I really enjoy reading the blog Kellevision.com. She says it like it is and seldom misses the point of what she's writing about. She identifies a problem in programming for homelessness and proposes a set of concepts to help clarify the situation.

Many of the "barriers" faced by the chronically homeless are not external. They are self-inflicted. Repeatedly failing to pay one's utility bills is not a barrier. It is a behavior. Repeatedly getting into relationships with drug addicts and being evicted because you have allowed your new girlfriend to turn your affordable housing into a crack house is not a barrier. It is a behavior. Choosing to pay your boyfriend's bail instead of the rent is not a barrier, it is a behavior. Consistently refusing to hold down steady employment and being evicted for not being able to pay the rent is not a barrier, it is a behavior.

[..]Lastly, how we label the problem determines how we approach solving it. True social barriers need to be addressed by social services. Better programs need to be designed to specifically address the needs of the mentally ill population. Programs designed to assist the medically disabled need to be accessed. But behaviors require a clinical intervention - therapy. Clients who demonstrate patterns of behavior which result in repeated instances of homelessness need counseling, not social services. The problem is not a social problem. It is an individual problem which requires an individual intervention.

I think it's much more complicated than that. Our world has always had an underclass, a group of individuals who have been largely invisible in the US except during the Depression. These people largely function outside the visible society and economy. They share housing with family and friends, squat in abandoned buildings, and sometimes live under bridges. They live off their housemates or family, work for temp job agencies, borrow, steal, deal drugs, and even engage in formal criminal enterprise. Given our recent policies that have reversed the tax-based redistribution of wealth since FDR, the stagnant wages, disappearing jobs, and ever increasing cost of living, that underclass has become so large it is again visible.

They are chronically under or unemployment and are not collecting Social Security, either because they don't qualify, try though they may to apply, or they haven't the where-with-all to get themselves qualified. This chronic underclass is best described as a sub-culture. They are structurally built into the economy. "Full employment" doesn't include them. Because they have given up on finding work, they no longer register with unemployment offices and so are not counted among the unemployed. Those who are chronically homeless are a sub-group of this sub-culture, and probably represents some of its most dysfunctional members.

By describing the chronically homeless, Kellevision describes most of the common attributes of this subculture.

For the majority of the [chronically] homeless population, homelessness is a lifestyle, not an event.

[..]My purpose here is not to blame the victim, but to talk openly about the severe dysfunction I see in chronically homeless families. Unless we identify the true problem, we will not be able to form a lucid solution. Homeless families typically do not function well on any level. Children are frequently truant from school and display numerous behavior and developmental problems. Dorm rules are constantly broken and there is constant turmoil between the families on the dorm. Relationships are fleeting, intense and severely dysfunctional including domestic violence, substance abuse and exploitative. Interactions with other people are inappropriate or dysfunctional. Most homeless families have burnt all their bridges with every social service agency and with their own families because of their severe dysfunction. Shelter staff often feel like we are running a middle school rather than a homeless shelter. This behavior is what needs to be addressed rather than giving them more money or building more homes.

[..]What are the elements of the homeless mindset? I'm still trying to work this out in my mind, but here are some of them which I see frequently:

• An external locus of control
• the belief that they have no control or responsibility for their choices, actions or behaviors but they are the victim of circumstances
• the belief that the causes for good or bad events in your life are totally outside your control or responsibility
• Sense of entitlement
• the belief that the worlds owes them something and they should be able to collect immediately
• the belief that they should be taken care of by others, by the government or by social service agencies
• the belief that they should be given things they have not earned (i.e. free housing, clothing, food, etc.)
• the belief that others should "help" them (i.e. by paying their unpaid bills or appealing their housing denial)
• Impulsivity
• Poor boundaries
• Emotional immaturity
• Need for instant gratification
• Dependency issues
• Predatory/antisocial behaviors
• Pathological relationships

Certainly, not every member of what I'll call the "underclass sub-culture" share all of these attributes. Each and every person has a story behind their situation. A careful account of their histories, something they usually reluctantly give, chronicles the development of these problems. It's important to discourage a prejudice developing against a whole group of people who are already stigmatized along with the "welfare mother" of the AFDC era. But we are not going to get to a more complete solution without understanding the problem. I suspect that why there is little commentary on this topic.

Kellevision hits on what I believe to be one of the most common roots of dysfunction, repeated traumas throughout their life.

A vast majority of our clients seem to have endured some sort of trauma(s) during their childhood which has(have) halted their emotional development. The result is immaturity, impulsivity, dependency, a sense of entitlement (that someone should take care of them rather than being responsible for themselves), an external locus of control (seeing problems as existing outside of themselves and therefore being outside of their control and/or responsibility), immature relationships and emotional lability. These factors result in behavior which appears erratic and irresponsible.

"Arrested development" is what Kellevision calls it. Indeed, this problem is pervasive and most often multi-generational. There are most often one or more of the following in the family history:

• lifelong repeated exposure to trauma:
  
  
  
  • child abuse and neglect
  
  
  • incest
  
  
  • domestic assault
  
  
  • gang or drug related violence
  
  
  • repeated exposure as a crime victim including assault, rape, and drive by shootings
  
  
  • inconsistent parenting ranging from abusive to no supervision
  
  
  • one or more family member who was murdered
  
  
  
  
• poor performance/attendance at school


• high school drop-out


• parenthood started by mid-teens


• by their twenties, they have several kids with mostly different partners


• sporadic work history and chronic unemployment


• efforts to qualify for Social Security


• family members relying on other families income, so no family member is able to break the pattern of poverty


• chemical abuse


• drug dealing to support a habit


• mental illness


• parents, spouses, brothers, sisters in prison


• criminal activity as income


• crime as a family enterprise

Persons who are members of the underclass see dysfunction as normal. They've never known any different. Many think this is how everyone lives. While they may dream of a good job, they appear to not have the self-discipline to keep a good job. Many of this group might be diagnosed with an anti-social personality DO. Personally, I think this diagnosis is misleading at best. A person earns this diagnosis if their history includes sufficient "anti-social" behavior. This doesn't account for family cultures that teach a confusing mix of conventional and anti-social values. Thus we have neighborhoods that have no constructive relationships with police, believe that justice is against them and label anyone reporting a crime as an informant and not to be trusted. This of course contributes to the chaos in the neighborhood.

In my experience people who get diagnosed anti-social are the ones the clinician don't trust or believe. The whole underclass culture tries to keep their business to themselves. Lying to protect one's family's reputation is encouraged. I suspect while there may be a few classic psychopaths out there, most of those folks who populate our jails are drug abusing, impulsive, underclass members with shut down emotional systems due to repeated chaos and trauma. These folks won't tell you the truth unless they are desperate and already feel they are the lowest of the low. Their judgment is so impaired that they see fear as a weakness they must squelch out. Danger in their world is everywhere and it must be faced, not avoided.

I have worked with some persons of the underclass who have a clinical presentation of PTSD after many years of participation in gang violence. They know what conventional values are, but they also know what is the law of streets. They are scared and tired of living a nightmare, and want a stable peaceful life but are tortured about what they've seen and what they've done to others over the years. Just seeing a gun sets off flashbacks. They describe their younger years as being "shut off" emotionally, and "not caring" about anyone or anything but money. But now in my office, they are presenting a mostly full range of emotion and a guilty conscience that suggests conventional values. Has their impulsive, "immature brain", associated with anti-social acts, matured into a more conventional pattern? Or is it more accurate to describe them as a product of an anti-social sub-culture? I suspect the latter is more accurate.

Returning to the homeless and Kellevision, she notes the major problem with relationships is homeless people's "picker is broken".

For every person in a homeless shelter with dependency issues we seem to have an predator waiting for them. Half the population seems to be working or receiving some form of assistance and the other half seem to be trying to hook up with them to take advantage of that income....

It is important to realize that single parents contribute to the problem of picking the wrong partner with their own pathology. The single mothers in the family dorm are not simply victims of the men they pick out. There seems to be a predominant attitude of these women that the man should "take care of them". They believe it is just a matter of picking out the right one. The first problem is that their "picker" is broken. They do not pick out a good one. They usually pick out one of the predators roaming the alley behind the shelter. The second problem is that you cannot sit at home expecting to be taken care of in our modern economy. That might have worked in the 1950's, even in the 1970's, but June Cleaver is no more. The modern American household takes two paychecks. Two full-time paychecks. The third problem presents it self when the man expects to be supported by the woman. Even if the woman is working full-time and picks out a man who wants to live off of her, women traditionally earn much lower wages than men. So the family's financial stability is even more shaky.

This predatory - dependent dyad seems to play out in most of their relationships and I wonder if it is not the source of their alienation from their families of origin. A person who constantly expects to be taken care of can be quite tiring. By contrast, a person who is constantly preying on others also becomes quite tiring.

Having grown up in a chaotic home and living a chaotic lifestyle, repeated trauma has numbed their emotions to the point that they are unable to make proper judgments about who is worthy of trust. The predator-prey dyad began in their family of origin where parents exploited the children when they were young, and when the children grow up, they exploit their vulnerable elderly parents. Recently, in my therapy group, one male member admonished a older woman for setting limits with her adult children because they were tacitly supporting her grandchildren for default on a loan she'd co-signed. He felt family was entitled to lean on, effectively use, each other.

Mental illness is often cited as a factor in homelessness. A significant number of homeless clients suffer from debilitating mental illnesses and many researchers sight the high numbers of mental illness in the population. However, each researcher seems to define it in their own way. Some include only the big three Axis I diagnoses (Schizophrenia, Bipolar I and Major Depression). Others include substance abuse (since it is an Axis I diagnosis in the DSM IV) which dramatically inflates the numbers of the "mentally ill". Others include Axis II personality disorders, but only some of them, usually Antisocial Personality Disorder. Still others include Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In my experience, mental illness is a factor in about 10-20% of our homelessness clients and it is a serious problem. However, it does not explain the other 80%. These 80% use an unusually high percentage of services and monies devoted to the homeless and they are repeat customers.

Here I have to disagree with Kellevision. Everyone I've counseled with substance abuse were running from their feelings about themselves and/or their past. I have found Bipolar DO in significant numbers behind petty criminal activity, gambling addiction, alcoholism, sexual addiction, exotic dancing and prostitution. I participated in a local county survey that identified their most expensive clients. The general profile was bipolar chemically abusive who revolved in and out of the hospital, placements and jail. Personality disorders are mental illness. While many may think the rest of the world is the problem and are not willing to take responsibility, many others are desperate for relief from a horribly chaotic and often traumatic life.

There is a very high incidence of traumatic histories in the homeless community, even before they became homeless, usually during childhood. I believe that a majority of the substance abuse problem in this population is an effort to treat trauma symptoms. However, this can be said of other populations as well, including the substance abuse community. Most trauma survivors manage to maintain housing despite their trauma symptoms. Though trauma symptoms may play a factor in homelessness, I do not believe they are the sole cause.

Sole cause, no, it's the multi-generational underclass sub-culture with it's accompanied fractured families, drug abuse, trauma, predator/prey cycle, and chaotic lifestyles. Trauma comes in forms that are not readily identified. Chaotic events in close proximity in time give the victim the impression they have no control of their fate and so they scramble for every edge in the moment, and anxiously await for the next disaster to strike. Those in the underclass go way out of their way to withhold their histories of trauma and chaos, insisting that they can handle their own problems, and it's none of anyone's business. Or is this simply the accepted cultural method to deal with the shame of their past?

Most homeless clients do not have family support systems. If they did, the family would take them in and they would not be homeless. Many homeless clients come from families who are themselves very nomadic and teetering on homelessness. Some come from families rife with substance abuse, sexual abuse or domestic violence. Others have been rejected by their families for various reasons. These reasons often involve their dependent and/or dysfunctional behaviors.

Underclass families exploit each other until the resources are gone, or the member with resources cut off the leech. Once the underclass has used up their family resources, they become at risk for homelessness. Many have family who died young living violent or drug infested lifestyles, or who are in prison. By this time, they've burned out most of their friends as well. All they can do and meet new vulnerable people and continue a new predictor/prey dynamic.

So what solutions are there for healing the cultural divide? The problem is mostly economic. The underclass lacks a realistic chance for escaping their plight. Oh, sure a few make it, usually through advanced education. But many will hit a ceiling in achievement when they rely too heavily on "temporary feel good" behavior that provides relief from stress, but self-destructively complicates their lives and increases the chances they will fall out of their newly found middle-class status.

The middle-class in America is shrinking, many of the hard working blue collar workers are falling into the underclass from where with a floundering economy, escape will be difficult. Jobs programs, affordable housing, and counseling are sorely needed but remains largely unfunded. What infrastructure is present is actually shrinking with government tax dollars.

Too often the only role models for success are the gang members, drug dealers or pimps who drive fancy cars and flash wads of money. Too many get lost in this dream turn nightmare. But my experiences working with recovering gang members is that many are retrievable when they get desperate enough to escape with the right kind of treatment and patience with their guarded presentations. I work in a Partial Hospital Program (PHP) at an inner city public hospital that is designed to intervene with persons with personality disorders. It's largely based on the Crisis Intervention model that relies on the desperation of the client to inspire commitment, insight and behavior change in therapy. The PHP format is ideal for persons who are suffering from acute exacerbation of substance abuse, PTSD or personality disorder. I call it "mental health boot camp". We have a satisfaction rate of over 90%.

Kellevision lists a number of problems within the system.

In my humble opinion, our current social services system and is a major factor contributing to the homeless mindset. This is a complicated element to explain. But I think it is important to make an attempt.

I see two major problems with the social services system: 1) the system itself - how benefits are applied and eligibility determined and 2) the people working within the system - the mindset of caseworkers and social workers working with the homeless population.

• The social services system seems to be designed to punish attempts by the poor to achieve independence. Assistance programs penalize people for working "too much" by cutting off benefits when assets accrue. These systems often reinforce irresponsibility and impulsivity while punishing people who try to work and plan ahead.
• Many social services programs seem to "teach" clients to wait until the last minute then create a dramatic "emergency" in order to get help. This fosters the emotionally immature and histrionic displays in emergency rooms.
• Our current welfare system does not allow exchanging work for benefits. Benefits are given away free.
• Caseworkers and social workers have a bad habit of doing things for clients, rather than expecting the client to do it or teaching them how.
• So what have clients learned so far?
  • Don't work too much.
  • Don't plan ahead.
  • Expect someone else to provide you with what you need.
  • Don't take responsibility. Someone else will fix it for you.

The welfare system is complex, cumbersome, and difficult to change into a working entity. The major problem is that it is designed not to serve the poor, but to mollify the political needs of the tax payer. That makes it inherently punitive. As we know from behavioral science, punishment doesn't change behavior. I believe it in fact feeds the cycle similar to the one Kellevision describes above. As long as we put political considerations ahead of evidence-based methods, we'll have a broken system.

Kellevision proposes ideas that I think have significant merit.

I think counseling should be provided liberally. Teach people how to fish. Teach them how their maladaptive behaviors impair their ability to function. Stop rewarding bad behavior. Stop giving away money. Stop cleaning up their messes for them. Stop giving away free stuff.

Once homeless clients are assigned jobs, they would be provided with counseling to address the behavior problems that interfered with their ability to maintain employment. If they failed to come to work due to a poor work ethic, substance abuse problems, domestic violence or other relationship issues, etc. instead of getting fired - again - and having another black mark on their work history, they would be required to participate in counseling or group work to address it.

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Many of the boomer adults were raised with a lot of TV. It would appear things have gotten worse. We know a lot more about what TV does to children, but it doesn't appear to have had much effect. Simple logic will tell us that the experience of TV will decrease a child's ability to tolerate a delay in gratification of desires. Certainly, the TV ads are designed to create the desire for things we didn't know we needed, a certain frustration that we can't have it all, now. But it's much worse than that.

John M Grohol PsyD owner of PsychCentral.com is usually a man who politely understates things. But, he pulls no punches in a recent article.

Most child psychologists and child development experts recommend no TV whatsoever for a child before the age of 2 or 3. None. Yet a whopping 43 percent of parents plop their toddler down in front of the television set, apparently blind to the consequence of their actions.

[..]There are also the studies that show that teens who watch more sexual content on TV are twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy over the next three years than their peers.

[From the Boston Globe]

Countless studies have documented the inverse link between devotion to the boob tube and achievement in school. Researchers at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons concluded in 2007, for example, that 14-year-olds who watched one or more hours of television daily "were at elevated risk for poor homework completion, negative attitudes toward school, poor grades, and long-term academic failure.'' Those who watched three or more hours a day were at even greater risk for "subsequent attention and learning difficulties,'' and were the least likely to go to college.

In 2005, a study published in the American Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that the harm caused by TV watching shows up even after correcting the data to account for students' intelligence, family conditions, and prior behavioral problems. The bottom line: "Increased time spent watching television during childhood and adolescence was associated with a lower level of educational attainment by early adulthood.''

The baleful effects of TV aren't limited to education. The University of Michigan Health System notes on its extensive website that kids who watch TV are more likely to smoke, to be overweight, to suffer from sleep difficulties, and to have high cholesterol.

From Research Digest Blog, here is an excerpt from an article commenting on the effects of TV on in the background while a young child plays.

Schmidt's team described the disruptive effects of the background TV as "real but small". While the current study doesn't say anything about the possible developmental consequences of TV-disrupted play, previous research has shown that shorter play episodes and less focused attention tend to be associated with poorer developmental outcomes. Moreover, a previous unpublished study by the present team of researchers showed that background TV reduces how often parents interact with their children. "Taken together," the researchers said, the new and previous findings lead us to "hypothesise that background television, as a chronic influence, is by itself an environmental risk factor in children's development."

According to these articles, Visual voodoo: the biological impact of watching TVandThe Psychologist, TV is a cause for attention deficits in children.

Sigman's review in fact only cites two published studies that show direct associations between TV viewing in this age group and negative consequences. The first, a 2004 longitudinal study by Dimitri Christakis and colleagues of 1200 children, found that for every extra hour of average daily TV viewing between birth and three years, the children were 10 per cent more likely to have attentional problems at age seven. The second, a cross-sectional study by Dimitri Christakis and Darcy Thomson, found that among 2068 infants aged between four months and three years, those who watched more television also tended to have less regular afternoon and nighttime sleeping schedules. The research base becomes more substantial when the focus is broadened to include TV viewing in older childhood and adolescence. For example, two studies by Robert Hancox and colleagues reported detrimental associations between TV viewing between the ages of five and 15, and educational attainment and several health measures at 26 years. Sigman's review, which also discusses harmful associations between adult TV viewing and mental and physical health, concludes these 'findings are set to re-cast the role of the television screen as the greatest unacknowledged public health issue of our time'. However, not all experts are sympathetic to Sigman's view. Dr Brian Young at the University of Exeter told us children are active in the way they use TV - they don't just sit on the receiving end of a stream of audiovisual input. 'There certainly are benefits for children interacting with TV,' he said. 'They learn stuff - it's as simple as that. But the best learning environment is where the mother or the family collectively consume television and discuss what's being seen. In that sense it's a 'window on the world'. However, he added: 'Any medium has a downside and unsupervised viewing by very young children - the "TV as a babysitter" - is not helpful.'

Now consider the effects of violence in TV and video games. Are we training our children to tolerate routine violence? I think so. It fact, it would appear that TV is an experiment on our children increasing obesity, tobacco and alcohol use, risky sexual behaviors, violence and social isolation.

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We've all heard about viruses and websites that steal our sensitive private information. Cyberstalking has also become a problem on social media sites. Blogs, Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, in particular, are prone to this sort of abuse.

But even cellphone texting can be a problem since you can forward others details where ever you want. Although there are mixed reviews of just how much of a risk there is, there is agreement there is a risk. Parents should certainly provide supervision for their kids with the youngest getting the most.

John Dvorak, a columnist at MarketWatch.com recently posted an interesting article.

If I were a professional thief, the first thing I would do is get a computer, find the folks out there who document everything they do on social-networking sites and go rob them.

There are a couple of risk that make this particular crime possible. If you tell the world what you are doing and where you are going, you are telling any criminal that might be listening when you've vacated your house. You may have already listed items in your house that might be particularly desirable by the thief, like the computer, PS3, perhaps even the type of car you have in the driveway.

Here are some rules for social media everyone should know about and practice regularly.

1. There is really only one reason to use your real name on the internet: to promote yourself or your business. Do a regular thorough search using Google of your full name, your address, and other identifying data and make sure all that you find is removed. Make sure your phone number and address are unlisted and there is no other way to find where you live. If you do promote yourself, use an email address as your contact point. To prevent misuse, change the @ sign to (at) or -at- to keep the robots from snapping up your email for spam lists. Or, better yet, use a virtual business card that has a contact form like card.ly. Then no one gets your email address until you decide.

2, Be careful about what you put on your site, like where you are, who is home, and when you go to work or go on vacation. Acquaintances who know your nick name on the internet might decide to break into your house while you are gone or share with others who you really are. Remember, personal information becomes permanently available to whomever wants it once you post it. Employers and college admission officers are regularly searching the internet for applicant's antics. Remember if you are protecting your identity in Twitter and refer to your Facebook site that identifies you, you've only delayed someone who might want to hurt you. If you post your picture on the internet, that could identify you to someone you don't want to know or could be used in a faked porn picture.

3. If you say something cruel to someone, remember that it's recorded forever for anyone who looks. Not only have you hurt another person, you have hurt yourself and your reputation forever. Your repeated insults on the internet could be turned against you and used as evidence to charge you with cyberstalking or cyberbullying and turned into civil or criminal charges.

4. Never give out personal information that could identify you. This includes:
* full name
* home address
* phone number
* Social Security number
* passwords
* names of family members
* credit card numbers

5. Keep online friendships in the virtual world. Meeting online friends carries more risks than other types of friendships because it's easy for people to pretend to be something they're not when you can't see them or talk in person. Even if you "feel" you know someone, you really can't know them as well as if you had known them face to face. Some people think they have fallen in "love" with an online friend. The only thing you can fall in love with online is your fantasy of who the other person might be. The non-verbal and contextual clues about another person is sometimes the only thing that can keep us safe in a face to face relationship. Our intuitions about trust are truly potential lifesavers. What we know about another persons history from our own and others experiences fill in the picture. These aids to judgment either don't exist online or are clouded by an 'unseen' or undocumented history. If you must meet someone you know from on line, do so as if you are meeting someone for the first time, because you are. Meet only in public preferably with someone else. And don't give out personal information like you would with someone you just met.

Let me know if I missed anything. I'll update as needed.

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While I'm not surprised by this news, I'm deeply saddened reading this. It more or less confirms that had Zamora been treated, there is a good chance, this wouldn't have happened. Now we have another victim, the perpetrator appears to be psychotic. Now, if treated, and he comes back to the real world, he will be haunted forever about what he did.

This could have been avoided. There needs to be a more progressive court intervention for potentially dangerous persons with mental illness. I would rather see the money spent supporting this sort of project in the community rather than locking people up in jail or a mental health hospital where the environment is unhealthy and the illness is likely to worsen. Any lawyers out there with a legal concept? I might be interested in working on legislation.

MSNBC.com

"I kill for God. I listen to God," a man accused of a northwest Washington shooting rampage said Friday at a hearing where six charges of first-degree murder and four of first-degree assault were filed against him.

Isaac Zamora made the chilling comment twice at the brief hearing in Skagit County District Court while investigators wrapped up their work at eight crime scenes. The 28-year-old is being held on $5 million bail in the wake of Tuesday's rampage, which left six people dead and four injured.

District Court Judge Warren Gilbert read each charge and the penalties, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. That doesn't mean the death penalty is off the table, according to the Skagit County prosecutor.

Another shooting, another story of a mentally ill man in need of court ordered treatment who didn't get it. My thoughts follow the story.

TwinCities.com

A shooting rampage in which six people died along a trail of blood stretching from a tiny town to the state's busiest highway ended with the surrender of a man who was recently released from jail, authorities said.

The dead included a sheriff's deputy who had tried to help the mentally ill man's family in the past, the man's mother said.

State Department of Corrections officials identified the gunman in Tuesday's deadly spree as Isaac Zamora, 28, who had just served a six-month jail sentence for drug possession in Skagit County, in northwest Washington.

Since his Aug. 6 release, Zamora had been under community supervision by corrections officers, spokesman Chad Lewis said.

Zamora's mother described her son as "desperately mentally ill" and said she had tried repeatedly to get help for him.

"We're so devastated for the families," Dennise Zamora told the Associated Press by telephone. "I wish it would have been him or me that was killed. That's how deeply I feel about it."

The six who died included Skagit County Sheriff's Deputy Anne Jackson, 40, who was shot while responding to the initial call by Dennise Zamora.

The dead were found at multiple crime scenes. Jackson and a second person were killed at the same location near the small town of Alger, two construction workers found shot nearby, and a body was found a few houses away, Trooper Keith Leary said. A civilian motorist was killed along I-5 near a rest stop, Leary said.

Dennise Zamora described Jackson as a sympathetic figure who had tried to help the family in the past.

Seattle Times

Dennise Zamora, the suspect's mother, said her son was "extremely mentally ill" and had been living in the woods on and off for years. He was released last month from jail after a drug offense and was under Department of Corrections supervision, according to a department spokesman.

Dennise Zamora said Jackson was aware of her son's illness and told the Zamora family to call her anytime for help.

After watching Isaac walk in and out of neighbors' homes, Dennise Zamora called deputies on Tuesday. She said her son wasn't aware of his mental illnesses.

[..]Dennise Zamora said her son, who sometimes worked as a house painter, had struggled with mental illness since their family's house burned down more than a decade ago. She said he was "agreeable" and "placid" Tuesday morning and that she didn't know what made him snap. She also said she didn't know where he got the gun used in the shootings.

Barbara Crossen, who lives across the street from the Zamora family, said Dennise Zamora came to Crossen's home Tuesday afternoon and asked her to look after a young boy.

"She said, 'Keep him here, Isaac has gone crazy,' " said Crossen, who added she'd known Isaac Zamora since he was born and never saw any signs of trouble. "He was always quiet and never demanded a lot of attention or anything. That's why I think we're so shocked."

Joe Corbell, a longtime friend of the Zamora family who lives in Alger, said Isaac is a quiet, withdrawn person. He said he believed Isaac had received some psychiatric treatment, "But it's never really been to the point where it's done him any good."

Another neighbor, John Hughes, said he and his 21-year-old grandson, Johnathen, have seen Zamora walking on the road alone by himself at all hours.

Zamora was under state supervision and considered a high-risk offender, with convictions for theft and drug possession. While Zamora was regarded as a nonviolent offender, he was supervised at a high level because of his long-standing mental-health issues, according to DOC records. Zamora last reported to his probation officer in Mount Vernon on Aug. 21.

In a news release, DOC Secretary Eldon Vail said Zamora had been released from jail during the first week of August. He had been serving time for felony drug possession, according to court records.

After his release, Zamora had reported to his community corrections officer twice as instructed, DOC said. A urine analysis indicated no drug or alcohol consumption.

Governor Christine Gregoire Tuesday night called for an independent review of how Zamora's case was handled.

Seattle Times

On good days, Isaac Zamora could be charming, warm, creative. But over the past decade, the suspect in Tuesday's fatal shooting rampage showed increasing signs of serious mental illness, ranging from suicide attempts to auditory hallucinations, from smashed windshields to outright threats.

On good days, Isaac Zamora could be charming, warm, creative. He could be strange, too -- aimlessly walking the streets alone at all hours, causing trouble by grabbing a fistful of paper towels from the gas station and letting them trail out his window as he drove off.

But most recently, however, Zamora was scary, say family and friends. In some ways, residents of his close-knit neighborhood in rural Skagit County were living under Zamora's shadow.

Over the past decade, he showed increasing signs of serious mental illness, ranging from suicide attempts to auditory hallucinations, from smashed windshields to outright threats. He racked up dozens of criminal charges, and while none of them were particularly violent offenses, they were enough for him to draw extra scrutiny from the state Department of Corrections, which supervised him in the community under a special program for offenders with mental illness.

Meanwhile, those who know Zamora best say that for years he was left wanting for the psychiatric help he so obviously needed. His mother, Dennise, said that despite his family's urging, Zamora wouldn't agree to ongoing mental-health treatment, and the law prevented them from forcing it on the 28-year-old.

In recent weeks, he went from sleeping in the woods to sleeping out on neighbors' lawns, after his parents told him he could no longer spend the night in their Alger home. Last week, he told neighbor Shirley Wenrick, "I am going to get even with them."

On Saturday, however, Dennise Zamora said the family had its first ray of hope: He agreed to the first of two evaluations he needed to qualify for state mental-health programs.

Three days later, he would be accused of killing six people, including a Skagit County sheriff's deputy.

"This happened because of the law and because of Isaac's choices," Dennise Zamora said. "The major difficulty is ... when you're mentally ill you don't think anything is wrong."

Isaac Zamora was a quiet, unremarkable kid, said neighbor Christie Howard. At worst, she recalls, he "was one of the kids who rode his obnoxious motorcycle through the property."

From the outside, his upbringing appeared relatively ordinary. Zamora's father took him to Boy Scouts; his mother home-schooled him.

"I remember a sweet, sweet, sensitive mama's boy," said Rachel Brown, who grew up with Zamora.

Then, when Zamora was about 14, the family home burned down and they lost everything. They struggled both financially and emotionally.

"It's all we can do to keep the electricity on," Dennise Zamora wrote as part of the family's bankruptcy petition.

A doctor diagnosed Zamora as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and said that his problems would likely subside after puberty.

"By the time he got to be 18," Dennise Zamora said, "we thought, 'He's gone past the junction here.' He was never the same."

The family stayed in the neighborhood, putting a triple-wide mobile home on the property. Around the same time, Zamora stole his mother's gun to sell to another teenager, but was later charged with filing a false report after telling police a stranger had stolen it.

Ex-girlfriend Connie Hickman met Zamora around 2000 when they were both working at a health-care facility. At the time, Zamora had trouble holding jobs.

Still, Hickman said, he had a lot of promise. "He was kind," she said. "He was easy to talk to, easy to get along with."

But every so often, signs of trouble popped up. He would make threats and start fights over "things that never happened," Hickman said. Initially, she attributed it to Zamora's drinking and drug use -- he has arrests for cocaine and marijuana possession.

Zamora attempted suicide several times and told her at one point he was hearing voices. Hickman said Zamora was diagnosed over the years with both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

In 2003, Hickman and Dennise Zamora took him to a Whatcom County hospital, saying they feared for their safety. People with mentally ill family members say it's often difficult to meet the threshold for involuntary psychiatric treatment. Washington law says that to hold someone, an imminent threat of harm must exist. What constitutes imminent danger, however, is open to interpretation.

This time, he qualified and was held for a few weeks. But the treatment wasn't quite enough, Hickman said.

"The night after he was released, he called me and said, 'I want to go back,' " she recalled. But when he showed up again at the hospital, it declined to admit him.

Eventually, Zamora was admitted to another hospital. During that stay, court records show that he bit an orderly who was trying to restrain him. Criminal charges were filed, then dropped for reasons that are unclear.

"The next day, they discharged him," Hickman recalled. "How could they put him out on the streets when it was obvious the man had some issues?"

Zamora took his medication in the hospital, but when he was released he stopped, Hickman said, partly because "he didn't have a job so he couldn't pay for medication."

Eventually, Zamora's volatility got to be too much and Hickman took out protection orders. She changed her phone number, but he was able to track her down through friends.

One night, after she bumped into him on the street, a wine bottle came flying through her apartment window. Another time, her roommate's windshield was smashed.

Eventually, she packed up her car and left the state. He later tracked her down, leaving rambling messages on relatives' answering machines. She said she has had no contact with him for about three years.

Over the years, said Dennise Zamora, the family tried everything they could think of to get him to agree to ongoing treatment. "We've all tried to influence him, to threaten him," she said.

And Zamora's troubles with the law continued: malicious mischief, drugs, theft.

In 2001, for example, Zamora and an accomplice were investigated by the Mount Vernon Police Department for stealing an outboard motor. Zamora refused to cooperate. But Dennise Zamora crawled through an open window of a house trailer where her son lived on their property and found the outboard motor and turned it over to police. Zamora pleaded guilty to second-degree theft and served three days in jail with 17 days of community service.

In May 2007, he flew into a rage when a friend refused to go hiking, hurling a concrete block into the friend's car. In a statement to the Skagit County Court officials, the friend described Zamora as "devious and vengeful." Zamora was charged with second-degree malicious mischief.

On May 15, he signed a guilty plea and agreed not to possess or own firearms, although neighbors said at some point he had a collection of six or seven guns. He was released on Aug. 6 and the Department of Corrections (DOC) said he checked in regularly and passed two drug tests.

A spokesman for the DOC said the agency is scouring its records to see what else it could have done.

Dennise Zamora isn't making excuses: "I'm not one of those people who say he's not guilty by reason of insanity. He is guilty by insanity."

Seattle Times staff reporters Sara Jean Green, Steve Miletich, Jennifer Sullivan, Peyton Whitely, Ron Judd and news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

Seattle Times

Dennise Zamora's longtime friend and neighbor, Shirley Wenrick, said Isaac was resentful that he had been banned from the house at night because his parents feared him following years of erratic behavior. In recent weeks, Isaac Zamora had taken to curling up in a sleeping bag in neighbors' yards and would wander the streets at all hours, she said.

Wenrick said Isaac Zamora also often clashed with a 9-year-old boy whom his mother was caring for and that she had been told that the two had argued Tuesday morning. Dennise Zamora denied there had been a confrontation.

Isaac Zamora, Wenrick said, routinely confronted neighbors and ranted about his parents. He was disdainful and seemed jealous that they had homes or other possessions, she said.

"I don't know why I'm alive. I don't know how I escaped death," Wenrick said. "He ran into all those homes and killed everyone. Why not me? It could have been me. This will haunt me the rest of my life."

The civil rights of the mentally ill are certainly important. In the not so distant past, only on a family member's word, a person could be locked up in a mental hospital for months at least. It had become a divorce custody battle tactic to get your ex-spouse committed.

Now however, until something really bad happens, a person can't be locked up. There needs to be a middle ground. I certainly am no lawyer, and I've talked at length with County Attorneys about this issue. Their point of view is that there is no precedence to take rights away unless there is documented imminent danger to self or others. Anything less than that doesn't warrant locking someone up. To a County Attorney, court ordered outpatient treatment is an oxymoron. How can you force someone to do something because a psychiatrist thinks they might do something? Psychiatrists are no better at predicting the future than anyone else.

It's truly a Solomon dilemma.

Recently, the NYTimes.com had an article about a malicious sort of on-line anti-social behavior called Trolling. One of the people the author interviewed was Jason Fortuny, a thirty-two year old web programmer, who's passion is trolling.

Today the Internet is much more than esoteric discussion forums. It is a mass medium for defining who we are to ourselves and to others. Teenagers groom their MySpace profiles as intensely as their hair; escapists clock 50-hour weeks in virtual worlds, accumulating gold for their online avatars. Anyone seeking work or love can expect to be Googled. As our emotional investment in the Internet has grown, the stakes for trolling -- for provoking strangers online -- have risen. Trolling has evolved from ironic solo skit to vicious group hunt.

"Lulz" is how trolls keep score. A corruption of "LOL" or "laugh out loud," "lulz" means the joy of disrupting another's emotional equilibrium. "Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh," said one ex-troll who, like many people I contacted, refused to disclose his legal identity.

Another troll explained the lulz as a quasi-thermodynamic exchange between the sensitive and the cruel: "You look for someone who is full of it, a real blowhard. Then you exploit their insecurities to get an insane amount of drama, laughs and lulz. Rules would be simple: 1. Do whatever it takes to get lulz. 2. Make sure the lulz is widely distributed. This will allow for more lulz to be made. 3. The game is never over until all the lulz have been had."

Trolling for lulz inspired a number of malcontents to harass a family who's son committed suicide. Then when Lori Drew, a suburban wife, tormented a former friend of her daughter to suicide, she drew a counter attack from trolls.

Their personal information -- e-mail addresses, satellite images of their home, phone numbers -- spread across the Internet. One of the numbers led to a voice-mail greeting with the gleeful words "I did it for the lulz." Anonymous malefactors made death threats and hurled a brick through the kitchen window. Then came the Megan Had It Coming blog. Supposedly written by one of Megan's classmates, the blog called Megan a "drama queen," so unstable that Drew could not be blamed for her death. "Killing yourself over a MySpace boy? Come on!!! I mean yeah your fat so you have to take what you can get but still nobody should kill themselves over it." In the third post the author revealed herself as Lori Drew.

This post received more than 3,600 comments. Fox and CNN debated its authenticity. But the Drew identity was another mask. In fact, Megan Had It Coming was another Jason Fortuny experiment. He, not Lori Drew, Fortuny told me, was the blog's author. After watching him log onto the site and add a post, I believed him. The blog was intended, he says, to question the public's hunger for remorse and to challenge the enforceability of cyberharassment laws like the one passed by Megan's town after her death. Fortuny concluded that they were unenforceable. The county sheriff's department announced it was investigating the identity of the fake Lori Drew, but it never found Fortuny, who is not especially worried about coming out now. "What's he going to sue me for?" he asked. "Leading on confused people? Why don't people fact-check who this stuff is coming from? Why do they assume it's true?" [..] The willingness of trolling "victims" to be hurt by words, Fortuny argued, makes them complicit, and trolling will end as soon as we all get over it.

What inspires people to be malicious to strangers? The question has as many answers as their are trolls. However, in this story, Fortuny demonstrated a principle I've seen demonstrated in clinical practice. Many with anti-social histories also had a history of being victimized.

"Am I the bad guy? Am I the big horrible person who shattered someone's life with some information? No! This is life. Welcome to life. Everyone goes through it. I've been through horrible stuff, too."

"Like what?" I asked. Sexual abuse, Fortuny said. When Jason was 5, he said, he was molested by his grandfather and three other relatives. Jason's mother later told me, too, that he was molested by his grandfather. The last she heard from Jason was a letter telling her to kill herself. "Jason is a young man in a great deal of emotional pain," she said, crying as she spoke. "Don't be too harsh. He's still my son."

No, his past abuse doesn't "excuse" his behavior towards others, but it explains a lot.

The initial trolling impulse... seems to spring from something ugly -- a destructive human urge that many feel but few act upon, the ambient misanthropy that's a frequent ingredient of art, politics and, most of all, jokes. There's a lot of hate out there, and a lot to hate as well. [..] I asked Fortuny whether a person is obliged to give food to a starving stranger. No, Fortuny argued; no one is entitled to our sympathy or empathy. We can choose to give or withhold them as we see fit. "I can't push you into the fire," he explained, "but I can look at you while you're burning in the fire and not be required to help." Weeks later, after talking to his friend Zach, Fortuny began considering the deeper emotional forces that drove him to troll. The theory of the green hair, he said, "allows me to find people who do stupid things and turn them around. Zach asked if I thought I could turn my parents around. I almost broke down. The idea of them learning from their mistakes and becoming people that I could actually be proud of . . . it was overwhelming." He continued: "It's not that I do this because I hate them. I do this because I'm trying to save them."

Some victims identify with the abuser, and employ power and intimidation tactics as if they are "pre-emptive", a way to strike first before they are victimized again. Feeling so ashamed of their own victimization, they strike out in what they see as less malicious ways and then explain their behavior as a way to "toughen" those around them so they won't feel as victimized as they did so long ago. They learn to react to fear with rage.

I've heard convicted child abusers talk about how despicable their victims were when they cowered before them, that they beat them harder to inspired them to stand up to their abuser. How many of us have heard, "I'll give you something to cry about"?

Others suppress this angry response and feel chronically powerless, prone to anxiety and depression. Still others somehow find a middle ground where they are able to live a reasonably adjusted lifestyle. There is no good explanations why people adjust so differently.

I have yet to treat a person with an anti-social past that didn't also experience chaos, repeated trauma and abuse as a child. It seems as if their own rejection of themselves as victims drives their abusiveness, as if demonstrating their own abusive power allows them to forget their past weakness.

Thats not to say that all people with anti-social histories fit this pattern. It's pretty clear their are those who never come to treatment that don't want to understand themselves. I can only begin to imagine their motivations.

Apparently, one of his previous counselors has spoken up anonymously. I believe that confidentiality is still required despite the client now being deceased. Duley spoke of her court case for a restraining order.

We also get more details of Ivin's drug and alcohol abuse. Mental illness and drug abuse makes both problems much worse.

WaPO

Ivins was abusing vodka, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication, according to a fellow scientist who is in recovery from addiction. The scientist told a Washington Post reporter that he was in contact with Ivins through Ivins's two stints in psychiatric and detox facilities this spring.

Ivins's psychiatric problems and homicidal threats predated Duley [his most recent therapist], according to a counselor who saw Ivins for four or five sessions in 2000 at the same Frederick clinic. In an interview with The Post last week, the counselor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the scientist was obsessed with a young woman and had "mixed poison" that he brought when he went to watch her play a soccer game. The counselor contacted the Frederick police but was told that unless Ivins had provided the full name of his intended victim, there was little that could be done.

More information in the anthrax case have emerged, questions about security of US weapons development, the story of his last couple years under the FBI investigation, and details about Dr. Ivins psychiatric condition in the past year and his treatment.

Associated Press

Privacy concerns, bureaucratic loopholes, the demands of a criminal investigation -- all combined to let Ivins keep his job and stay out of jail for years. And in the high-security lab until last November.

Or was it just that the government's evidence was too weak to act? That's what Ivins' attorney says.

"If it's such earth-shattering stuff, what's been going on since 2005?" Paul F. Kemp asked Wednesday after the government made its case with a news conference and a pile of documents. "Why is he on the street if they think it's that important?"

That question goes beyond the criminal investigation. It goes to the heart of how secure the nation's nearly 1,400 biological defense labs are and whether the estimated 14,000 scientists working with deadly toxins are being screened for the kind of mental illness Ivins exhibited.

The Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, known as USAMRIID, follows strict security measures meant to weed out troubled scientists. It has offered no explanation for why Ivins was allowed to work with some of the world's most dangerous toxins while taking antidepressants and receiving counseling to control his inner demons.
[..]
It wasn't until November 2007, after the FBI raided his home, that Fort Detrick revoked his laboratory access, effectively putting him on desk duty for the past year.

"If he really was the guy and he acted alone, then that's pretty scary because that's a lot of damage that can be done by one person," said Gigi Kwik Gronvall of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "USAMRIID is not like being in a shack in the wilderness. It's interacting with people in a pretty secure place."

Anything Ivins discussed with his therapists, doctors or at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings would have been protected by privacy policies. But David Fidler, an Indiana University law professor and expert on biosecurity, said he didn't understand how a scientist spending late nights in a secure lab could go unnoticed.

Ivins' explanation -- that he wanted to escape a troubled home life -- should have also raised questions.

"Didn't his superiors notice this odd behavior?" Fidler said. "That ought to have set alarm bells ringing."

It's unclear from the documents whether those bells went off, and the military has not said how long it knew of Ivins' problems. Mental health reviews are a key part of the military's security program, but at least one former colleague at Fort Detrick has said it's usually up to scientists themselves to report their problems.

Ivins had no trouble purchasing weapons. Jack Moberley, manager of The Gun Center in Frederick, Md., said he sold two Glock pistols to Ivins in 2005. The following year, Ivins traded in one of those guns and bought a different Glock, Moberly said.

Moberley said Ivins had passed the background check conducted by the Maryland State Police. "If I even suspected that he was anywhere close to being mental, I would not have done the paperwork at all. The state of Maryland approved him," Moberley said. "No gun gets out of here unless there's a background check."

Lawmakers have pledged to investigate the anthrax case and lab security generally. Bills in the House and Senate would order a review of how scientists work with deadly toxins.

"If we don't have a good handle on this at USAMRIID, it's probably true we don't have a good handle on it across the board," Fidler said.

Clearly this has stirred a hornets nest within the security community and probably among all employers concerned about having a dangerous person in their midst. The chance of this situation doing damage to an already delicate perception of mental illness by the general public is very high.

And we have more information about his therapist and his treatment in the last year.

Associated Press

Bruce E. Ivins, the late microbiologist suspected in the 2001 anthrax attacks, told his psychotherapist after learning he was about to be indicted that "he was going to go out in a blaze of glory, that he was going to take everybody out with him," she said.

Social worker Jean C. Duley also said Ivins left her a telephone message in mid-July, after she had alerted police to his threats, telling her that that her actions had made it possible for the FBI "to now be able to prosecute him for the murders."

Duley testified at a Frederick County District Court hearing July 24 in a successful bid for a protective order from Ivins. The New York Times obtained a recording of the hearing and posted on its Web site Saturday.

Duley testified that Ivins had tried to poison people even before the 2001 attacks.

"As far back as the year 2000, the respondent has actually attempted to murder several other people, either through poisoning ... He is a revenge killer. When he feels that he's been slighted or has had -- especially toward women -- he plots and actually tries to carry out revenge killings," Duley said.

She added that Ivins "has been forensically diagnosed by several top psychiatrists as a sociopathic, homicidal killer. I have that in evidence. And through my working with him, I also believe that to be very true."

Duley told the judge she was "scared to death" of Ivins.

Duley told the court that she had known Ivins for six months and had been meeting with him for group sessions weekly and for individual counseling every other week.

She said that on July 9, Ivins showed up for a group session "extremely agitated, out of control." She said that when she asked him what was wrong, he said he had obtained a gun and described to the group "a very long and detailed homicidal plan" to kill his co-workers.

Duley said she called Ivins' two lawyers and the city police, who went to Ivins' workplace and had him committed to Frederick Memorial Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

She said Ivins was transferred the next day to a high-security, psychiatric treatment center and placed on "homicidal and suicide watch."

Duley said Ivins' scheduled release from the hospital on the day of the hearing prompted her to seek the protective order.

Duley said that on July 11, Ivins left her two ranting voice messages, blaming her for his commitment.

On July 12, he left another "rather scary" voice message from a hospital in which "he very calmly thanked me for ruining his life and opening -- allowing the FBI to now be able to prosecute him for the murders, and that it was all my fault and it's going to be my fault that they can now get him."

It appears that Ivins was a dangerous man, someone who should have been better contained. What's missing is what happened in his treatment before February of 2008. He had lost his job in November of 2007 after the FBI raided his home. He had been in many treatments since 2001. Perhaps more details will emerge.

Here is a very interesting discussion of the obligation of therapists to protect the public from their dangerous clients.

Salon

The 1996 Supreme Court case Jaffee v. Redmond officially recognized psychotherapist-patient privilege in federal courts. That decision, concerning a police officer accused of excessive force who sought to keep his social worker's notes out of a trial, states that "effective psychotherapy ... depends upon an atmosphere of confidence and trust in which the patient is willing to make a frank and complete disclosure of facts." Patients, in other words, should feel secure that what they reveal in a clinical setting is between them and their psychologists. Although all states recognize some form of this privilege, 27 of them, including Maryland, require therapists to breach confidentiality if the patient poses a serious danger of violence to others. (In some other states, psychologists have explicit permission to warn the cops but aren't obligated to do so.)

The exact nature of this requirement varies slightly from state to state, but the general formulation is that a mental-health professional must warn either the police or the potential victim if a patient makes a specific threat against an identifiable third party. That is, the patient has to be doing more than just blowing off steam ("God, I'm gonna kill my boss!"). He has to have an actual plan ("I'm going to buy a gun") and an actual victim ("and shoot my neighbor") in mind. But it's up to the therapist to decide if the patient truly intends violence and is capable of carrying out the threat. Arguably, Duley could have kept quiet if she thought Ivins' apparent plan to kill his co-workers was really just a fantasy.

The "duty to warn" concept dates back to the 1974 case Tarasoff v. The Regents of the University of California - Supreme Court of California, 1976. In Tarasoff, a patient told his therapist that he intended to kill a young woman who had spurned him. A couple of months later he did so, and her parents sued the therapist for failing to warn their daughter. The case ended up in the Supreme Court of California, which ruled that therapists have a "duty to warn" not just the police (which the therapist had done) but the potential victim as well. In a 1976 rehearing, the court replaced the phrase "duty to warn" with "duty to protect."

So there is much information missing to know if there was a breach of the law in the treatment of Ivins. There is no reason to expect that more information about his treatment will emerge unless there has been other court involvement in this treatment. That part is public record. But his death removes any compelling reason for his treating professionals to come forward legally to release information.

Just as I say this, more information emerges.

Associated Press

A microbiologist claims she was stalked for decades by Bruce Ivins, the suspect in the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001 who, according to court documents, was obsessed with the sorority she joined in college.

Nancy L. Haigwood and her former husband, Carl J. Scandella, also think Ivins may have wanted to get close to her when he moved in down the street from the couple in the suburbs of Washington in the early 1980s.
[..]
Haigwood, now the director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center, said she suspected Ivins in the anthrax mailings as early as November 2001, when he e-mailed her, his immediate family and other scientists a photo of himself working with what he called "the now infamous 'Ames' strain" of anthrax, which was used in the attacks. She reported her suspicions to the FBI in 2002 and, at the behest of investigators, kept in touch with Ivins by e-mail and shared their correspondence with investigators.

Haigwood, 56, met Ivins in the late 1970s when he was doing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina, where she earned her doctorate. She was cordial to him, but she noticed that he took an unusual interest in her Kappa membership.

In the summer of 1982, Haigwood moved in with Scandella, then her fiancee, in a townhouse in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Montgomery Village. On Nov. 30 that year, Scandella awoke to find the Greek letters "KKG" spray-painted on the rear window of his car and on the sidewalk and fence in front of the home. Although a police report filed by Scandella does not mention any possible suspects, Haigwood quickly concluded that Ivins was responsible.

"My address wasn't published, and I only lived there a short while before Carl and I got married and moved out of state," Haigwood said Friday. "No one knew my address or my phone number. You had to stalk me to figure this stuff out."

Records show that Ivins was living on the same street, about a block away, shortly after the incident. It was not clear when he moved in. Scandella did not know that Ivins had been their neighbor until he was told Friday by a reporter.

"I was blown away by that," Scandella said. "I had no idea he lived anywhere in the vicinity ... I wonder if it's possible that Ivins moved to that location to be close to Nancy."

Soon after the vandalism, Haigwood bumped into Ivins -- she doesn't remember where -- and accused him.

"I said, 'This happened and I'm sure you're the one who did it,' and he denied it," Haigwood said. "And I said, 'Well, I'm still sure you did.' What can you do at that point?"

Ivins kept in touch with Haigwood via phone calls, letters and e-mails, and while some of the correspondence made her uncomfortable, she never cut off contact with him, a decision she later regretted. She said she sent him polite but curt replies.

"He seemed to know a lot about myself, my children, things I never remembered telling him, which always disturbed me," she said. "I kept him at arm's length as best I could."

She also suspected Ivins of writing a letter in her name to The Frederick News-Post that defended hazing by Kappa members.
[..]
Haigwood said she was not aware of Ivins stalking any other Kappa sisters.

In an interview Friday, Kappa Kappa Gamma executive director Lauren Sullivan Paitson said the FBI asked in August 2007 for help documenting decades' worth of Ivins' contacts with the sorority, including breaking into the now-closed chapter house at the University of Maryland. The sorority disbanded at Maryland in 1992.

But before being contacted by the FBI, Paitson had been engaged in an editing war on Wikipedia.com with a writer by the name of "jimmyflathead" who threatened to post secret rituals and bad publicity about the sorority on the Web site. Court affidavits listed "jimmyflathead-at-yahoo.com" among Ivins personal e-mail addresses.

Only after the government asked for the sorority's help did Paitson realize that the online Kappa nemesis was the top suspect in the anthrax investigation.

He was apparently potentially dangerous for many years. It appeared to be just a matter of time before his actions would manifest. And they did, tragically so.

The Anthrax mailing attack on several government institutions was a chilling aftermath to the 9/11/2001 attacks. The letters, poisoned with a rare and hard to produce highly refined weapons grade anthrax, were postmarked 9/18/2001. The letters containing the spores contained references implying that the sender was Muslim. However, the nature of the refinement of the spores made it highly likely they came from a government sponsored bio-weapons program because of the scientific sophistication needed. The USDOJ makes a fairly convincing circumstantial case detailed here.

My intent here is not to pass judgment on the accused man, but to comment on the information building a case that Ivins suffered an active mental illness and the implications for prevention and emotion education, as well as the issue of confidentiality and a therapist's duty to report a dangerous client.

First the story from the LA Times.

Bruce E. Ivins, the bioweapons scientist who apparently killed himself as the goverrnment was preparing to indict him in the 2001 anthrax attacks, had a long history of mental illness that flared just before mail contaminated with the fatal spores was received in New York, Florida, Connecticut and Washington, D.C.

Newly released government documents show that in the months before the mailings that led to the deaths of five people and made 17 ill, Ivins -- who had worked at the Army's top biodefense laboratory for 28 years -- told a friend that he had "incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times" and feared that he might not be able to control his behavior.

The revelations have sparked questions at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill about how someone known to have such disturbed thoughts was still allowed access to the government's infectious-disease laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Md., where anthrax and other deadly plagues were studied in classified projects. Ivins' apparent suicide from an overdose of acetaminophen occurred just as prosecutors were readying murder charges against him.

In the last several days, the public learned of Ivins' recent threats toward a therapist and others he thought had wronged him. But those outbursts occurred after he was informed that he was a suspect in the case and had been barred from the top-secret labs.

The information released Wednesday showed a much longer history of emotional turbulence within a man whose outward veneer of respectability was enhanced by the government awards he had received for his research. The documents provided detailed evidence showing that Ivins' mental illness flared about the time of the 2001 anthrax mailings.

According to U.S. Atty. Jeffrey A. Taylor, "Dr. Ivins had a history of mental health problems and was facing a difficult time professionally in the summer and fall of 2001" -- in part because an anthrax vaccine he was working on was failing.

Ivins' problems before and around the time of the mailings -- including strange physical symptoms and treatment with Celexa, an antidepressant -- were detailed in e-mails and other documents released to reporters after they were unsealed by a federal judge.

On June 27, 2000, Ivins wrote in an e-mail to a friend: "Even with the Celexa and the counseling, the depression episodes still come and go. That's unpleasant enough. What is REALLY scary is the paranoia."

A week later, on July 4, he wrote to his friend that his psychiatrist and his counselor now thought that his symptoms "may not be those of depression or bipolar disorder, they may be that of a 'paranoid personality disorder.' "

That Aug. 12, he wrote about what he called one of his "worst days in months."

"I wish I could control the thoughts in my mind. It's hard enough sometimes controlling my behavior. When I'm being eaten alive inside, I always try to put on a good front here at work and at home, so I don't spread the pestilence. . . ." he wrote. "I get incredible paranoid, delusional thoughts at times, and there's nothing I can do until they go away, either by themselves or with drugs."

In one e-mail he acknowledged, "Sometimes I think that it's all just too much."

The first deadly mailings -- anthrax-laced letters sent to news media in New York and Florida -- were postmarked Sept. 18, 2001, a week after Islamic terrorists hijacked four passenger jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. A second batch of letters was sent that Oct. 9. After sophisticated tests were developed to identify the genetic material of anthrax spores, investigators used it in 2005 to trace the particular blend of spores recovered from the letters back to Ivins, then set about building a case against him.

The letters -- which mentioned Allah and called for the destruction of Israel and the United States -- forced the closing of a Senate office building, a newspaper headquarters and a large postal facility, and they made the entire nation, already on edge from the Sept. 11 attacks, fearful that foreign terrorists were now targeting the U.S. with a deadly microbe.

On Oct. 16, 2001, one of Ivins' co-workers communicated to a former colleague that "Bruce has been an absolute manic basket case the last few days."

From 2000 through 2006, Ivins was prescribed "various psychotropic medications including antidepressants, antipsychotics and anti-anxiety for his mental issues," the documents showed.

Long before, however, Ivins had acted oddly; for example, the documents released Wednesday said that he had used two post office boxes over 24 years to "pursue obsessions" -- including an intense interest in the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. One confidential witness said Ivins had admitted breaking into a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house to steal a secret handbook, apparently while he was pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina.

The documents also included a message board post by Ivins on a conspiracy theory website, www.abovetopsecret.com. Asking for replies at the e-mail address goldenphoenix111-at-hotmail.com , he wrote that the sorority had labeled him as an enemy decades ago. "I can only abide their 'Fatwah' on me," he said.

The posting was significant, according to a government document, because "in his own words Dr. Ivins defines the depth of his obsession" and knowledge of the sorority. The document noted that letters containing anthrax were deposited in a mailbox in Princeton, N.J., just 60 feet from a building the sorority used.

The documents also revealed the results of searches of Ivins' property, including the contents of a black briefcase -- Glock 34, Glock 27 and Beretta pistols, makeup and "false hair," and a copy of Albert Camus' book "The Plague."

Federal law restricts scientists' access to potentially deadly materials if they have been judged mentally disturbed. Last week, after Ivins was identified as the target of the anthrax investigation, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Associated Press that it was time to reexamine the rules.

Collins said that federal standards should not discourage scientists from working in government labs, but that someone as disturbed as Ivins should not "have access to some of the most lethal substances imaginable."

Dr. Ivins, as evidenced by his own emails, was a deeply disturbed man, someone clearly who presented a security risk to his employer and everyone else, given the volatile nature of his job. A man capable of paranoid delusions is placed under overwhelming stress during and after events like 9/11. Paranoid thoughts quickly develop into conspiracy theories and occasionally into rash impulsive or even calculated acts. A person with these traits might find mixed feelings and conscious pangs about the work he was doing evolving into obsessions, delusions.

One can only guess about the motivations of Ivins at this stage. His emails however, suggest he was a man raked by paranoia fear and guilt about the knowledge he could be dangerous. So my guess is that Ivins was not without conscience. It's conceivable that Ivins was wracked by guilt about helping produce anthrax and so was obsessed with developing an antidote. His motivation was certainly helped by the financial and professional rewards of such an endeavor, but it's likely these incentives were secondary because the nature of his symptoms would make the motive of fear primary.

One possible explanation for his alleged acts may be as his emotional state deteriorated in the months before 9/11, he became increasing driven by his delusional thinking. Then 9/11 pushed him over the top. A bright man, Ivins recognized the implications of 9/11 and the fact that bio-terrorism was a likely method to be pursued by those so inclined. He also recognized the agent with which he was an expert was perhaps the ideal weapon for a terrorist. So driven by a combination of fear, guilt, and a grandiose belief in his foresight and ability, he decided to use his access and knowledge to force the US government to develop a bio-terrorism program that included his anthrax vaccine. He then sent the letters, knowing he would put only a few people at risk, believing that the ends justified the means.

Clearly this man should never have been doing this kind of work. Working with any kind of weapons technology that could easily be smuggled to terrorists might be best served by employees with a certain set of personality traits and mental stability. These traits would include a rule-based value system, a compulsive nature that ensures a high level of competence in detailed work. These traits were likely present in Ivins, but he lacked stability. Predicting future stability is a very difficult task. Personality assessment is often used in high security settings to screen out instability and very likely here as well with demonstrated effectiveness.

It's probably possible to do a better job screening applicants to highly sensitive positions, but it's probably not possible to be 100% accurate in those assessments. The job brings with it a high level of stress given the danger and responsibility involved. The chances of disturbances emerging later is probably pretty high. Should such employees be routinely reassessed on a regular basis?

Any hope for such prescience would require complete information about all aspects of the employee's life. Getting complete information about an employee in a high security setting would require access and control of all aspects of his life. For example, all health services available would have to report all usually confidential and private information. Such employees would have to forfeit most civil liberties. It's not likely there would be many willing and qualified candidates.

One can only guess about what the mental health professionals treating Ivins knew about the nature of his work and the risk he presented. It's likely he was more honest in his emails than he was in his sessions. It's well known that one common reason mental health treatment fails is that the client withholds crucial information. It's common that the critical nature of the information was most evident to the treating professionals was not only not known to be so important by the client, but also this information was likely to be largely inaccessible to his conscious awareness. If indeed, Ivins was torn by the responsibility of bringing such a dangerous substance to the world, he couldn't possibly live with that thought daily. He simply had to suppress it, consciously or unconsciously.

Its also likely that Ivins was forbidden by his employment agreement to discuss with anyone the nature of his work. So my guess is, the professionals involved had no clue that he was engaged in such sensitive work. The confidential nature of mental health services would likely have prevented a report to his employer unless they had sufficient details of his delusions as well as details about the nature of his work.

Could laws be changed to better protect the public? Sure, we could strip everyone with a potentially dangerous mental illness of privacy, ensure their permanent unemployment and poverty and probably their inability to financially support their psychiatric treatment. We could certainly offer them permanent Social Security disability status. I would hate to see it come to this. The fact is that most people with serious mental illness have a good chance at recovery to an acceptable level of autonomy including employment. The major problem with mental illness is due to the high level of stigma associated with it. If Ivins had informed his employer of his struggles, he likely would have been transferred to a less risky setting. Certainly, he should have done so, but the very nature of his illness prevents him from trusting anyone. With the possible exception of the person he was emailing, it was likely that no one else had the whole story, the employer, his treating professionals, or this friend. So no one had enough to act on.

Educating the public about emotion, mental illness, decreasing stigma, and ensuring access to treatment are the only means to protect the public. But will the public agree to pay the financial cost? I would argue, they will pay now or pay later by an ever increasing frequency of deadly incidents.

Knoxville Police Chief sheds a little more light on the motivation of Adkisson's murderous tirade. He blamed liberals from keeping him from a job.

CBS News

"He felt he was being kept out of the loop because of his age and because he was not liberal."

It seems unlikely that this belief has any basis in rationality. The thought would probably qualify as a paranoid delusion. I have found it quite common for themes of religion and sex in delusional thinking. I suspect because both of these topics inspire considerable passion in most people. A person prone to paranoia, down on his luck, will look for someone to blame around him, a victimizer who has it out to get him. Adkisson demonstrated the essence of paranoid projection. He was the one with aggressive intent towards liberals and gays. The "liberals" presented no identifiable threat to him.

Elizabeth Raney Burman in her blog Almostgotit.com may well have summed up a major principle about how alienation that inspires violence. Both Adkisson and Cho, the VA Tech shooter clearly were mentally unstable and tragically alienated and angry. The NIU and Omaha shooters clearly were mentally unstable and, given their life circumstances, may have experienced alienation as well. One of the common contributors to alienation is feeling invalidated, feeling that one's personhood, perspective, and value as a human being is being attacked.

Yesterday morning, two miles away from my house, a man named Jim Adkisson burst into a church and started shooting people. Today we found out that Mr. Adkisson has not been able to find a job, and that he'd hoped to die in the shooting, too.

Last Friday, another man named Randy Pausch did die, after first inspiring an entire nation with his positive approach to life even as he was battling terminal cancer.
[..]
Telling a hurting, rejected person that he needs to stop feeling what he feels and feel something else instead ("stop wallowing," etc.) is like rejecting that person all over again. We are a seriously repressed people, and we repress each other, too. I think most of us are afraid that being angry and upset, or even showing that we are angry and upset, metaphorically may be the same as killing people in a church. It is not.

In my clinical practice, I've worked with many people with anger control problems and histories of violence. With perhaps the exception of those who relish how anger intimidates those around them, people with anger problems I've met were afraid of their anger. They have witness and sometimes experienced the results of violent anger and learned that anger is controlling, vengeful and dangerous. Effectively, they learned that their anger controlled them, would compel them to revenge and violence. In a dramatic example of a self-fulfilling prophesy, they lived their lives allowing their anger to make certain decisions for them with predictable results.

Being angry is not bad, evil, awful or even unfortunate. It is in fact an opportunity. Some of the most creative people in the world are also very angry. Anger is one of the most powerful motivators in our lives. It gives us the power to pick ourselves up from the perception of defeat and try again and again until we are successful. Anger allows us to find the value in our lives.

Randy Pausch, who died last Friday from pancreatic cancer certainly understood the value of his life. Here is his last lecture.

To Randy, chasing his childhood dreams valued his life, especially the dreams he didn't reach.

Greg McKendry understood his value in life. In a fleeting moment before Adkisson shot into the crowd that included children. Greg faced the shotgun and died so many other's could live, allowing other parishioners to wrestle the gunman to the floor.

CBS News

"Greg McKendry stood in the front of the gunman and took the blast to protect the rest of us," Barbara Kemper said. McKendry's foster son Taylor Bessette watched it happen. "He stood in front of the bullets between the child and the gunman and actually took the bullets to save the child," said Bessette.

Barbara Kemper and Taylor Bessette and 200 others in that church will be changed forever by these events. Unfortunately, I know from experience, not all of them will find meaning and purpose in their experience. Finding meaning and purpose is the only way to go forward positively.

Another UU congregation summed up what might have prevented Adkisson and Cho from their fate if it had come early enough and often enough in their life.

Kitsap Sun

With their fingers touching and shoulders pressed, about 60 people bowed their heads in downtown Winslow to affirm that the violence that tore through a Tennessee church can be overcome, one pair of joined hands at time.

"Feeling the touch of another person who is not going to hurt you and who is going to care for you, we pray that the compassion here will spread into the world," said Cedars Unitarian Universalist Church co-minister Barbara ten Hove at the City Hall plaza Tuesday evening. "It's a baby step, but it is important."
[..]
Even more dangerous is the hatred that pulled the trigger, he said. "We wonder what taught him to hate a religion that for 400 years has preached love, acceptance and hope," he said. "Sadly, there are those in our culture who do teach hate, even if indirectly." Hove urged his congregation to meet hate with love, even for those that open fire in churches.

A clearer picture of Adkisson is emerging from the sad community of Knoxville, where he walked into a Unitarian church firing a semi-automatic shotgun, killing two and critically injuring 2 more. Four more remain hospitalized.

He has a history of domestic violence and his ex-wife belonged to the church years ago. He had two DWIs, and a book shelf full of hate literature. He couldn't find a job and was about to lose his food stamps. Clearly this man was building to an explosion over many years. The concept of being charged with a hate crime is looking more plausible.

The Associated Press

Adkisson's ex-wife once belonged to the church but hadn't attended in years, said Ted Jones, the congregation's president. Police spokesman Darrell DeBusk declined to comment on whether investigators think the ex-wife's link was a factor in the attack.

Adkisson, 58, who had been on the verge of losing his food stamps, remained jailed Monday on $1 million bond after being charged with one count of murder. More charges are expected. Four victims remained hospitalized, including two in critical condition.

The attack Sunday morning lasted only minutes. But the anger behind it may have been building for months, if not years. "It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred for the liberal movement," Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen said of Adkisson.

A police affidavit used to get a search warrant for Adkisson's home said the suspect admitted to the shooting. Adkisson "stated that he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country," investigator Steve Still wrote.

Adkisson was a loner who hates "blacks, gays and anyone different from him," longtime acquaintance Carol Smallwood of Alice, Texas, told the Knoxville News Sentinel. Authorities said Adkisson's criminal record consisted of only two drunken driving citations. But court records reviewed by The Associated Press show that his former wife obtained an order of protection in March 2000 while the two were still married and living in the Knoxville suburb of Powell.

The couple had been married for nearly 10 years when Liza Alexander wrote in requesting the order that Adkisson threatened "to blow my brains out and then blow his own brains out." She told a judge she feared for her life.

Another mass murderer, this time in a church.

Knoxville News Sentinel

Jim D. Adkisson sometimes volunteered to change his neighbors' tires. He let neighbors store their property in his garage. He was the guy everyone could count on to help out when they needed a hand.

On Sunday, however, Adkisson was accused of opening fire with a 12-gauge shotgun during a children's play at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on Kingston Pike, killing two and injuring seven. Now, those who knew him as "David" and considered him their friend want to know why. Adkisson, 58, was charged with first-degree murder Sunday for the mass church shooting. He was being held in lieu of $1 million bond.
[..]
"I'm saddened for the church, I'm saddened by what happened, but I'm also saddened for him, as well," Massey said. "He was my friend. If I needed him for anything, he would have done it for me."

Massey said that, after learning of Adkisson's alleged involvement in the church shooting, she recalled a lengthy conversation she had with him a couple of years ago. Massey's daughter, Cameron, had just graduated from Johnson Bible College, and Massey was eager to share the news. But when Massey told Adkisson, he didn't react as she had expected, and she ended up having to explain to him that she was a Christian, triggering an outburst that lingered in her memory. "He almost turned angry," she said. "He seemed to get angry at that. He said that everything in the Bible contradicts itself if you read it. "I was shocked that he had feelings like that, because I don't have the same beliefs. I believe in the King James Bible, I believe it literally. ... He had his own sense of belief about religion; that's the impression I got of him." According to Massey, Adkisson talked frequently about his parents, who "made him go to church all his life. ... He acted like he was forced to do that."

It appears Adkisson was anti-liberal and anti-religion. So he picked on a liberal church?

USATODAY.com

"It appears he was acting alone," Chief Sterling Owen IV tells reporters. "In his written statement, he does not describe any affiliation with anybody and the subsequent search at his residence shows that it appears he was operating alone." The chief says Adkisson fired three times with a 12-gauge shotgun. They recovered 76 shotgun shells at the Tennessee Valley Universalist Church. The gun was purchased last month at a pawn shop. "I do not believe he expected to leave there alive," Owen says. [..] Knoxville News Sentinel reports that the four-page letter that investigators recovered from Adkisson's truck "indicates he had been planning the shooting for about a week.... It appears he did choose that church intentionally," Owen says.

ABC News

Jim D. Adkisson, 58, ranted that "liberals and gays" taking jobs had prevented him from finding work.
[..]
"It appears what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, frustration over that and his hatred for the liberal movement," Owen said.

The chief later added, "He did express that frustration that the liberal movement was getting more jobs and he was being kept out of the loop because of his age" and because he wasn't liberal.

"It appears he did choose that church intentionally," Owen said, possibly after it had received some publicity for its advocacy of liberal causes. "We're certainly investigating it as a hate crime."

There is something inherently incongruent here in the motive for a hate crime. He was forced to go to church as a child. He talked about the inconsistency within the bible. The Unitarian Church is as non-denominational as a denomination can be. The bible is treated as one text out of many, and inconsistencies are discussed.

Perhaps though he really didn't do his homework and took on the cause of punishing the church for it's liberal views, not for it's highly inclusive "doctrine". But there is a lack of rationality to the choice that suggests Adkisson may have a thinking problem along the lines of paranoia or delusional disorder, but so far, there isn't enough information.

The Guardian

The church's website speaks of its "long and rich history of taking stands for social justice," and said it has fought since the 1950s for racial desegregation, fair wages and equal treatment for women and homosexuals. It provides sanctuary for political refugees and founded a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The church hosts social events for gay and lesbian teens.

Just how did he connect liberals and gays to not having a job? Seems like a stretch suggesting a thought problem. Perhaps the news will have a more in depth profile by tomorrow.

Suffice it to say, no one should have so much alone time that few of his friends new what was bothering him. Isolation is a set up for future problems. This sounds similar to the "postal worker" syndrome.

Enough background is emerging to suggest Kazmierczak was suffering from a mental illness. The sad and scary part of this is that the fear generated by this and other tragedy may contribute to the isolation and stigma of mental illness.

ABC News

Though Kazmierczak seemed friendly and normal, he had a troubled past. After high school, Kazmierczak's parents sent him to Thresholds-Mary Hill House, a psychiatric treatment center for teens, where he lived for a year while getting therapy and medication for what was described as "unruly" behavior.

Louise Gbadamashi, a former employee at the Chicago treatment center, told the Associated Press that he used to cut himself, and had resisted taking his medications. "He never wanted to identify with being mentally ill," she said. "That was part of the problem."

Apparently in recent weeks Kazmierczak's problems were re-emerging. "We have spoke to people who are close to him and apparently he had been taking medication. He had stopped taking those medications and had become somewhat erratic in the last couple of weeks," said NIU Police Chief, Donald Grady.

The chief declined to specify the type of medication the gunman was on.

In September, 2001, Kazmierczak joined the army. Six months later he was issued an administrative discharge, before he completed basic training, a defense official told ABC News.

Reasons for his exit could include not revealing a condition during initial screening, or not adapting to military life.

The Privacy Act forbids the Army from characterizing the reason for Kazmierczak's discharge.

Kazmierczak had most recently been studying mental health issues at the University of Illinois, and had taken a job as a guard at a prison, according to his academic adviser.

But his career as a correction officer at the Rockville County Correctional Facility was short-lived, according to Doug Garrison, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Correction.

[..]"[Kazmierczak] was employed, starting the 24th of September 2007, as a correction officer at the Rockville Correctional Facility," Garrison told ABCNEWS.com. "He left employment on the 9th of October 2007."

"He just did not come back to work," said Garrison.

[..]"Steve was the most gentle, quiet guy in the world. ... He had a passion for helping people," said Jim Thomas, an emeritus professor of sociology and criminology at Northern Illinois who taught Kazmierczak, promoted him to a teacher's aide and became his friend.

Details are beginning to emerge from another mass killing at a school by a young person. Some information suggested a young man interested in corrections, other information suggest he was being treated for mental illness.

Preventing these kind of tragedies needs to be a high priority effort by all of us. The solution can not be found by locking up everyone who might be violent, we can't afford that many jail cells. It must be based on how we raise and educate our children, not just academically, but emotionally. We can no longer afford to ignore emotion education.

ABC News

Stephen Kazmierczak, the 27-year-old who opened fire on a crowded Northern Illinois University lecture hall, killing five and then himself Thursday, was described as "fairly normal" and an "unstressed person" by NIU campus Police Chief Donald Grady.

But in the last few weeks his behavior had become erratic, according to Grady, and it is believed the Kazmierczak had stopped taking his medication. The chief declined to specify the type of medication the gunman was on.

Kazmierczak had served as a member of the NIU Academic Criminal Justice Association, was a teaching aid during his undergraduate years and in 2006 even received a Dean's Award from the sociology department.

In 2006 Kazmierczak was a co-author of an essay entitled "Self-Injury in Correctional Settings: 'Pathology' of Prisons or of Prisoners," in which an attached biography describes him as having just begun his graduate work at NIU.

Kazmierczak's interests are listed as corrections, political violence, and peace and social justice, according to the essay, and he had plans to co-author a manuscript on the role of religion in the formation of early prisons.

In another biography, apparently written by Kazmierczak for the Academic Criminal Justice Association's Web site, he pledged his commitment to social justice and his academic work.

"I've worked very hard as a student," the entry reads.

Kazmierczak worked as the Pirates Cove Childrens Theme Park in his hometown in 1995, according to the park's director. He had an acceptable employee record.

[..]Originally from Champaign, Ill., Kazmierczak had been a student at NIU in the spring of 2007, where he had majored in sociology. He had been studying at the University of Illinois - Campaign most recently, according to NIU school officials.

Grady said that those who knew him "revered him as an outstanding student" and had no inclination that Kazmierczak was capable of such carnage.

But law enforcement authorities told ABC News that Kazmierczak had likely planned the assault on the school for at least five days -- he had bought most of his arsenal, including a 12-gauge shotgun, .22-caliber pistol and a 9 mm pistol, at a gun store in Champaign, Saturday.

Another .45-caliber Glock semi-automatic handgun that was found on the scene has also been linked to him. He brought some of the weapons to campus in a guitar case, police said, and hid others underneath his jacket.

At approximately 3:15 p.m. Thursday, Kazmierczak -- dressed in black and armed with three handguns and a shotgun -- entered an introductory geology class and opened fire.

While students ran for cover and hid under their desks, Kazmierczak wounded 16 people, killed five others and then himself.

"The assailant began firing into the assembled class from the stage -- from the front," NIU President John Peters told ABC News.

"It didn't seem like he was aiming. He just raised a gun and shot immediately," said Paul Sundstrom, a student who was sitting in the class with his brother Kevin when the gunman opened fire.

The violence goes on and on. Eight innocents were killed by a lone 19 year old gunman people have called "quiet and polite". Clearly there is much more to this story. But here is what there is so far. Robert Hawkins was deeply into drugs, at least marijuana, and alcohol. Although he had one felony for drug possession, his other criminal behavior was limited to misdemeanors.

Quiet and polite behavior can hide incredible violent anger. Many of the imfamous postal workers that shot up their work place also were described as quiet and polite. Children who are abused are often unusually quiet and polite.

Hawkins had been a ward of the state of Nebraska from 2002 to 2006 but had not been associated with violence. The state provided Mr. Hawkins with stays at residential centers and in-patient facilities and also at a hospital. The facilities provided him with addiction counseling and mental-health counseling, among other services. One of the treatment periods came after Mr. Hawkins had threatened to kill his stepmother.He was due for a court hearing in two weeks after the shooting for minor alcohol consumption.

Hawkins obtained the AK-47-style semi-automatic weapon by stealing it from his stepfather. He had twice as much ammunition than he used.

Hawkins had a history of depression but was not on any medication recently. He broke up with his longtime girlfriend about two weeks ago and had just been fired from his job.

A sixteen year old female friend of Hawkins came forward after receiving a death threat from another friend of Hawkins after she told others what a horrible situation it was and "how bad Robbie was on a MySpace". The sixteen-year-old girl used to hang out with Hawkins and his friends. "They're all drug addicts, they have plenty of guns and they're all weird," says the girl. They would hang out in a home the girl's father calls a flophouse for drug addicts. Both adults and teenagers used drugs and alcohol in this house. Hawkins and his friends were alleged to be dealing drugs at one of the Sarpy County high schools.

After hearing their story, Bellevue Police arrested one of Hawkins' friends. Seventeen-year-old David Horvath of Bellevue was taken into custody for making terroristic threats. Police confiscated three guns from his home, two shotguns and a rifle. Police say Horvath described Hawkins as his best friend. There is no evidence to suggest Horvath had any prior knowledge of Hawkins' plans.

Omaha Police are now checking evidence collected at Hawkins' home including computers and any information that may be out on the Web. Another friend of Hawkins' parents took him in after he was kicked out of his family's house.

"He was depressed and he had always been depressed," Maruca said Wednesday. "But he looked like he was getting better." Hawkins, who earned a GED after dropping out of Papillion-La Vista High School, got a driver's license after moving in with the Marucas and five months ago started working at a McDonald's near their home. Maruca said Hawkins was not on any medication for mental illness, but that he had been treated in the past for depression and attention deficit disorder/hyperactivity disorder. Though he had his troubles, Maruca said Hawkins was gentle and loved animals. But he also had a drinking problem and would occasionally smoke marijuana in his bedroom. She said Hawkins liked to listen to music and play video games, "normal teenager stuff." "He was a very helpful young man, but he was quiet," Maruca said. "He didn't cause a lot of trouble. He tried to help out all the time. He was very thankful for everything. He wasn't a violent person at all."

Maruca said Hawkins had lived with several friends for a couple days at a time before landing at the Maruca's house last year. "He was like a lost pound puppy that nobody wanted," she said. "I felt sorry for him. I let him stay and we tried to get him on his feet." Maruca said Hawkins phoned her about 1 p.m. on Wednesday, telling her that he had left a note for her in his bedroom. She tried to get him to explain, but he hung up. She called Hawkins' mother, whom Maruca knows only as "Molly." She went to the Marucas' house, retrieved the suicide note and took it to authorities. In the note, Maruca said Hawkins said, "how sorry he was for everything." He wrote that he loved his mom and dad and other family members and said he wasn't "going to be a burden anymore." He ended the note saying that now he would be famous.