Largest | Domestic Terrorists | Nazis | Cults | Workplace | School shootings

(Does not include Dictators & Terrorists who were mass murderers. See Wars/Dictators & Terrorism.)

Mass Murderers
There are several types of mass murderers including, the family annihilators, the paramilitary enthusiasts, distressed students, disgruntled workers and Anti-Abortion extremists.
On "Mass Murders," an American Justice documentary, it was claimed that mass murders have been on the rise over the past three decades and that around the country there are an average of two a month. Two hundred people each year become victims, and seven of the ten worst cases in our history have occurred since 1980. (Source:CrimeLibrary)

Mass Shooting Deaths in the US

 
Note: Counts prior to 2012 may be low because media did not report them all, but they are up even if you count the ones with 10 or more deaths which are more likely to be reported.

A Politico article pins the blame on more deadly mass shootings, rather than an increase in the number of shootings. In contrast, the Mother Jones database shows both an increasing number of mass shootings and more fatalities per attack.

ItÕs possible that the increasing availability of previously banned items like high-capacity magazines allows shooters to gun down more people than before. But research on the ban is equivocal about its effects on crime in general, and little research has been done on mass shootings in the U.S. in particular.

Source No Matter How You Measure Them, Mass Shooting Deaths Are Up | FiveThirtyEight

Largest Death Toll (A few individuals in the Arab-Israeli conflict who seemed to be acting on their own are listed)
Name Vict
-ims
Dates Places Notes
Stephen Paddock 58 2017 Las Vegas Paddock fired into a crowd at a Music Festival from a hotel window. Motive unknown.
Julio Gonzalez 87 1990 New York Gonzalez, who came to the United States in the 1980 Mariel boat lift from Cuba, set fire to a New York nightclub after having a row there with his girlfriend.
Omar Mateen 49 2016Orlando, FL Mateen, who'd pledged allegiance to ISIS, carried an assault rifle and a pistol into the packed gay nightclub.
Andrew Kehoe 45 1927Bath, MI Kehoe, a school board member and farmer, blew up a school.
Jack Gilbert Graham 44 1955Denver Jack, a petty criminal, was always annoyed by his doting mother. After a visit, Jack gave her a Christmas present to take back home with her on the plane. The present, fourteen pounds of dynamite with a timer in a box, blew up shortly after takeoff.
David Burke 43 1987San Luis Obispo, CA Burke, a fired airline employee, followed his ex-boss onboard a Pacific Southwest Airline jet with his mind set on revenge. He shot the man in mid-flight and caused the plane to crash
Cho Seung-hui 33 2007Blacksburg, VAVirginia Tech shootings.
Adam Lanza 26 2012Newtown, CT20-year-old Adam Lanza took his Mothers assault rifle to kill 20 students and 6 teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, CT.
Devin Patrick Kelley 25 2017Southerland Springs, TXKelly, a troubled man, went into a church and opened fire.
Humberto de la Torre 25 1982Los AngelesHumberto torched the Dorothy Mae Apartment Hotel in downtown Los Angeles in 1982 after a dispute with his uncle who managed the building.
George Jo Hennard 23 1991Killeen, TXHennard crashed his blue Ford pickup truck through the plate glass window of Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas. As he stepped out of the truck he screamed, "This is what Bell County has done to me! I hope all this is worth it, Texas!" Then he systematically opened fire.
James Oliver Huberty 21 1984San Ysidro, CA Huberty, an unemployed security guard, had only one friend-- his dog Shep. "I killed thousands in Vietnam, and I want to kill more!", and for the next hour and fifteen minutes he slaughtered twenty-one people and wounded twenty.
Thomas Hamilton 16 1996 Dunblane, Scotland, Thomas Hamilton (43), walked in to the school armed with two pistols, two revolvers and 743 cartridges and opened fire. He fired 105 rounds with one of his two 9 mm Browning semi-automatic pistols within about 3-4 minutes. Sixteen children of 4-6 years of age and one adult teacher died as a result. Hamilton then committed suicide.
Patrick Henry Sherrill 14 1986Edmond, OK Sherrill (Crazy Pat) a suspended postal worker, went into the post office and fired 50 rounds of ammunition in 15 min. before shooting himself.
Charles Whitman 15 1966U. Texas Austin Shot at least a dozen students and shoppers from a university tower.
Jiverly Voong 13 2009Binghamton, N.Y.Community center. A 41-year-old naturalized American citizen from Vietnam. Wong shot a teacher and students from his former classroom then others.
Nidal Hasan 13 2009Fort Hood, TXMilitary base. Hasan a U.S. Army Medical Corps psychiatrist. He was described as socially isolated, stressed by his work with soldiers, and upset about their accounts of warfare.
Howard Unruh 13 1949Camden, NJ Unruh, an unemployed 28-year-old World War II combat veteran and schizophrenic. Shot 13 people to death. He is considered the father of modern mass murder, which was almost unheard of up until then.
Dylan Klebold & Eric Harris 13 1999 Columbine, CO Klebold & Harris (The trenchcoat mafia) killed 12 students, a teacher and themselves at the Columbine High School. See School Shootings.
Saber & Mahmoud Farahat Abu el-Ulla 13 1997Cairo, EgyptThe two brothers attacked a bus outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo leaving nine German tourist and their Egyptian driver dead. Skazaber was incarcerated in a mental hospital for killing two Americans and a Frenchman at a Cairo hotel in 1993
James Holmes 12 2012Newtown, CTHolmes set off tear gas grenades and shot into the audience with multiple firearms, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others at the at the Century movie theater in Aurora, CO
Jeff Weise 9 2005 Red Lake, MN Jeff Weise killed his grandfather and his companion then went to the High School on the Red Lake Indian Reservation and killed 5 students, a teacher and a security officer before killing himself. See School Shootings
Charles Manson 7 1969 Los Angeles Manson and four of his followers killed Sharon Tate and houseguests. Story
Richard Speck 9 1966 Chicago - Nurses in a Townhouse
Jared Lee Loughner 6 2011 Casas Adobes, AZLoughner shot congresswoman Gabrielle "Gabby" Giffords outside a Safeway grocery store in Casas Adobes, Arizona, a suburban area northwest of Tucson, during her first "Congress on Your Corner" gathering of the year.
Colin Ferguson 6 1993Long Island RR Shot 25 passengers on a LIRR train killing 6.
Domestic Terrorists (They have a social cause other than personal anger at individuals or society in general, but are distinguished from other terrorists in that they are acting alone or with a few others.)
Those on the extremist fringe don't call themselves lone wolves. They like to use the term "leaderless resistance," which was coined by a guy from Texas named Louis Beam, a former Aryan Nation and Ku Klux Klan militia leader who has since advocated a more independent approach.
Timothy J. McVeigh & Terry Nichols 168 1995 Oklahoma City McVeigh, white-supremacist/ separatist/Neo-Nazi , and Nichols blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building .
Andrew Kehoe 45 1995 Bath, Mich. Andrew Kehoe, a school board member, who was resentful of the higher taxes that resulted from a school's construction bombed the school. Kehoe's wife was found dead at their farm and he killed himself and 4 bystanders by detonating dynamite in his truck as he sat parked in front of the school while rescue workers searched through the rubble.
Baruch Goldstein 29 1994Israel Goldstein, a Jewish settler and immigrant physician from New York City, gunned down 29 Arab worshippers at the al-Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron.
See also the Terrorism page.
Hanadi Tayseer Abdul Malek Jaradat 21 2003Haifa, IsraelA palestinian lawyer from Jenin blew herself up in the busy beach restaurant Maxim's. According to reports, she was motivated by the death of her older cousin (Salah, age 34), and especially by the death of her younger brother (Fadi, 25) in her presence during an IDF undercover operation to apprehend a cousin who was wanted by Israel.
See also the Terrorism page.
John Lee Malvo and John Allen Muhammad
"Beltway Snipers"
10 2002 Wash DC area Stories at Fox
"The Tylenol Killer" 7 1982 Chicago
Cyanide-tainted Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules -
James Lewis, served 12 yrs for an attempt at extorting $1 M from Johnson & Johnson but never charged with the deaths.
Anthrax killer 5 2001 Florida, Wash. DC, Conn. - Letters with anthrax. Perpetrator never identified.
Ted Kaczynski
"Unabomber"
3 1978-95 IL, NY, UT, TN, CA, WA, MI
Eric Rudolph 2 1996-98 Atlanta, Birmingham Set off bombs at the Atlanta Olympics, killing a woman, a family-planning clinic and nightspot frequented by lesbians in Atlanta and an Alabama abortion clinic. Officer Robert Sanderson was killed during a clinic bombing in Birmingham, AL. Emily Lyons, a nurse at the clinic was severely injured in the blast.
James Kopp 1+ 1994-98 New York, Canada? Murdered Dr. Barnet Slepian, an Amherst, New York abortion practitioner, in front of his wife and son at his home. In 2003 he was given the maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison for the Slepian murder. He claims that the death of Dr. Slepian was an accident; he only meant to injure or disable him. Some speculate that Kopp was also responsible for the other "killing season" attempted murders of abortion doctors in Vancoover, Manitoba and Ontario Canada. He was a member of the Army of God with an alias of Atomic Dog.
Mir Aimal Kasi 2 1993 McLean VA Pakistani who killed two CIA employees outside HQ.
See also Terrorists at the Terrorism page.,
Mass Murder at nationmaster.com/encyclopedia
Workplace Shootings and School Shootings
Notorious Nazis
Adolf Eichmann 3 M1939-45 - Chief of operations in the deportation of three million Jews to extermination camps. He fled to Argentina and lived under the assumed name of Ricardo Klement for ten years until Israeli Mossad agents abducted him in 1960 to stand trial in Jerusalem. Convicted of war crimes in 1961 and hanged in 1962. Story
Klaus Barbie
"the butcher of Lyon"
26 K SS officer in charge of the Gestapo in Lyon, France from November, 1942 to August, 1944. Barbie was convicted in absence and given the death penalty. During the immediate postwar period (1945-1955) he was protected and employed by American intelligence agents because of his "police skills" and anti-Communist zeal. He escaped to Bolivia. In 1983 he was deported to France. In 1987, he was tried in Lyon and sentenced to life imprisonment
Dr. Josef Mengele
"The Angel of Death"
?1943-44 Auschwitz
Mengele performed medical experiments on Jewish prisoners resulting in the death of most. Records he sent to Dr. Von Verschuer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute were destroyed, so we will never know the extent of his atrocities.
After the war he lived for 35 years, hiding under various aliases in Paraguay and Brazil until his death in 1979. It was not until 1992, that DNA tests proved the remains in a grave marked "Wolfgang Gerhard" at Embu were those of Josef Mengele. Story
Heinrich Himmler 3M1934-44 head of the Gestapo and chief architect of the "Final Solution".
In 1933, he had set up the first concentration camp in Dachau.
Brutal Dictators see Dictators at the Wars and Empires page

Cult Suicides
Deaths Date Description Links
900 1978 Jim Jones' Peoples' Temple cult mass suicide in Jonestown Guyana.
100 Apr-93 David Koresh and the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco, Texas. FBI stormed the compound after a failed ATF raid. Most were killed in the resulting fire.
74 1994-97 The "Solar Temple" cult led by Luc Joret, a supposed homeopathic healer who lectured about "New Age" theories, nutrition and parenting. 53 shot and stabed in Switzerland near Geneva; 5 in Canada 45 miles from Montreal; 16 in France in 1995; 5 near Quebec City, Canada in 1997. Story
39 1997 The "Heaven's Gate" cult led by Marshall Applewhite in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. They thought that by killing themselves they could migrate to a huge UFO that accompanied the comet Hale-Bopp. Story
778 2000 Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, Uganda, The leaders claimed to be communicating with Mary and committed mass murder/suicide after their predictions of the apocalypse failed to come about. Story
See: Cult suicide - Wikipedia


Workplace Shootings at: Disaster-management.net

From the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, there was a rash of workplace homicides at various U.S. Post Offices, which resulted in coining the term "going postal."

In 1986, an Oklahoma post office worker shot and killed 15 fellow employees in less than 10 minutes.
In 1989, a postal worker killed his wife at home and then drove to the post office where he shot and killed two colleagues and himself.
In both October and November of 1991, two fired postal workers returned to work to kill supervisors and co-workers.
It happened twice more in 1993, and twice again in 1995.
It's easy to see how the term "going postal" entered our lexicon.


Recent School Shootings in the U.S. (with deaths):


Source: "Myths about youth violence and school safety", Dewey G. Cornell, Ph.D. Virginia Youth Violence Project, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia. (Data from National School Safety Center, 2003).
[#] - Number of dead.

2012 - December 15 [26] Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newton, CT
Adam Lanza, a 20-year-old former honors student at Newtown High School who subsequently was home-schooled by his mother, and earned a GED, took 4 of his mother's guns including an assault rifle and killed 20 first-grade children and 6 teachers.

2007 - April 16 [33] Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
Cho Seung-hui, a 23-year-old English major from South Korea kills one in a dorm then 31 plus himself in the engineering building.

2006 - October 2, 2006 [5] Amish school shooting - Nickel Mines, Lancaster County, PA
Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old milk-tank truck driver who lived nearby took hostages in a one-room Amish School and eventually killed five girls (aged 7Š13) and then killed himself.

2005 - [9] Red Lake, MN
High School on the Red Lake Indian Reservation, Red Lake, MN - Jeff Weise killed his grandfather and his companion then went to the High School on the Red Lake Indian Reservation and killed 5 students, a teacher and a security officer before killing himself. He created comic books with drawings of people shooting each other and posted on the web site www.nazi.org writing under the pennames Todesengel -- German for "Angel of Death" -- or "NativeNazi."

2004 - [326] Beslan, Russia
Half of the 326 dead were children -- were slain in the Russian town of Beslan after being taken hostage at a school. Chechen rebels were blamed.

September 24, 2003 [1] Cold Spring, MN
Rocori High School, Cold Spring, Minnesota Jason McLaughlin, 15, shot and killed Aaron Rollins, 17, and critically injured another student who died of his injuries in October. McLaughlin has been charged as an adult with second-degree murder.

April 24, 2003 [1] Red Lion, PA
Red Lion Area Junior High School, Red Lion, Pennsylvania James Sheets, 14, brought three handguns to school and killed Principal Eugene Segro, and then himself in the cafeteria before school.

March 30, 2001 [1] Gary, Ind.
One student killed by Donald R. Burt, Jr., a 17-year-old student who had been expelled from Lew Wallace High School.

March 5, 2001 [2] Santee, CA
Santana High School, Santee, California Charles "Andy" Williams, 15, killed two classmates, a 14-year old and a 17-year old, and injured 13. Williams was sentenced in 2002 to at least 50 years in prison.

May 26, 2000 [1] Lake Worth, FL
Lake Worth Community Middle School, Lake Worth, Florida Nathaniel Brazill, 13, returned to school after being sent home for misbehaving, and shot and killed his teacher Barry Grunow. Brazill was sentenced to 28 years in prison.

March 10, 2000 [1] Savannah, Ga.
Two students killed by Darrell Ingram, 19, while leaving a dance sponsored by Beach High School.

February 29, 2000 [1] Mount Morris Twp., MI
Buell Elementary School, Mount Morris Township, Michigan An unnamed 6-year old boy shot and killed 6-year old playmate Kayla Rolland at school. He was not charged with a crime, but he was removed from his mother's custody and put up for adoption.

November 19, 1999 [1] Deming, NM

Deming Middle School, Deming, New Mexico Victor Cordova, 12, shot and killed a 13-year old classmate. He was sentenced to two years in juvenile detention.

April 20, 1999 [13] Littleton, CO
Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, killed 12 fellow students and one teacher before committing suicide in the school library.

May 21, 1998 [2] Springfield, Ore.

Two students killed, 22 others wounded in the cafeteria at Thurston High School by 15-year-old Kip Kinkel. Kinkel had been arrested and released a day earlier for bringing a gun to school. His parents were later found dead at home.

May 19, 1998, [1] Fayetteville, Tenn.
One student killed in the parking lot at Lincoln County High School three days before he was to graduate. The victim was dating the ex-girlfriend of his killer, 18-year-old honor student Jacob Davis.

March 24, 1998, [5] Jonesboro, Ark.

Four students and one teacher killed, ten others wounded outside as Westside Middle School emptied during a false fire alarm. Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, shot at their classmates and teachers from the woods.

Dec. 1, 1997, [3] West Paducah, Ky.
Three students killed, five wounded by Michael Carneal, 14, as they participated in a prayer circle at Heath High School.

Oct. 1, 1997, [2] Pearl, Miss. Two students killed and seven wounded by Luke Woodham, 16, who was also accused of killing his mother. He and his friends were said to be outcasts who worshiped Satan.

Feb. 19, 1997, [2] Bethel, Alaska Principal and one student killed, two others wounded by Evan Ramsey, 16.

Feb. 2, 1996, [3] Moses Lake, Wash.
Two students and one teacher killed, one other wounded when 14-year-old Barry Loukaitis opened fire on his algebra class.

1996 [17] - Dunblane Scotland
An unemployed former shopkeeper and Scout leader Thomas Hamilton walked into the school and killed 16 students and a teacher.

1966 [15] U. Texas Austin Charles Whitman Shot at least a dozen students and shoppers from a university tower.

See: A Time Line of Recent Worldwide School Shootings, School Shootings at wikipedia
Criminals at rotten.com


See Also:
Disasters - Accidents and Death Rates.
The Scales of Good and Evil where Cliff Pickover lists the top 10 evil people and good people.
Good People

last updated 17 Feb 2013