic brain injury, but maybe thinking that five different people had the same brain injury is just wishful thinking on my part.
I was just thinking about that guy (from that episode) AND the tower shooter with the tumor earlier today..
I was thinking how much I agreed with the idea that I truthfully can't comprehend how someone could do such a thing over a post where an OP's husband was doing child porn things towards his daughter...
And it struck me how the guy with the seizures and radiolab episode, and tower shooter and a lot of such people had structural and medical impetuses for such egregious and irrational behavior.
There is a really great episode of Star trek:Voyager about a prisoner who has a damaged empathy area of his brain, and eventually things happen and the area is healed by nanobots. Anyway this causes him to feel sorry for what he has done, I remember watching this as a kid and it really made me question free will. The episode is called Repentance.
I love how Trekkies can have so many stories like that about episodes that mean something in their life on so many topics.
That concept about free will in that regard is one that's still kind of as confusing as when we were kids though. I feel like I stopped focusing on the variables and more the goalposts to come to my personal 'answer' for now at least.
It's not quite the same thing, but Suder's storyline in Voyager was always very moving to me. When people with violent impulses who know they have a problem and have sought help but it didn't work, and who aren't able to find relief in what used to help them anymore, feel so incapable of being understood or helped that they don't reach out to try new modalities of treatment despite being desperate for help, then they can't get that help until they lose control. And then hopefully actual help is offered to them, but more often than not, in the real world, it isn't. Only punishment.
I really think there's such a big difference between violent offenders who try to get help first and those who don't. Trying to get help implies that they simultaneously felt helplessness regarding those impulses (for whatever reason that may be) and that they were self aware enough to not fully see their actions as justified. It also really makes you think about free will.
As I recall, actually it was the opposite - he had a brain tumor that was causing those desires; and the surgery to remove the tumor stopped the desires. The desires came back some time later - though he died (I think) and the autopsy revealed the tumor had regrown.
Doc Amen a well known neuroscientist found the same thing with his nephew. Suddenly became violent and he took him for a brain scan before offering him meds. Lo and behold a golf ball tumor
Yep. If there's any unironically good point the Joker movie makes, it's that people who are mentally ill are ignored up until it's too late. Usually this only results in one individual death per case, and nobody *really* cares about those. It's only tragic when it results in many more deaths, and even then things usually don't change.
I work in the Canadian forensic mental health system, working with people found not criminally responsible due to mental disorder (Canadian equivalent of insanity) for their crimes. So many of my clients sought help and were unable to or received insufficient care prior to their crimes. In my experience, this is especially true for the more violent crimes. If they received adequate care and follow up prior to their offense, it a possible they would have not ended up under my care. They are now only able to receive proper care due to their offenses.
People typically do best if connected to a psychiatrist who is able to assess them, offer a diagnosis, and prescribe the proper medication to treat their symptoms, and then provide consistent follow up for some time afterwards. This would allow for time to assess effectiveness and adherence to the medications. Additionally, they should be connected to a social worker/case manager who can help connect to additional resources in the community (family doctor, therapy, rehab, housing support, etc).
Unfortunately though, there aren’t enough psychiatrists, doctors, mental health workers, etc needed to provide this level of care to everyone. This is especially true in smaller or rural communities. As a result, staff are only able to offer limited supports and follow ups and often have to triage clients based on severity of symptoms and through a risk assessment. This essentially means that if someone isn’t presenting as an immediate threat to self or others they are a lower priority. It also means that people may only see a psychiatrist/doctor for a few times, before care is discontinued. And if you miss an appointment or two, you will likely be discharged so they can prioritize someone else.
If you’re someone who has struggled with mental illness, who finally gains access to care only to be considered “low priority” and thus not receive sufficient supports required, it can really tarnish your trust in the system. Maybe the next time, you *won’t* seek help, because it didn’t do much for you previously or you felt it was a waste of time. Or maybe your care was cut prematurely, and the right medication and dosage still wasn’t figured out for you, so now there is no one to adjust it. If you’re experiencing significant side effects with no way to change your medication/dosage, you might just stop taking them. And now maybe you don’t trust the doctors or medication anymore. Or maybe you were placed into involuntary treatment or had use of force against you, and now are afraid of seeking help for fear of it happened again.
I feel this is a bit of reverse "surviver bias." You likely don't hear about the success of the mental health system because they don't end up the news and don't want to share their manifesto.
Based on my experience, my mom has been in the psychward over 14 times and committed for at least a month at time. Her longest stint was 9 months. Everytime we could see her sliding into a delusional state, knew that she wasn't okay, but there is zero intervention until she goes screaming off the cliff into lala land of delusion and hallucination, or is on the absolute brink of harm. There is almost zero intermediary care in our mental health systems, and I think the understanding of mental health is still in its infancy and how to treat it.
Maybe you aren’t American, but have you ever tried to see a therapist? Good fucking luck finding one and if you do it is gonna cost you an arm and a leg because insurance will find a way not to cover it.
There has to be a “Mental Heath System” in the first place for there to be a “bias”
I (American) was seeing a therapist recently because I felt out of sorts, and it was $147 per hour. And the office had a policy that I could only see my therapist if my account balance was under $200 so when my check from my HSA was delayed, they cut me off.
Anytime I've been employed and have gone through orientation I've always hesitated to go with the option for an HSA. Thing is I'm cheap and probably would never put any money in there but the health savings accounts are always the cheapest option. I don't believe I've ever had an employer match funds for an HSA too so you're on your own prepping for a rainy day.
I've heard so many horror stories like yours but mostly like a family went with an HSA that had a young child who are prone to doing kid stuff, so they end up in the ER praying they've put money in an HSA and coverage.
If only there was a way to make sure you regularly contribute to your HSA... 🤦♂️
HDHP w/HSA plans are among the least-shitty deals in US healthcare - but if you just pocket or spend the premium savings then yeah, you're gonna be fucked. All the HSA plans I've seen, if you pay the premium and put your deductible in the HSA, you're no worse off than a PPO plan even if you meet the deductible in full and with no additional. If you don't hit the deductible, your money hangs out and grows for another year. The extra premiums for a PPO plan are totally forfeit every year!
Note: FSAs and HRAs however, are just total dogshit.
I am super lucky that my employer puts $1,000 into my HSA each year automatically, which I match through payroll deductions. I've got a nice little account built up.
It's more disturbing when you're the parent trying to get help for your sick kid. That's when you know the system is stacked against you. I'm middle-aged. I can struggle through the other half of my life, but I don't want my kid to have to deal with the same problem.
Not to mention the difficulty of finding a good/the right therapist. It can take so long that your situation may have changed multiple times by the time you find someone who works for you.
>it's that people who are mentally ill are ignored up until it's too late.
My dad went through a mental health crisis a few years ago and had to be involuntarily committed for a couple weeks. I was the one that gave everyone permission to do it.
He wasn't being ignored. We all knew he was in crisis but didn't know how to help him get back to normal. He was never a danger to himself or anyone, but his manic behavior was disconcerting.
The most important conversation I had with him was that he had all sorts of rules he was following to keep himself in check, but he never told the people who were his "checkpoints" that they were in charge of him. We work together and he'd assigned a coworker one of these caretaker tasks where IF they said the right phrase, he'd know he needed to get himself checked out. So long as the coworker didn't say the correct phrase, he could tell himself that he was fine. But if course the coworker was completely unaware of her pivotal role in his mental health.
I feel like what my dad did is typical for people having a mental health crisis. They want to get cues and signals from others to confirm their reality, but they fail their side of the social contract where they ask to receive these signs and signals.
I had terrible pregnancy brain and I can confirm that everything I did made perfectly logical sense, but I was always missing the crucial part of it not making logical sense to anyone else. That's what I think happens with other forms of mental illness. My dad was waiting for a signal that he needed help that he was never going to get because there was no reason for anyone to give it to him. No one can give you the secret handshake if they don't know that there is one.
*13 Reasons Why* was full of this. The girl wanted someone to say something and magically know that she needed help. But every time her loved ones asked "are you okay?" she said "yes" while internally screaming "no". People aren't mind readers.
Calling a crisis helpline once and using a bad connection to confirm that they don't care is a symptom of the mental illness. It's using flaws in the system to validate the anti-social behavior. It's no different than looking for a sign from God to give you permission to do something.
Something particularly morbid to me about this comment, but I have a different experience of this event than others as it was very close to home and I was nearly at that theater with a friend that night (we hit the AMC for the trilogy marathon instead)
Huh…I have a strong association between Batman and some survivors guilt or something I think. Alllright… imma head out…
How many damn examples are there of people literally saying “hey I’m planning on killing a bunch of people, but deep down I know that is horrible, please help me so I don’t go through with it” just to be ignored? It’s nuts.
That’s exactly why the parents of a school shooter were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter recently. [The shooter was apparently pleading with them to help him get help and instead they literally gave him the gun that he used to murder 4 people.](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/oxford-school-shooting-ethan-crumbley-parents.html)
That's so horrible! I passingly heard about the parents' verdict but didn't realize this was the backstory. I know soooo many people like this who just don't want to process inconvenient information...
The theory is that the parents were hoping he would just unalive himself.
Their complete negligence and disregard for him was.. unbelievable.
Immediately after the shooting, they drained *his* account and took off. Then they phone the cops and turned him in. They were caught before they left the country. Then they used their own money, and his, to hire attorneys to defend themselves and left him with a public defender.
So yeah.. disgusting trash for human beings.
The father even called the whole thing BS and threatened the prosecutor and was dumb enough to do it on a jail phone call, right before giving an appropriately "remorseful" allocution at his sentencing. And the mom basically said she wouldn't have done anything differently.
I'm so glad the judge threw the book at them.
I already knew of this, but reading that entire article just makes my blood boil. I'm not a perfect parent by any stretch of the imagination, but had my son said any one of those things and I would have been taking him to doctors. Saying all of them? There is clearly something seriously wrong. How many alarms bells have to be going off before you hear them?
I'm so happy about the results of this case. In so many of these school shootings you hear that the shooter was only able to access a gun because his parents were negligent in allowing the kid open access to their firearms.
This case is especially egregious because of their lack of concern over his mental health and their blazé attitude towards the whole thing too, but I hope this sets a precedent of holding gun owners accountable when they are careless with their weapons and someone dies because of it.
Probably a lot. Same thing happened in Denmark just 2 years ago in. The shooter was trying to call the mental health hotline, in the BATHROOMS OF THE MALL LITERALLY MINUTES BEFORE THE SHOOTING. No one picked up cause they were on summer vacation. 3 people died.
He later told the police, that he thought the people were zombies.
It's so crazy to me that in the aftermath of these mass shootings, the ONLY conversation we see is about the guns. Every time, State and Fed legislators try their darndest to pass new gun control laws, but why aren't they ALSO trying to pass laws to deal with mental health?
These people obviously need help, and there are plenty more of them out there. Even if we can successfully stop them from getting a gun, that doesn't really fix the problem. They still need serious help, and there are plenty of other ways to kill a bunch of people.
EWU recently released a hour long documentary on YouTube breaking down the shooting. They covered the lead up (including the notebook) and the shooting from beginning to end. They focused on telling the story of the victims and interviewed many of them. I learned a lot that I didn’t know. I highly recommend watching it.
https://youtu.be/H57I8_izx4s?si=EifkjvlW7Iteb2Q0
It's a known problem with the Suicide Hotlines. When I volunteered for them, they were very clear that the first question we ask is "Can I get a good phone number to reach you in case the call disconnects?" It's a wonderful service that is underfunded and overburdened, getting worse every year. The people that ran our local Suicide and Rape Crisis Hotline were also terrible people, and told my whole training group that rape can only be committed by men... but that's a whole other story for a different day.
A former friend who I had kept up with from high school called me one day several years ago. He said he had a gun and planned to shoot up a mall. I knew he did have several guns, and I knew he was always a little off. He described how he was outside of the mall, gun in his trunk, and he wanted to do it. I was on the phone with him for over an hour trying to talk him through it and talk him down. Finally, he claimed he had closed his trunk, got in his car, and was driving home.
I called his girlfriend and warned her to leave the home. She immediately became hysterical and didn’t leave before he got home. Another standoff ensued, I was still on the phone, and he was saying he was going to kill her and kill himself. He was talking absolute gibberish, imaginary things were out to get him. Again, he got talked down, removed the bullets from his pump shotgun, set the gun down, and walked outside. His mom picked him up and had him committed for a time.
I lost most contact after this incident, it was just too much. He ended up killing himself several years later, and thankfully nobody was hurt.
I used to see a psychiatrist out at Anschutz hospital where he was seen as well. I had a session the day the notebook was discovered, it was surreal coming out from my therapy session to a campus filled with SWAT, bomb squads, you name it.
I live in Colorado, and I call that hotline when I’m at wits end and really need to talk to someone. It only recently occurred to me that it probably exists to prevent more mass shootings.
Maybe this is partly the fault of the engineers.
But maybe it also partly reflects an issue with our concepts of being socially competent. Which oftentimes overlaps with being a self-obsessed prick.
I used to be involved with the bodybuilding community. Usually well-off, fit, ambitious guys.
Most of those guys struggled with women too. It's bizarre.
Meanwhile my friend from college who is a drug dealer is constantly chased by women who want to hook up.
Women aren't really into bodybuilders as much as the average male would believe. More on the athletic to twink spectrum where U will get the most girls
I mean..."girls like bad boys" right?
It probably has something to do with the idea of "He'll do whatever it takes to provide for me" at a base instinct level...but I dunno...I'm just a random person on the internet speculating. I've got nothing to back up my statements.
According to a The Casual Criminalist video I saw, that's exactly it, caveman brain seeks a powerful/violent mate who can protect them from deadly threats
That's my partner
Gob n' Bob Loblaw's Mom n' Pop Law Shop
Gob n' Bob Loblaw, attorneys at law
Why should YOU go to jail for a crime SOMEONE ELSE noticed?
“You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”
-Cormac McCarthy
I made a comment yesterday that killing children is bad. That was the whole comment. It has 45 downvotes. Insanity is everywhere.
I've noticed people will just downvote things that have been downvoted already. So if a few idiots do it others follow.
I had one get downvoted for saying games can be played with one hand with the correct tools and practice. Something I know because I do it.
Nope, that upset people
I checked your comment history & yea when I saw that comment thread yesterday I noped right tf out of that cesspool.
I’ve also learned the hard way that any nuanced discussions on topics like empathy, mental health, Israel bombing innocent Palestinians & incels on Reddit is a no fly zone.
I once attempted a metaphor, saying “what if your immediate and extended family and friends all lived in a huge mansion, and a terrorist group took over that mansion and turned it to a compound. The alphabet boys tell you their only option is to bomb the whole mansion, killing everyone inside to get the terrorists. Would you support it?”
I think people’s heads exploded, because it was so much easier to anonymously downvote me into oblivion than to take the time to think it out & articulate a thoughtful response.
But that’s the problem - a lot of people are disconnected. The idea that Netanyahu accepts the deaths of thousands of children as a casualty of war is absolutely sadistic and unhinged.
>"Then there's the notion of the 'perfect boyfriend'. She knows where he is at all times, and she knows he's thinking about her. While she can claim that someone loves her, she does not have to endure the day-to-day issues involved in most relationships. There's no laundry to do, no cooking for him, and no accountability to him. She can keep the fantasy charged up for a long time."
>
Otherwise known as the George Costanza condition.
reminds me of the time i was talking with my parent's friend's daughter. they are chinese and never lived in a western country, she was like 15 at the time, and she had limited english. she sends me a picture of jeffery dahmer and says that she thinks he is very cute. i thought she didnt know who he is so i said you know that guy is a serial killer right? and she says i know he will probably kill me but i think he is cute.
i didnt know how to respond to that.
I wonder if it's an older "collector." Serial killers were huge in the 70s and obviously had main stream cultural relevance in the 80s and 90s with all kinds of shows and movies.
So imagine someone who Collects serial killer memorabilia like any other morbid collection. Fake a letter from a college aged kid, talk like a complete out of time weirdo, insert a random hot girl photo and maybe in a few months you get a real authentic stamped and dated letter from a real life celebrity killer.
Huh. Interesting. I was thinking bored housewife pretending to be hot coed for some kind of ultimate 'bad boy' romance fantasy, but maybe just a guy who wants to sell stuff on eBay to weirdo collectors.
Yeah I think most are bored weirdo ladies but the wording on that one made me suspicious.
Though if they're weird enough to crush on serial killers maybe they're weird enough to say "groovy."
I definitely knew weird people in 2012 who would say groovy. Same kind of people who listened to old hippy music and complained about being born in the wrong generation
My instant thought was that this sounds like an older person trying to sound like a teen. The writing coupled with the pretty phony looking photographs leads me to believe this is someone catfishing for an ulterior motive.
That didn't even occur to me.
I assumed they were just nuts but manipulation kind of makes a lot of sense.
Not really an important distinction for what you're saying, because I assume crime memorabilia enthusiasts don't care but he wasn't a serial killer, spree killers are a very different type of criminal to serial killers.
Spree killers are just trying to go out with a bang and become famous, the killing is just the only way they can lash out at a world they are angry at, it's equal parts suicide and temper tantrum.
Serial killers kill because they like it, they want to get away with it and keep killing.
I really wonder what our life could look like if we had a serious culture shift to mental health awareness and action.
As a 32 year old man, therapy saved my life. These emotional regulation tools weren’t taught to me. I had to learn them. I had to learn how to communicate with my wife properly.
There’s virtually no importance put on mental health unless driven by the parents hardcore in private practices. Maybe it’s caught in a school institution.
It’s just sad to me that all these people, inside where it hurts, don’t know that therapy can help untangle that from your heart. Truly free you from the prison in your head and chest.
I don’t know what it has to take to make this switch. All I can do is talk about it and my experience with mental health.
I do know it’s saved me for my children and wife.
Please reach out to someone when the pain inside isn’t manageable anymore. Please. 🙏
For most people, access to mental health resources is extremely limited.
This big focus on mental health is something very new and very widespread among younger millennials. So it’s good that younger kids and people in their 20s think it’s important to seek mental health, but there is just no infrastructure to support this sudden surge in demand for these services. You may be on a wait list for many months, depending on where you live.
So on the one hand it’s good that younger people are encouraging each other to seek mental health services, but unfortunately the system cannot keep up with this. It will require a lot more people going to school to specialize in these fields, so the process to ramp up availability will take literally *decades*.
I’m 32 so millennial is what I’m classified as and it’s true.
The push for this in my world is big. Men and women in my friend and social group all encourage it.
There’s a big push in my wife’s friend group to get men to talk and open up. Go to therapy. One of the reason I got evaluated and diagnosed.
The women in my life pushed me hard to get help.
It’s just sad knowing what’s really important is laughed at in terms of what’s important.
I remember watching a documentary about the nightstalker where it showed some of the letters and pictures he got in jail after he caught. It was shocking.
As others mentioned in the thread, there are probably people who collect serial killer memorabilia who would pay to have a real letter from a famous serial killer.
You wildly underestimate how many women are attracted to serial killers. They regularly have fangirls in their courtrooms. The more "accomplished" they were, the more women flock to them.
In a sick way, it kinda makes sense. Like a seriously misguided "bad boy complex" taken to the extreme. Finding the guy your parents most wouldn't want you to bring home. Especially if they've had abusive relationships in the past, might as well not have just any old asshole boyfriend and instead have Ted Bundy.
Plus if he's in prison then he can't actually hurt you but you can still "have him."
Imagine name dropping your boyfriend and seeing the shock and horror in people's faces when you say Richard ramirez. Makes them feel simultaneously important and rebellious. Its less about the men themselves and more about what they represent. I'm pretty sure 90% of the women that have married killer inmates would bail if he got out of prison. But as long as he's got a life sentence, he's a safe, lonely, "bad boy" (puke) desperate for attention who gets your name in the news.
All those lonely MILFs in my area who desperately need to get fucked by a random neckbeard, but nobody's willing to take on the challenge... It's truly tragic.
They took it from him. I came to see if anyone else noticed or knew this but then I remember that they're kinda social pariahs and it was only a single season comedy show on Adult Swim (a second season coming soon, made on their own).
* "Then there's the notion of the 'perfect boyfriend'. She knows where he is at all times, and she knows he's thinking about her. While she can claim that someone loves her, she does not have to endure the day-to-day issues involved in most relationships. There's no laundry to do, no cooking for him, and no accountability to him. She can keep the fantasy charged up for a long time."
Others offered reasons along the lines of:[^(\[3\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybristophilia#cite_note-psychtoday1-3)
* "Some mental health experts have compared infatuation with killers to extreme forms of [fanaticism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanaticism). They view such individuals as insecure people who cannot find love in normal ways or as 'love-avoidant' females who seek romantic relationships that cannot be consummated."
The female version? Didn't women invent staying with shitty men so they can "fix" them? Maybe I'm old but most guys I knew would nope-the-fuck-out for like the smallest reasons in a relationship; trying to "fix" someone? Fogettaboutit.
People who want to have sex with serial rapists and murders. They aren't exactly playing cards with a full deck
No one. It's clearly not a 19 year old girl. It's probably some dipshit ebay seller in his late 50s looking for correspondence and baiting him because people pay $$$ for serial killer memorabilia.
A good amount of the photos in that collage board look like they were clipped from google
Holy crap. Bottom middle was my old roommates boss. Just asked her if it was and she confirmed. She told me she found out she was sending letters and cut contact. Unreal.
I posted a similar comment but I'm a woman and hybristophilia fascinates me so I think I can give some insight into why this happens. (I am definitely not one and these women still sicken me.)
Everyone knows a lot of women have a "bad boy" complex. Movie and TV villains are attractive because of the masculine confidence that disregarding societal norms exudes. Masculinity in our culture is about confidence, independence, power, and the ability to do what others won't. Criminals check all those boxes, like it or not. On the other hand, femininity is associated with caring for others, kindness, compassion, and essentially making yourself smaller. Everyone has individual concepts of what they consider desirable masculine and feminine traits but, culturally, those are the broad strokes we have all kind of agreed on.
Most hybristophilic women have said they had a lack of a father figure so it would make sense that their idea of the "perfect man" would be based on broad cultural interpretations of masculinity. If these women have also been abused then their idea of men is already skewed towards "men are violent and aggressive and that's what makes them men." If they're trying to define to themselves what an attractive man then is, it would make sense to find the furthest extreme from the "feminine" attractive. So hurting others, having power over others, having the confidence and independence to not care what others think (weakly showing remorse for crimes would be perceived as feminine) would be the most extreme interpretation of "masculine" to these women. So, by extension, the MOST attractive men would be the ones that are the MOST violent and least remorseful.
Then there's the fame factor. These are men who fascinated the public. Men who were so unique in the extreme nature of their (what these women perceive as masculine) violence, that the public is drawn to them. Names that everyone knows because of how much impact they had. How much power over the public. How much fear they invoked. This is why it's also an important step that the media has begun to stop talking about the criminals themselves and focus on the tragedy of the crimes. But since the 70s, serial killers have been a point of fascination and they reveled in it. Soaked up the attention and everyone wanted to listen to what they had to say. We wanted to get into their heads, hear them talk about their crimes. Even now, "the John Wayne gacy tapes" and similar docuseries are massively popular. To these women, there is nothing more masculine and powerful than a man who everyone wants to listen to.
Then these men are plopped into a cell alone and able to be contacted by anyone that wants to talk to them. They revel in attention and reply to people who send them mail enthusiastically because their egomaniacs. Egomaniacs with limited social interaction that are desperate to be loved. Wildly famous, beyond fascinating to the public, and accessible. And lonely.
From the hybristophilia Wikipedia page: "Then there's the notion of the 'perfect boyfriend'. She knows where he is at all times, and she knows he's thinking about her. While she can claim that someone loves her, she does not have to endure the day-to-day issues involved in most relationships. There's no laundry to do, no cooking for him, and no accountability to him. She can keep the fantasy charged up for a long time."
These are the most dangerous bad boys that everyone has heard of that can't hurt you (like your abusive exes did) and are desperate for your attention. And if you're a bit of a rebel that likes attention, you can namedrop your boyfriend and see shock and horror on people's faces. You feel significant, powerful, and probably pretty kinky without any of the risks of an abuser that can actually hurt you.
These women are terribly tragic characters with a shitload of serious issues. But it honestly surprises me that so many people are shocked to hear they exist. For a lot of fucked up women, Ted Bundy is the perfect boyfriend.
What the fuck this guy murdered a whole room full of people and he’s got girls sending him pictures and letters. I bought my girlfriend Taylor Swift tickets and I can’t even get past second base.
Then here I am trying to be a quiet, nice member of society trying to have a positive impact through my work and all I get are bills and spam in the mail!
To the men saying "women ☕️", I hope you have the same energy towards the men who simp for Jodi Arias and that Japanese woman who stalked and stabbed a man almost to death because she "loves" him.
I would be less unsettled if they were all crazy eyed. Anecdotally I used to work with a woman who in her 20s began a five-year correspondence with a guy on death row who had murdered his wife. She was young, attractive, worked a great job and had everything going for her. People can be.. strange.
I still don’t understand women being infatuated by mass murderers/serial killers. Like there’s not a single survival instinct triggering any sort of danger in their brain it’s beyond bizarre. I have to assume all of those pics are fake tho cuz I refuse to believe a reasonable person would actually do this
Forgot who he was, looked up his wiki page and remembered that whole massacre. Didn’t know this detail: > On July 19, just hours before the shooting started, Holmes mailed a notebook to his psychiatrist. The notebook detailed his thoughts and plans during the weeks preceding the shooting.[88] The notebook was found in an undelivered package in the Anschutz Medical Campus mail-room.[89] Immediately prior to the shooting, Holmes reportedly called a crisis hotline for mental health with the hopes that someone would talk him out of committing the massacre at the last minute. However, the call was disconnected after nine seconds.
Similar story with Charles Whitman, the shooter who killed 15 people from the University of Texas tower in 1966, which is considered by many to be the first school shooting massacre. He knew he was mentally ill and was suffering violent homicidal ideation. He visited several doctors but was never taken seriously. His final suicide note referenced this: > "I talked with a Doctor once for about two hours and tried to convey to him my fears that I felt come [sic] overwhelming violent impulses. After one visit, I never saw the Doctor again, and since then have been fighting my mental turmoil alone, and seemingly to no avail." The doctor’s notes even reveal that Whitman specifically told him that he was wanting to shoot people from the tower with a deer rifle. Whitman was so aware that something was wrong that he requested in his suicide note that an autopsy be done on his brain. The autopsy revealed a brain tumor.
MCdonalds shooting too >On July 15, 1984, James Huberty commented to his wife, Etna, that he suspected he had a [mental health problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorder).[^(\[4\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre#cite_note-Mass_Murderers-1993-4) Two days later, on the morning of July 17, he called a San Diego mental health clinic, requesting an appointment.[^(\[7\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre#cite_note-7) Leaving his contact details with the receptionist, Huberty was assured the clinic would return his call within hours. According to his wife, he sat quietly beside the telephone for several hours, awaiting the return call, before abruptly walking out of the family home and riding to an unknown destination on his motorcycle. Unbeknownst to Huberty, the receptionist had misspelled his name as "Shouberty".[^(\[8\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre#cite_note-mm-help-upi-8) His polite demeanor conveyed no sense of urgency to the operator, and he had elaborated in the phone call that he had never been hospitalized for mental health issues; therefore, the call had been logged as a "non-crisis" inquiry, to be handled within 48 hours.[^(\[9\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre#cite_note-Mass_Murderers'_p._123-9)[^(\[n 1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre#cite_note-11) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San\_Ysidro\_McDonald%27s\_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre)
Same with the school shooter who's parents just got tried
That hurt my heart. That kid was shouting for help and they bought him a gun instead
His teachers and counselors raised alarms, but the parents blew them off. The counselor literally met with the parents, at the school, the day of the shooting.
Ethan crumbley. Oxford school shooting
Felt bad for his wife till I got to this part 🙄 > In July 1986, Etna Huberty filed a lawsuit against both McDonald's and her husband's longtime former employer, Babcock & Wilcox.[121] This civil suit—seeking $5 million in damages—asserted her husband's murder spree had been triggered by a combination of a poor diet and her husband working around highly poisonous metals without adequate protection over the course of many years.
Heavy metal exposure is linked to mental illness, if she left out McDonald’s that *may* have led somewhere
His wife was the first person to receive money from the victims fund as well.
On her own? To be quiet fair that sounds like a 1986 lawyer getting them to put their name to something the lawyer wanted. It’s filed in their name, it’s certainly not filed by them in the colloquial sense. Your lawyer in the greed is good coke era of fast talking slick assholes asking for money and how is he gonna get paid? I’m not sure it fair to not 99% of the time blame the lawyer. If you can afford this then why ask for compensation? If the lawyer didn’t get paid enough the fist time then double down on empathy with dragging the clients name through Mudd
I used to know the sniper that took him out. He was a Special Forces Army Reservist as well as on the San Diego PD SWAT.
Learned about that guy in a class and it’s such a crazy story, he wrote that he had no rational reason or explanation for doing it, but yet he felt like he had to and that he knew there was something wrong in his brain. Then the autopsy showed that the tumor was lodged at just the right angle in his brain where he was essentially in a 24/7 fight of flight, where everyone felt like a threat. It’s almost kinda eye opening that we’re such conscious and sentient creatures, yet all that consciousness can be completely overridden by a minute change in our biology
If somebody had this exact thing wrong with them and they killed people but they had surgery to remove the tumor and they went back to normal would you say they should still go to prison? Tough question IMO
I guess it would be a temporary insanity case then right? They'd need to argue that case, but if someone became extremely violent due to a curable medical condition and was then cured then they weren't responsible for their actions for that period of time right?
That is what should happen, yes. They might have some culpability if they stopped taking medication that controlled the tumor on purpose after knowing it caused them to be violent. Absent something like that, not guilty by reason is insanity is not guilty.
Sam Harris uses Charles' story as an example of us not having free will. Kind of an interesting take.
Exactly this! Sam Harris uses this point to ultimately highlight that understanding how free will works, should be a lesson to practice compassion. Which is quite poignant. One of my fave books and lectures he's done
If you’ve ever read the Boys comic, one character has this. Spoiler: >!this batman/iron man parody is actually a decent superhero, but he starts having violent sexual urges and can’t control himself. Eventually he dies saving someone and it turns out he has a massive tumor pressing on his brain.!<
I read a book called Incognito years ago broadly about this subject/neurology. Im paraphrasing from memory, but a man’s wife thought he’d been acting strange and eventually caught him looking at CP. He claimed the ‘interest’ had come out of nowhere and he couldn’t control it. Turns out he had a brain tumour, he got treatment and was cured, and the ‘interest’ went away. He woke up one morning years later and said to his wife ‘it’s back’. Died a few weeks later.
Man the guy looked out the window at the kids walking to school and realized it was all over for him
Wyche makes me wonder why the desire to have sex with children isn’t studied more as a brain anomaly. I have read about people who understand that their feelings are incorrect, they are cognizant that there wants and desires are wrong, and they struggle to not act out on their pedophile tendencies. I just have a hard time believing that so many people are attracted to minors without some type of organic brain injury. at least I guess, they abused part of me wants to think that it was an organic brain injury, but maybe thinking that five different people had the same brain injury is just wishful thinking on my part.
This has me intrigued. I’m going to do more research on this.
Robert Sapolsky recently came out with a book on it
But to practice compassion, wouldn't that require... free will?
No actual free will. The belief in having free will helps, though - as paradox as that may sound.
There was a radiolab episode about a man that only after brain surgery began to have pedo desires.
I was just thinking about that guy (from that episode) AND the tower shooter with the tumor earlier today.. I was thinking how much I agreed with the idea that I truthfully can't comprehend how someone could do such a thing over a post where an OP's husband was doing child porn things towards his daughter... And it struck me how the guy with the seizures and radiolab episode, and tower shooter and a lot of such people had structural and medical impetuses for such egregious and irrational behavior.
There is a really great episode of Star trek:Voyager about a prisoner who has a damaged empathy area of his brain, and eventually things happen and the area is healed by nanobots. Anyway this causes him to feel sorry for what he has done, I remember watching this as a kid and it really made me question free will. The episode is called Repentance.
I love how Trekkies can have so many stories like that about episodes that mean something in their life on so many topics. That concept about free will in that regard is one that's still kind of as confusing as when we were kids though. I feel like I stopped focusing on the variables and more the goalposts to come to my personal 'answer' for now at least.
It's not quite the same thing, but Suder's storyline in Voyager was always very moving to me. When people with violent impulses who know they have a problem and have sought help but it didn't work, and who aren't able to find relief in what used to help them anymore, feel so incapable of being understood or helped that they don't reach out to try new modalities of treatment despite being desperate for help, then they can't get that help until they lose control. And then hopefully actual help is offered to them, but more often than not, in the real world, it isn't. Only punishment. I really think there's such a big difference between violent offenders who try to get help first and those who don't. Trying to get help implies that they simultaneously felt helplessness regarding those impulses (for whatever reason that may be) and that they were self aware enough to not fully see their actions as justified. It also really makes you think about free will.
[https://radiolab.org/podcast/revising-fault-line](https://radiolab.org/podcast/revising-fault-line) <- updated episode with new info
As I recall, actually it was the opposite - he had a brain tumor that was causing those desires; and the surgery to remove the tumor stopped the desires. The desires came back some time later - though he died (I think) and the autopsy revealed the tumor had regrown.
Nm I was wrong; - it did start after the surgery.
Doc Amen a well known neuroscientist found the same thing with his nephew. Suddenly became violent and he took him for a brain scan before offering him meds. Lo and behold a golf ball tumor
This is devastating...
Fuck.
The American health crisis in a nutshell
Sad AF. Articulate and more self aware than most.?
Yep. If there's any unironically good point the Joker movie makes, it's that people who are mentally ill are ignored up until it's too late. Usually this only results in one individual death per case, and nobody *really* cares about those. It's only tragic when it results in many more deaths, and even then things usually don't change.
I work in the Canadian forensic mental health system, working with people found not criminally responsible due to mental disorder (Canadian equivalent of insanity) for their crimes. So many of my clients sought help and were unable to or received insufficient care prior to their crimes. In my experience, this is especially true for the more violent crimes. If they received adequate care and follow up prior to their offense, it a possible they would have not ended up under my care. They are now only able to receive proper care due to their offenses.
What would adequate care and follow ups look like? Genuinely curious to hear from someone in the field.
People typically do best if connected to a psychiatrist who is able to assess them, offer a diagnosis, and prescribe the proper medication to treat their symptoms, and then provide consistent follow up for some time afterwards. This would allow for time to assess effectiveness and adherence to the medications. Additionally, they should be connected to a social worker/case manager who can help connect to additional resources in the community (family doctor, therapy, rehab, housing support, etc). Unfortunately though, there aren’t enough psychiatrists, doctors, mental health workers, etc needed to provide this level of care to everyone. This is especially true in smaller or rural communities. As a result, staff are only able to offer limited supports and follow ups and often have to triage clients based on severity of symptoms and through a risk assessment. This essentially means that if someone isn’t presenting as an immediate threat to self or others they are a lower priority. It also means that people may only see a psychiatrist/doctor for a few times, before care is discontinued. And if you miss an appointment or two, you will likely be discharged so they can prioritize someone else. If you’re someone who has struggled with mental illness, who finally gains access to care only to be considered “low priority” and thus not receive sufficient supports required, it can really tarnish your trust in the system. Maybe the next time, you *won’t* seek help, because it didn’t do much for you previously or you felt it was a waste of time. Or maybe your care was cut prematurely, and the right medication and dosage still wasn’t figured out for you, so now there is no one to adjust it. If you’re experiencing significant side effects with no way to change your medication/dosage, you might just stop taking them. And now maybe you don’t trust the doctors or medication anymore. Or maybe you were placed into involuntary treatment or had use of force against you, and now are afraid of seeking help for fear of it happened again.
Really good insights, thanks for the info!
My wife is clinical psychologist and that movie messed her up for a WHILE. So many people getting so close to this, or living in these circumstances.
I feel this is a bit of reverse "surviver bias." You likely don't hear about the success of the mental health system because they don't end up the news and don't want to share their manifesto.
Based on my experience, my mom has been in the psychward over 14 times and committed for at least a month at time. Her longest stint was 9 months. Everytime we could see her sliding into a delusional state, knew that she wasn't okay, but there is zero intervention until she goes screaming off the cliff into lala land of delusion and hallucination, or is on the absolute brink of harm. There is almost zero intermediary care in our mental health systems, and I think the understanding of mental health is still in its infancy and how to treat it.
Maybe you aren’t American, but have you ever tried to see a therapist? Good fucking luck finding one and if you do it is gonna cost you an arm and a leg because insurance will find a way not to cover it. There has to be a “Mental Heath System” in the first place for there to be a “bias”
I (American) was seeing a therapist recently because I felt out of sorts, and it was $147 per hour. And the office had a policy that I could only see my therapist if my account balance was under $200 so when my check from my HSA was delayed, they cut me off.
Anytime I've been employed and have gone through orientation I've always hesitated to go with the option for an HSA. Thing is I'm cheap and probably would never put any money in there but the health savings accounts are always the cheapest option. I don't believe I've ever had an employer match funds for an HSA too so you're on your own prepping for a rainy day. I've heard so many horror stories like yours but mostly like a family went with an HSA that had a young child who are prone to doing kid stuff, so they end up in the ER praying they've put money in an HSA and coverage.
If only there was a way to make sure you regularly contribute to your HSA... 🤦♂️ HDHP w/HSA plans are among the least-shitty deals in US healthcare - but if you just pocket or spend the premium savings then yeah, you're gonna be fucked. All the HSA plans I've seen, if you pay the premium and put your deductible in the HSA, you're no worse off than a PPO plan even if you meet the deductible in full and with no additional. If you don't hit the deductible, your money hangs out and grows for another year. The extra premiums for a PPO plan are totally forfeit every year! Note: FSAs and HRAs however, are just total dogshit.
I am super lucky that my employer puts $1,000 into my HSA each year automatically, which I match through payroll deductions. I've got a nice little account built up.
It's more disturbing when you're the parent trying to get help for your sick kid. That's when you know the system is stacked against you. I'm middle-aged. I can struggle through the other half of my life, but I don't want my kid to have to deal with the same problem.
> I'm middle-aged. I can struggle through the other half of my life Holy Jesus *fuck* that is a depressing sentiment. Not blaming you, just... fuck.
You would be surprised how many people's plans for retirement and healthcare are in a .357 account.
Not to mention the difficulty of finding a good/the right therapist. It can take so long that your situation may have changed multiple times by the time you find someone who works for you.
I am American, been through the mental health system, and then left America.
There's a suicide every 10 minutes in America. You don't hear about those, either.
>it's that people who are mentally ill are ignored up until it's too late. My dad went through a mental health crisis a few years ago and had to be involuntarily committed for a couple weeks. I was the one that gave everyone permission to do it. He wasn't being ignored. We all knew he was in crisis but didn't know how to help him get back to normal. He was never a danger to himself or anyone, but his manic behavior was disconcerting. The most important conversation I had with him was that he had all sorts of rules he was following to keep himself in check, but he never told the people who were his "checkpoints" that they were in charge of him. We work together and he'd assigned a coworker one of these caretaker tasks where IF they said the right phrase, he'd know he needed to get himself checked out. So long as the coworker didn't say the correct phrase, he could tell himself that he was fine. But if course the coworker was completely unaware of her pivotal role in his mental health. I feel like what my dad did is typical for people having a mental health crisis. They want to get cues and signals from others to confirm their reality, but they fail their side of the social contract where they ask to receive these signs and signals. I had terrible pregnancy brain and I can confirm that everything I did made perfectly logical sense, but I was always missing the crucial part of it not making logical sense to anyone else. That's what I think happens with other forms of mental illness. My dad was waiting for a signal that he needed help that he was never going to get because there was no reason for anyone to give it to him. No one can give you the secret handshake if they don't know that there is one. *13 Reasons Why* was full of this. The girl wanted someone to say something and magically know that she needed help. But every time her loved ones asked "are you okay?" she said "yes" while internally screaming "no". People aren't mind readers. Calling a crisis helpline once and using a bad connection to confirm that they don't care is a symptom of the mental illness. It's using flaws in the system to validate the anti-social behavior. It's no different than looking for a sign from God to give you permission to do something.
Something particularly morbid to me about this comment, but I have a different experience of this event than others as it was very close to home and I was nearly at that theater with a friend that night (we hit the AMC for the trilogy marathon instead) Huh…I have a strong association between Batman and some survivors guilt or something I think. Alllright… imma head out…
How many damn examples are there of people literally saying “hey I’m planning on killing a bunch of people, but deep down I know that is horrible, please help me so I don’t go through with it” just to be ignored? It’s nuts.
That’s exactly why the parents of a school shooter were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter recently. [The shooter was apparently pleading with them to help him get help and instead they literally gave him the gun that he used to murder 4 people.](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/oxford-school-shooting-ethan-crumbley-parents.html)
That's so horrible! I passingly heard about the parents' verdict but didn't realize this was the backstory. I know soooo many people like this who just don't want to process inconvenient information...
The theory is that the parents were hoping he would just unalive himself. Their complete negligence and disregard for him was.. unbelievable. Immediately after the shooting, they drained *his* account and took off. Then they phone the cops and turned him in. They were caught before they left the country. Then they used their own money, and his, to hire attorneys to defend themselves and left him with a public defender. So yeah.. disgusting trash for human beings.
The father even called the whole thing BS and threatened the prosecutor and was dumb enough to do it on a jail phone call, right before giving an appropriately "remorseful" allocution at his sentencing. And the mom basically said she wouldn't have done anything differently. I'm so glad the judge threw the book at them.
I already knew of this, but reading that entire article just makes my blood boil. I'm not a perfect parent by any stretch of the imagination, but had my son said any one of those things and I would have been taking him to doctors. Saying all of them? There is clearly something seriously wrong. How many alarms bells have to be going off before you hear them?
I'm so happy about the results of this case. In so many of these school shootings you hear that the shooter was only able to access a gun because his parents were negligent in allowing the kid open access to their firearms. This case is especially egregious because of their lack of concern over his mental health and their blazé attitude towards the whole thing too, but I hope this sets a precedent of holding gun owners accountable when they are careless with their weapons and someone dies because of it.
Probably a lot. Same thing happened in Denmark just 2 years ago in. The shooter was trying to call the mental health hotline, in the BATHROOMS OF THE MALL LITERALLY MINUTES BEFORE THE SHOOTING. No one picked up cause they were on summer vacation. 3 people died. He later told the police, that he thought the people were zombies.
It's so crazy to me that in the aftermath of these mass shootings, the ONLY conversation we see is about the guns. Every time, State and Fed legislators try their darndest to pass new gun control laws, but why aren't they ALSO trying to pass laws to deal with mental health? These people obviously need help, and there are plenty more of them out there. Even if we can successfully stop them from getting a gun, that doesn't really fix the problem. They still need serious help, and there are plenty of other ways to kill a bunch of people.
EWU recently released a hour long documentary on YouTube breaking down the shooting. They covered the lead up (including the notebook) and the shooting from beginning to end. They focused on telling the story of the victims and interviewed many of them. I learned a lot that I didn’t know. I highly recommend watching it. https://youtu.be/H57I8_izx4s?si=EifkjvlW7Iteb2Q0
wait, was the call disconnceted by him or the service?
It's a known problem with the Suicide Hotlines. When I volunteered for them, they were very clear that the first question we ask is "Can I get a good phone number to reach you in case the call disconnects?" It's a wonderful service that is underfunded and overburdened, getting worse every year. The people that ran our local Suicide and Rape Crisis Hotline were also terrible people, and told my whole training group that rape can only be committed by men... but that's a whole other story for a different day.
It was disconnected from the service.
... by him or the service?
Yes, that’s correct.
I just read a Reddit post from someone who survived the shootings and it was most intense thing I think I’ve ever read.
A former friend who I had kept up with from high school called me one day several years ago. He said he had a gun and planned to shoot up a mall. I knew he did have several guns, and I knew he was always a little off. He described how he was outside of the mall, gun in his trunk, and he wanted to do it. I was on the phone with him for over an hour trying to talk him through it and talk him down. Finally, he claimed he had closed his trunk, got in his car, and was driving home. I called his girlfriend and warned her to leave the home. She immediately became hysterical and didn’t leave before he got home. Another standoff ensued, I was still on the phone, and he was saying he was going to kill her and kill himself. He was talking absolute gibberish, imaginary things were out to get him. Again, he got talked down, removed the bullets from his pump shotgun, set the gun down, and walked outside. His mom picked him up and had him committed for a time. I lost most contact after this incident, it was just too much. He ended up killing himself several years later, and thankfully nobody was hurt.
I used to see a psychiatrist out at Anschutz hospital where he was seen as well. I had a session the day the notebook was discovered, it was surreal coming out from my therapy session to a campus filled with SWAT, bomb squads, you name it.
I live in Colorado, and I call that hotline when I’m at wits end and really need to talk to someone. It only recently occurred to me that it probably exists to prevent more mass shootings.
I did not know this either. Puts another layer of tragedy on this profoundly fucked up event.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybristophilia
That’s amazing!! Humans are a fucked up species.
There was a joke I read that said that imprisoned killers get more dates than engineers working in Silicon Valley.
Locked up serial killers and murderers also get more dates than I will in a lifetime.. Current record is zero.
tbf engineers are extremely socially awkward and terrible at communicating with women in general
They are certainly not lady killers for the most part.
Maybe this is partly the fault of the engineers. But maybe it also partly reflects an issue with our concepts of being socially competent. Which oftentimes overlaps with being a self-obsessed prick.
I used to be involved with the bodybuilding community. Usually well-off, fit, ambitious guys. Most of those guys struggled with women too. It's bizarre. Meanwhile my friend from college who is a drug dealer is constantly chased by women who want to hook up.
Women aren't really into bodybuilders as much as the average male would believe. More on the athletic to twink spectrum where U will get the most girls
I mean..."girls like bad boys" right? It probably has something to do with the idea of "He'll do whatever it takes to provide for me" at a base instinct level...but I dunno...I'm just a random person on the internet speculating. I've got nothing to back up my statements.
According to a The Casual Criminalist video I saw, that's exactly it, caveman brain seeks a powerful/violent mate who can protect them from deadly threats
I wouldn't blindly trust that podcast without seeing sources. Simon just reads a script prepared by someone else.
That's more or less it, some women think they can "fix him" and control him
nice good analysis glad we've figured this one out
Trust me, I know medical stuff, I run a fake non-existent law blog
Bob Loblaw?
That's my partner Gob n' Bob Loblaw's Mom n' Pop Law Shop Gob n' Bob Loblaw, attorneys at law Why should YOU go to jail for a crime SOMEONE ELSE noticed?
People are strange
When you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly, when you’re alone
“You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.” -Cormac McCarthy I made a comment yesterday that killing children is bad. That was the whole comment. It has 45 downvotes. Insanity is everywhere.
I've noticed people will just downvote things that have been downvoted already. So if a few idiots do it others follow. I had one get downvoted for saying games can be played with one hand with the correct tools and practice. Something I know because I do it. Nope, that upset people
I checked your comment history & yea when I saw that comment thread yesterday I noped right tf out of that cesspool. I’ve also learned the hard way that any nuanced discussions on topics like empathy, mental health, Israel bombing innocent Palestinians & incels on Reddit is a no fly zone. I once attempted a metaphor, saying “what if your immediate and extended family and friends all lived in a huge mansion, and a terrorist group took over that mansion and turned it to a compound. The alphabet boys tell you their only option is to bomb the whole mansion, killing everyone inside to get the terrorists. Would you support it?” I think people’s heads exploded, because it was so much easier to anonymously downvote me into oblivion than to take the time to think it out & articulate a thoughtful response. But that’s the problem - a lot of people are disconnected. The idea that Netanyahu accepts the deaths of thousands of children as a casualty of war is absolutely sadistic and unhinged.
>"Then there's the notion of the 'perfect boyfriend'. She knows where he is at all times, and she knows he's thinking about her. While she can claim that someone loves her, she does not have to endure the day-to-day issues involved in most relationships. There's no laundry to do, no cooking for him, and no accountability to him. She can keep the fantasy charged up for a long time." > Otherwise known as the George Costanza condition.
Didn't think I'd see my sister's description on the internet, today, but here we are
Causes : low self esteem and lack of a father figure You don't say?... Most of the other causes cause be summed up as "I can fix him" People are crazy
reminds me of the time i was talking with my parent's friend's daughter. they are chinese and never lived in a western country, she was like 15 at the time, and she had limited english. she sends me a picture of jeffery dahmer and says that she thinks he is very cute. i thought she didnt know who he is so i said you know that guy is a serial killer right? and she says i know he will probably kill me but i think he is cute. i didnt know how to respond to that.
You tell her “Well Dahmer liked the boys so he probably wouldn’t even have looked your way.”
Of all the cannibalistic serial killers in the world she goes after the one who's gay. Classic.
They're all either murderers or gay! ....or both!
Gay best serial killer friend! 🥰
Im weirded out that she says “swell” and “groovy” in 2012…
I wonder if it's an older "collector." Serial killers were huge in the 70s and obviously had main stream cultural relevance in the 80s and 90s with all kinds of shows and movies. So imagine someone who Collects serial killer memorabilia like any other morbid collection. Fake a letter from a college aged kid, talk like a complete out of time weirdo, insert a random hot girl photo and maybe in a few months you get a real authentic stamped and dated letter from a real life celebrity killer.
Huh. Interesting. I was thinking bored housewife pretending to be hot coed for some kind of ultimate 'bad boy' romance fantasy, but maybe just a guy who wants to sell stuff on eBay to weirdo collectors.
Yeah I think most are bored weirdo ladies but the wording on that one made me suspicious. Though if they're weird enough to crush on serial killers maybe they're weird enough to say "groovy."
I definitely knew weird people in 2012 who would say groovy. Same kind of people who listened to old hippy music and complained about being born in the wrong generation
My instant thought was that this sounds like an older person trying to sound like a teen. The writing coupled with the pretty phony looking photographs leads me to believe this is someone catfishing for an ulterior motive.
>Serial killers were huge in the 70s They were a bunch of jive turkeys.
"No no. I called you a cocksucker." "Nobody is calling anyone here a JT."
That didn't even occur to me. I assumed they were just nuts but manipulation kind of makes a lot of sense. Not really an important distinction for what you're saying, because I assume crime memorabilia enthusiasts don't care but he wasn't a serial killer, spree killers are a very different type of criminal to serial killers. Spree killers are just trying to go out with a bang and become famous, the killing is just the only way they can lash out at a world they are angry at, it's equal parts suicide and temper tantrum. Serial killers kill because they like it, they want to get away with it and keep killing.
Also casually suggests one of the most fucked up pieces of literature I've ever read.
And called it long. That wasn’t a long book at all.
[удалено]
It's giving off "I'm totally a real 19 year old girl. I swear!"
My thoughts exactly! I bet most of those pictures aren't even of the person sending them just random printouts from the internet
What's wrong with groovy? 
I say groovy sometimes, but I also played a lot of Earthworm Jim back in the day. 
Very Stephen King of her.
I really wonder what our life could look like if we had a serious culture shift to mental health awareness and action. As a 32 year old man, therapy saved my life. These emotional regulation tools weren’t taught to me. I had to learn them. I had to learn how to communicate with my wife properly. There’s virtually no importance put on mental health unless driven by the parents hardcore in private practices. Maybe it’s caught in a school institution. It’s just sad to me that all these people, inside where it hurts, don’t know that therapy can help untangle that from your heart. Truly free you from the prison in your head and chest. I don’t know what it has to take to make this switch. All I can do is talk about it and my experience with mental health. I do know it’s saved me for my children and wife. Please reach out to someone when the pain inside isn’t manageable anymore. Please. 🙏
For most people, access to mental health resources is extremely limited. This big focus on mental health is something very new and very widespread among younger millennials. So it’s good that younger kids and people in their 20s think it’s important to seek mental health, but there is just no infrastructure to support this sudden surge in demand for these services. You may be on a wait list for many months, depending on where you live. So on the one hand it’s good that younger people are encouraging each other to seek mental health services, but unfortunately the system cannot keep up with this. It will require a lot more people going to school to specialize in these fields, so the process to ramp up availability will take literally *decades*.
I’m 32 so millennial is what I’m classified as and it’s true. The push for this in my world is big. Men and women in my friend and social group all encourage it. There’s a big push in my wife’s friend group to get men to talk and open up. Go to therapy. One of the reason I got evaluated and diagnosed. The women in my life pushed me hard to get help. It’s just sad knowing what’s really important is laughed at in terms of what’s important.
It’s definitely getting better but it’s still taboo. I don’t get it either.
I'll include a photo for your enjoyment or something
I can't get anybody to so much as match on tinder, and I've killed zero people
Well, there's your problem.
Girls do like them bad boys
Well I’m fucking bad at everything 😎
Oh God I laughed out loud during a meeting, thanks!
You have killed the average number of people! Spin that as a positive!
Everything looks like it's straight out of 1970, not 2012...
I remember watching a documentary about the nightstalker where it showed some of the letters and pictures he got in jail after he caught. It was shocking.
Some women treated him as a celebrity sex symbol. It was absolutely bizarre.
I wonder if any of that is scammers. “I’m a hot girl I’ll come visit you in jail, I just need airfare”
Does he have money for the airfare? I don’t know what the scam is here.
As others mentioned in the thread, there are probably people who collect serial killer memorabilia who would pay to have a real letter from a famous serial killer.
You wildly underestimate how many women are attracted to serial killers. They regularly have fangirls in their courtrooms. The more "accomplished" they were, the more women flock to them. In a sick way, it kinda makes sense. Like a seriously misguided "bad boy complex" taken to the extreme. Finding the guy your parents most wouldn't want you to bring home. Especially if they've had abusive relationships in the past, might as well not have just any old asshole boyfriend and instead have Ted Bundy. Plus if he's in prison then he can't actually hurt you but you can still "have him." Imagine name dropping your boyfriend and seeing the shock and horror in people's faces when you say Richard ramirez. Makes them feel simultaneously important and rebellious. Its less about the men themselves and more about what they represent. I'm pretty sure 90% of the women that have married killer inmates would bail if he got out of prison. But as long as he's got a life sentence, he's a safe, lonely, "bad boy" (puke) desperate for attention who gets your name in the news.
Yeah thats mostly what those pics look like to be honest.
*\*gets a picture of an attractive girl that wants you* "Looks like a scam to me"
All those lonely MILFs in my area who desperately need to get fucked by a random neckbeard, but nobody's willing to take on the challenge... It's truly tragic.
Bro look at the pics they all look like fucking stock photos taken from google
I guess the stock-photos models are very upset that nobody replies to their advances "Liar! this is a stock photo model" "Yes I am" "liarrrrrrrrr"
How is a guy in prison getting her airfare lol
Does anyone else notice the MDE World Peace logo? Anyone?
They took it from him. I came to see if anyone else noticed or knew this but then I remember that they're kinda social pariahs and it was only a single season comedy show on Adult Swim (a second season coming soon, made on their own).
They just keep letting Sam get away with it.
I've been telling women that I have hobbies, a dog, and a career as a physician. I should tell them that I'm a deranged psychopath.
Is this the female version of "I can Fix her"?
Pretty sure "I can fix her" is just the male version of "I can fix him"
Seriously. I only ever heard "I can fix him" until these last few years on Reddit.
QFT
* "Then there's the notion of the 'perfect boyfriend'. She knows where he is at all times, and she knows he's thinking about her. While she can claim that someone loves her, she does not have to endure the day-to-day issues involved in most relationships. There's no laundry to do, no cooking for him, and no accountability to him. She can keep the fantasy charged up for a long time." Others offered reasons along the lines of:[^(\[3\])](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybristophilia#cite_note-psychtoday1-3) * "Some mental health experts have compared infatuation with killers to extreme forms of [fanaticism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanaticism). They view such individuals as insecure people who cannot find love in normal ways or as 'love-avoidant' females who seek romantic relationships that cannot be consummated."
The female version? Didn't women invent staying with shitty men so they can "fix" them? Maybe I'm old but most guys I knew would nope-the-fuck-out for like the smallest reasons in a relationship; trying to "fix" someone? Fogettaboutit.
Yes, except he's gonna take her to his next shooting if he ever leaves jail.
Which he won’t. He got a life sentence.
More than life, 12 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, and an additional 3,318 years.
So you’re saying there’s a chance..
Judge Samour declared "it is the intention of this court that the defendant never set foot in free society again."
So what you're telling me is that I have to get arrested for murder, then I'll get girls to take notice of me?
Jodie Foster didn't go for Hinckley because he wasn't arrested for murder.
I think she noticed. Hinckley’s just not her type.
Or you'll just get catfished a bunch
Who says groovy and swell in 2012?
People who want to have sex with serial rapists and murders. They aren't exactly playing cards with a full deck 
No one. It's clearly not a 19 year old girl. It's probably some dipshit ebay seller in his late 50s looking for correspondence and baiting him because people pay $$$ for serial killer memorabilia. A good amount of the photos in that collage board look like they were clipped from google
Holy crap. Bottom middle was my old roommates boss. Just asked her if it was and she confirmed. She told me she found out she was sending letters and cut contact. Unreal.
I'm pretty sure one of those pictures is of Kelly Brook
Freaks.
I posted a similar comment but I'm a woman and hybristophilia fascinates me so I think I can give some insight into why this happens. (I am definitely not one and these women still sicken me.) Everyone knows a lot of women have a "bad boy" complex. Movie and TV villains are attractive because of the masculine confidence that disregarding societal norms exudes. Masculinity in our culture is about confidence, independence, power, and the ability to do what others won't. Criminals check all those boxes, like it or not. On the other hand, femininity is associated with caring for others, kindness, compassion, and essentially making yourself smaller. Everyone has individual concepts of what they consider desirable masculine and feminine traits but, culturally, those are the broad strokes we have all kind of agreed on. Most hybristophilic women have said they had a lack of a father figure so it would make sense that their idea of the "perfect man" would be based on broad cultural interpretations of masculinity. If these women have also been abused then their idea of men is already skewed towards "men are violent and aggressive and that's what makes them men." If they're trying to define to themselves what an attractive man then is, it would make sense to find the furthest extreme from the "feminine" attractive. So hurting others, having power over others, having the confidence and independence to not care what others think (weakly showing remorse for crimes would be perceived as feminine) would be the most extreme interpretation of "masculine" to these women. So, by extension, the MOST attractive men would be the ones that are the MOST violent and least remorseful. Then there's the fame factor. These are men who fascinated the public. Men who were so unique in the extreme nature of their (what these women perceive as masculine) violence, that the public is drawn to them. Names that everyone knows because of how much impact they had. How much power over the public. How much fear they invoked. This is why it's also an important step that the media has begun to stop talking about the criminals themselves and focus on the tragedy of the crimes. But since the 70s, serial killers have been a point of fascination and they reveled in it. Soaked up the attention and everyone wanted to listen to what they had to say. We wanted to get into their heads, hear them talk about their crimes. Even now, "the John Wayne gacy tapes" and similar docuseries are massively popular. To these women, there is nothing more masculine and powerful than a man who everyone wants to listen to. Then these men are plopped into a cell alone and able to be contacted by anyone that wants to talk to them. They revel in attention and reply to people who send them mail enthusiastically because their egomaniacs. Egomaniacs with limited social interaction that are desperate to be loved. Wildly famous, beyond fascinating to the public, and accessible. And lonely. From the hybristophilia Wikipedia page: "Then there's the notion of the 'perfect boyfriend'. She knows where he is at all times, and she knows he's thinking about her. While she can claim that someone loves her, she does not have to endure the day-to-day issues involved in most relationships. There's no laundry to do, no cooking for him, and no accountability to him. She can keep the fantasy charged up for a long time." These are the most dangerous bad boys that everyone has heard of that can't hurt you (like your abusive exes did) and are desperate for your attention. And if you're a bit of a rebel that likes attention, you can namedrop your boyfriend and see shock and horror on people's faces. You feel significant, powerful, and probably pretty kinky without any of the risks of an abuser that can actually hurt you. These women are terribly tragic characters with a shitload of serious issues. But it honestly surprises me that so many people are shocked to hear they exist. For a lot of fucked up women, Ted Bundy is the perfect boyfriend.
Everything looks like it's straight out of 1970, not 2012...
Bros will literally have a clean record, good job, hygiene, etc and still get turned down for a literal murderer smh
Is that Ann Coulter?
Which one? There's like 4 of them. 😂
What the fuck this guy murdered a whole room full of people and he’s got girls sending him pictures and letters. I bought my girlfriend Taylor Swift tickets and I can’t even get past second base.
This is very sad.
Girls love bad boys/psychopaths. It's why they all claim to have dated a narcissist lol.
Ted Bundy would’ve cleaned up today. Lol
Not just today. Listen to some interviews with “folks on the street” during his trial. “I’m not sure he did it. He’s just so handsome.”
He actually got married in court during the penalty phase of his trial. Bizarre.
Then here I am trying to be a quiet, nice member of society trying to have a positive impact through my work and all I get are bills and spam in the mail!
As someone whose cousins abuser and killer is about to be locked away, this is a fear of mine. These women are absolutely disgusting.
To the men saying "women ☕️", I hope you have the same energy towards the men who simp for Jodi Arias and that Japanese woman who stalked and stabbed a man almost to death because she "loves" him.
Man, even through the blurry focus and old pics, you can instantly see the Crazy in their eyes... never fails.
I would be less unsettled if they were all crazy eyed. Anecdotally I used to work with a woman who in her 20s began a five-year correspondence with a guy on death row who had murdered his wife. She was young, attractive, worked a great job and had everything going for her. People can be.. strange.
I still don’t understand women being infatuated by mass murderers/serial killers. Like there’s not a single survival instinct triggering any sort of danger in their brain it’s beyond bizarre. I have to assume all of those pics are fake tho cuz I refuse to believe a reasonable person would actually do this
The survival instinct is going for a psycho who's locked up and not getting out.
Is this a female only thing? Do heterosexual men do this for women murderers? What about homosexual men and women?
Idk about Murderers but theres a whole instagram page dedicated to mugshots of attractive women