This is Both Tragic and Weirdly Weird

 Oakland, Cal. (1974)

01/31/1974: Someone hacked to death three people in a mortuary as they attempting to escape their attackers. Police later arrested a man, 20, for the murders and theft of “several bottles of embalming fluid.” His father brought him to the police station in response to an arrest warrant for rape in an unrelated event.

The embalming fluid theft, and the murders probably caused by the theft, while at first bizarre, has a rational basis. Drug dealers in the 1970s used “embalming fluid” as a street name for PCP into which marijuana cigarettes were dipped. “This eventually led to the actual use of embalming fluid when lacing both cannabis and tobacco cigarettes.”

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: robbery 

Weapon: other sharp[1]

---

[1] "Trio Hacked To Death In Mortuary," [Chico, Cal.] Enterprise-Record, Jan. 31, 1974, 2; “Berkeley Man, 20, is Arrested in Oakland Mortuary Murders,” Sacramento Bee, Feb. 09, 1974, 11; “Is PCP the Same as Embalming Fluid?” Medical News Today, Nov. 23, 2023, https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/is-pcp-embalming-fluid, last accessed October 22, 2026.

I Barely Remember This

Reading the Wikipedia article about the Zebra killings, their racial motivation, their reputed connection to Nation of Islam, the deranged political response to attempts to find the murderers is pretty depressing. If you think our current societal madness is bad, 1974 was not so wonderful, either.

When the Incidents Get Close Enough in Time to Recognize the M.O. Before You Find the Confirmation

 Wichita, Kan. (1974)

01/15/1974: Police were puzzling over a crime scene where the phone line was cut, the parents were bound, gagged, beaten, then strangled to death. The son was also bound with three plastic bags over his head; he likely suffocated. The daughter was hanging in the basement, toes two inches from the floor. Their other three children were at school. There was no sign of robbery, although the murderer appears to have stolen their car. Police later suggested there was some sort of fetish to the murders but refused to describe what had been done to the bodies in support of this theory. The B.T.K. murderer eventually claimed to have done it.

Category: family non-resident

Suicide: no

Cause: mental illness

Weapon: strangle, hang[1]

---

[1] "Four In Wichita Family Slain," Kansas City Times, Jan. 16, 1974, 1, 16; “Murders Baffle Wichita Lawmen,” [Olathe, Kan.] Olathe News, Jan. 17, 1974, 1; “Letter Writer Claims He Killed Seven in Wichita,” [Iola, Kan.] Iola Register, Feb. 11, 1978, 1..

A Conscious Decision to Make an Oregon School a Mass Murderer Safe Space

 As usual Dr. Lott is on top of this. His discussion of this tragedy links to a 5/31/2022 Oregon Public Radio article:

Oregon lawmakers last year gave every public school district in Oregon the option to ban guns from their premises.

So far, most districts have declined to take them up on the offer.

Since a change to Oregon law in September, just 13% of the state’s public school districts have opted to close an exemption that allows holders of a concealed handgun license, or CHL, to carry weapons onto public property where possessing a gun would otherwise be a felony.

According to an OPB analysis, that list includes some districts in the Portland metro area — though not yet Portland Public Schools — along with far more rural school systems. Among the 25 that have banned guns are districts in Klamath Falls, Myrtle Point, Tillamook, Pendleton, Tigard-Tualatin, Lake Oswego and Woodburn.

The vast majority of the state’s 197 public school districts have, to date, taken no such action...

Backers of policies banning guns in schools acknowledge it’s a small step. Board members in three districts OPB spoke with said they could not point to an incident where a CHL holder or their weapon had caused an issue on school grounds.

“It just allowed us to complete the commitment that we already had in place of having gun-free schools,” said Melissa Barnes Dholakia, chair of the Bend-La Pine school board. The board passed a ban in December, receiving just two comments on the policy, both of them supportive.

So why would districts disarm their teachers and staff?

For some students, the possibility that lawful guns could cause trouble on campus was a primary driver of their support for a ban.

When the Hillsboro school board enacted the policy in January, a high school student named Ceph Tronco was among those voicing support.

“What I’ve been thinking about as I’ve been hearing about this policy isn’t, ‘Is someone going to be in place to stop an attempted school shooting?’” Tronco said. “It is: ‘Is someone going to have brought a gun into a school grounds that accidentally discharges? Or is somebody going to have the potential to get into a charged argument that escalates because of the presence of a firearm?’”

The bottom line, Tronco said: “We do not want people to be bringing firearms onto our campuses.”

And that worked out so well in Bend. Adults should be making policy not kids, whose knowledge of the world is necessarily incomplete.

Whenever I Cringe About Capital Punishment...

I run into cases like this.

 Victor, Cal. (1973)

11/07/1973: Seven adults were bound and gagged in a semicircle, then shot to death. Two children were found shot to death in a bedroom. Police eventually arrested two persons for whom arrest warrants were already outstanding for a similar crime in Phoenix One of the dead owned a nearby market. An undetermined amount of cash was missing from its floor safe which had not been forced. Police believed this mass murder was to cover up the robbery. Police across Northern California were stacking up charges against these two for murder and rape. Arizona executed one of them in 1978; the other died of cirrhosis of the liver on death row in 1986.

Category: family non-residential

Suicide: no

Cause: robbery

Weapon: firearm[1]

---

[1] "Nine Murdered In Professional Style," [Lancaster, O.] Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, Nov. 08, 1973, 1; “Two Funerals for Murdered Families,” Sacramento Union, Nov. 13, 1973, 1, 8; Dan Walters, “Evidence Mounts in Massacre,” Sacramento Union, Nov. 13, 1973, 8; "List of People Executed in Arizona,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_in_Arizona#cite_ref-7.

Whatever caused these two men to take this path, they do not deserve food or shelter paid for by anyone.

Fortunately, South Africa's Gun Laws Are Much Tougher Now

 9/27/26 NPR:

Johannesburg — A spate of mass shootings in three major South African cities killed nearly 40 people this week, with such incidents increasingly common in a country already known for its high crime rates.

On Saturday night, South African police said at least 10 people were killed at a shisanyama — a common kind of local restaurant selling barbecued meat — near Cape Town, while eleven others were injured.

Warning Signs Ignored

 

Torrance, Cal. (1973)

02/11/1973: Police investigated a missing person report and four theater employees. They were at first unsure if the victims were shot or stabbed to death It turned out that he used a gun to get compliance but used a knife to slit their throats. They could not be identified at first because of the amount of blood on their bodies. The safe was open.

Subsequent investigation into a similar business robbery that only resulted in one murder and the suspect’s suicide in jail led police to surmise that a long-time criminal, 30, with an extensive psychiatric history, which included repeated warnings that he was a murder-in-training. Police arrested him for misdemeanor traffic warrants; he committed suicide in jail. He committed the murders after a detailed casing of the theater. He told his roommate that “if he didn’t come back there was no reason to feel guilty. If everything went right, he would have $2,000 owed to him and his roommate would read about in the newspapers.”

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: robbery

Weapon: knife[1]

---

[1] "4 Found Murdered At Theater Office; Vault Cleaned Out," Los Angeles Times, Feb. 12, 1973, 1; “Society Ignored Danger Signals in Maheu’s Life,” [San Pedro, Cal.] News-Pilot, Sep. 25, 1973, 5; “Maheu’s Death Sealed The Fully Story of Mass Killing,” [San Pedro, Cal.] News-Pilot, Sep. 25, 1973, 5.

Probably Not Post-Partum Depression But Still a Tragedy

 8/2/1972 Newday (Nassau Edition) describes a mother who suffocated her children, ages 8, 5, and 3 with a plastic bag while her husband slept. She was hospitalized May 26 as an emergency psychiatric patient, left against medical advice May 31. She took leave of her job as a customs inspector July 31 to care for her children and murdered them August 1st. She apparently had a history of depression and paranoia.

Germany: Mass Murder

 6/29/26 DW:

A shooting in the northern German city of Stade left several people dead on Monday, according to local police.

Police initially reported a death toll of five adults, but later on Monday said it has risen to six. Five people died at the scene, while the sixth died in the hospital due to injuries sustained during the shooting, police said in a statement.

.

Herostratic Murder

4/22/26 KOMO:

MEXICO CITY (TNND) — The gunman who opened fire atop one of the historic Teotihuacán pyramids in Mexico on Monday carried notes and materials related to past mass shootings in the United States, officials said Tuesday.

Julio César Jasso Ramírez, 27, shot into a crowd of tourists, killing a Canadian woman and injuring 13 others. Interior Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez said six of the injured have since been discharged, while seven remain hospitalized.

When security forces responded to emergency calls at the Pyramid of the Moon, Ramírez climbed higher up the structure before being shot in the leg by a National Guardsman. He then used a .38-caliber revolver to take his own life, officials said.

If "herostratic" is not in your vocabulary. Herostratus destroyed one of the Wonders of the Ancient World, the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus:

Herostratus, who by pure coincidence destroyed the world wonder on the same night Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great was born [not correct], is a man about whom nothing is known. His social status was likely poor because he was either a former slave or the son of a slave, according to historians. The arsonist, who upon his arrest stated that he committed this unimaginable crime because he was seeking kleos: infamy, reputation, may have been best described by the Russian poet Semyon Nadson. Nadson hypothesizes that Herostratus' determination to destroy the Temple of Artemis was motivated by the sobering understanding that he was but a "maggot squashed by destiny, in the midst of the countless hordes," and that doing so was the only way for him to make his mark on history.

The Ephesian authorities believed that the death penalty did not adequately reflect the seriousness of the offense. Herostratus was sentenced to death as well as damnatio memoriae, which forbade mentioning his name in writing or conversation moving forward. This was done in order to severely punish the fame-seeking criminal.

See how well it worked? You have no idea who he was. This is not the first mass murder seeking kleos. My first peer-reviewed journal article discusses another such case and how news coverage encourages this, especially with guns. The 2019 El Paso mass murderer  consciously modeled himself after a Christchurch mass murder. 9/5/19 AP:

The El Paso massacre is the latest attack in which the gunman appears to have praised the March 15 shootings in Christchurch, where an Australian white supremacist is charged with killing 51 worshippers at two mosques.

Authorities are investigating the possibility that Saturday’s shooting in El Paso was a hate crime, and are working to determine whether a racist, anti-immigrant screed posted to the 8chan board shortly beforehand was written by the man arrested in the attack. Though he was targeting Latinos rather than Muslims, the first sentence of the online rant expressed support for the Christchurch shooter.

While the El Paso murderer seemed driven by hatred of Hispanics, the Christchurch murderer:

The attacks were mainly motivated by white nationalism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and white supremacist beliefs. [monster name redacted] described himself as an ecofascist and professed belief in the far-right "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory in the context of a "white genocide". 

Curiously he was an Australian immigrant to New Zealand. The news media's pursuit of clicks makes these monsters famous. If you are a sad little person who feels that your passing will leave no mark on the world, chasing your "everyone will be famous for 15 minutes" may make twisted sense.

This is Becoming a Pattern

The correlation of mental illness and mass murder goes back centuries. 2/11/26 Sunday Guardian reports the recent school massacre murder was by someone born male but dressing as female.  (The article has a picture reminding you that men pretending to be women are profoundly ineffective.)

It has been clear for some time that while the Professional Caring Classes deny it, these people are mentally ill. Amplifying this are the legacy media and antisocial media. Transgender are now a disproportionate part of mass murderers.  Encouraging confused people to take hormones for the opposite sex seems like a recipe for confused or overwrought emotions. 

From Crime Prevention Research Center, "Updated Detailed Information on Mass Public Shootings from 1998 to 2025":

57.5% of the US population was non-Hispanic white in 2025, with 1.06% being Middle Eastern and North African (MENA), so about 56.4% are non-Middle Eastern whites. With 55.0% of the murderers and victims being non-Middle Eastern whites, whites are slightly below their share of those involved in these attacks. 

With all the discussions about the racial motives of shooters, blacks are underrepresented as a share of the victims. Blacks comprise 17.4% of the murderers but only 9.9% of the victims. That 9.9% is less than their 13.7% of the general population. 

Hispanics are underrepresented as a share of mass murderers. 11.0% of these mass murderers are Hispanic compared to Hispanics, making up 20.0% of the general population. But their 17.1% share of the victims is close to Hispanics’ share of the general population.

Compared to Middle Easterners at 1.06% of the general population, they are overrepresented as a share of mass murderers (6.4%) and slightly underrepresented in terms of victims (0.9%).

Asians make up 6.7% of the population, but they are overrepresented in both mass murderers (7.3%) and even more overrepresented as victims (9.5%). Interestingly, 50.6% of the Asians murdered in these attacks were murdered by other Asians.

Trans individuals are well over-represented in terms of attacks. There are three estimates of the percentage of adults who are trans (CDC’s Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) finds 0.5% between 2017 to 2020, Gallup shows 0.7% in 2021, and the Census puts it at 1% in 2023). These numbers are clearly increasing over time, so an average for 2018 to 2023 years would probably overestimate the rate, but the average is 0.73%. Trans share of mass public shootings over the 2018 to 2025 period is 6.2 times their share of the population. The Nashville Catholic School shooter in 2023 and the Club Q murderer who identified as nonbinary and used the pronouns they and them in 2022 were transgender individuals.

Over the period from 1998 to 2025, 50% of mass murderers have seen mental health care professionals before their attacks.

These Are Always Sad

 Going through newspaper accounts of mass murders is never fun.  Sometimes, there are details that just seem especially sad when you see what happened at the end of the tragedy.

Overton, Nev. (1967)

08/29/1967: After threatening to rob a store earlier in the day, a 23-year-old man robbed a bank, shooting to death three employees in the vault.  He died of diabetes in 1999.

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: robbery

Weapon: pistol[1]

---

[1] "3 Slain In Bank Robbery," [Columbus, Ind.] Republic, Aug. 30, 1967, 1; "Killer of three bank Employees In '67 Overton Robbery Dies," Overton, , Sep. 23, 1999.

 

Someone Turned Personal Tragedy into Something Good

9/22/25 KGO reports that one of the Sandy Hook parents set up a hotline for reporting suspected school shooters.  It worked.  A student saw clear evidence of intent on a fellow student's social media. Arrest, seizure of guns.

I suspect that there is nothing else on which would agree but she put her grief to a good purpose.

UPDATE: Like all things from Everytown For Dead People, this turned out to be false.  9/23/25 Almanac:

After local schools issued a secure campus order due to a potential threat, officials made it clear that there was no imminent risk of violence. Then the nonprofit that originally informed officials of the threat released a press release heralding the incident as the 19th school shooting they thwarted, a claim officials refute. 

On Sept. 10, several local schools were placed on secure campus orders after an anonymous report through Menlo-Atherton High School’s “See Something, Say Something” tip line. The hotline is operated by Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit dedicated to ending gun violence at schools, and flagged a former Menlo-Atherton student who posted “concerning content” about the school on social media.

Atherton police located the individual the same day and the secure campus orders were lifted. School instruction continued while the individual was located. The former Menlo-Atherton student, who is currently a student at another local school, was later placed in a medical facility for psychiatric treatment. 

But on Sept. 22, Sandy Hook Promise published a press release claiming the Sept. 10 incident was the 19th planned school shooting the organization has stopped through its tipline.

A California community prevented a school shooting after a student reported a threat via Sandy Hook Promise’s Say Something Anonymous Reporting System recently. The student recognized the warning signs among a peer’s Instagram posts, took them seriously, and acted immediately to report the threats,” the organization’s press release started. “This set off a swift chain of events that ultimately saved lives.”

The organization said the former Menlo-Atherton student posted “images of firearms, ammunition, and a mapped-out plan for attacking the school.” Sandy Hook Promise also claimed police recovered a firearm.

However, the Atherton Police Department claims there was no firearm in the Instagram post nor did it recover one. Additionally, the Sequoia Union High School District said in a message to parents that there was no detailed plan for any violence. 

“The individual making the threat included a map of M-A, but the threat did not express any sense of immediacy or an impending timeline,” Superintendent Crystal Leach said in her message to parents."

Would You to Help Strike Down California's "Sensitive Places" Law?

 This guarantees that California CCW holders cannot carry in much of the state.  The goal seems to be to make much of the state a safe place for mass murderers.  I have a number of sources that I cite in my rebuttal declaration to which I would like to provide links.  (Their experts misrepresent laws frequently. I like to show that what I am citing really says what I claim?)

The older sources are out of copyright.  You can often find them through books.google.com, hathitrust.org, or archive.org.  If you can find them, please email me or add as a comment.  More recent stuff is probably accessible through your favorite search engine.  This would save me a lot of time.

Horrid Murder! At an early hour on Wednesday morning last, the inhabitants of this town were alarmed with the dreadful information…, (Augusta, Me., 1806), 1.

Meaghan Hoyer and Brad Heath, “Mass Killings Occur in USA Once Every Two Weeks,” USA Today, Dec. 19, 2012.

Jason Van Rassel, “Police officer's son charged in city's worst mass murder,” Calgary [Alberta] Herald, Apr. 17, 2014.

Matthew de Grood found not criminally responsible for stabbing five people to death at Calgary party,” National [Canada] Post, May 26, 2016.

Andrew Higgins and Kimiko De Freytas-Tamura, “In Brussels Bombing Plot, a Trail of Dots Not Connected,” New York Times, March 26, 2016.

Will Oremus, How Many Shootings Will It Take for America to Control Its Guns?,” Slate, Dec. 16, 2012.

Jonathan Pearlman, Eight Children Murdered In Mass Stabbing In Australia, [U.K.] Telegraph, Dec. 19, 2014.

A Decade On, Childers Remembers Hostel Fire Tragedy, Brisbane [Australia] Times, Jun. 23, 2010.

Candace Sutton, Man Who Murdered 11 People in Nursing Home Fire 'Frothed At The Mouth' From Drugs And 'Put Nails In Tyres And Poured Paint' Over Boss's Car, Inquest Hears, [U.K.] Daily Mail, Sep. 8, 2014.

Candace Sutton, Man Who Murdered 11 People in Nursing Home Fire 'Frothed At The Mouth' From Drugs And 'Put Nails In Tyres And Poured Paint' Over Boss's Car, Inquest Hears, [U.K.] Daily Mail, Sep. 8, 2014. (11 dead).

Toronto is the most recent of many deliberate attacks involving vehicles, USA Today, Apr. 23, 2018

Nice attack: Trial for Bastille Day massacre which killed 86 begins, BBC, Sep. 5, 2022 

Australian who rammed and killed six pedestrians jailed for life, Reuters, Feb. 21, 2019 (6 dead).

Andrew Higgins and Kimiko De Freytas-Tamura, In Brussels Bombing Plot, a Trail of Dots Not Connected, New York Times, March 26, 2016 (33 dead)

Jason Van Rassel, Police officer's son charged in city's worst mass murder, Calgary [Alberta] Herald, Apr. 17, 2014 (5 dead); 

Jonathan Pearlman, Eight Children Murdered In Mass Stabbing In Australia, [U.K.] Telegraph

Robert Foyle Hunwick, Why Does China Have So Many School Stabbings?, New Republic, Nov. 2, 2018 (summarizing 14 knife mass murders in two incidents); David Mercer, Canada mass stabbing: 

David Mercer, Canada mass stabbing: Trudeau urges public to 'be careful' over two men suspected of killing 10 people, Sky News, Sep. 5, 2022 (10 dead).

, Dec. 19, 2014 (8 dead); Jamelle Wells, Robert Xie Trial: Lin Family 'Murdered With Hammer Bought From $2 Shop, ABC [Australia], May 12, 2014 (5 dead)

Japan marks 25 years since deadly Aum sarin attack on Tokyo subway, Mar. 20, 2020 (14 dead).

Thanks for your help.

What a Surprise

8/31/25 CNN:

"Billings, Montana

AP — 

A man suspected of killing four people at a Montana bar and evading capture for a week while hundreds of law enforcement officers searched for him in the nearby mountains faces four counts of murder, according to court records....

"Authorities have not commented on a potential motive for the 45-year-old former soldier. His niece has said Brown long struggled with mental illness."

Yes, We Cannot Risk Return Fire

8/27/25 BBC News discussion of murderer's online presence:

"In some of the notes analysed by BBC Verify, the writer weighs options of when and where it might be best to carry out an attack on “a large group of kids”.

"The writer expresses a desire to “catch a big assembly on the first day of school” and the intention to avoid parents as they may be armed."

Be armed wherever you go.  Mass murderers are afraid of victims returning fire.

On Top of the Rest of the Tragedy...

This just makes me want to cry.  From 8/28/25 Hindustan Times:

"Part of what [murderer name redwcted]

 wrote in his manifesto in Cyrillic, which was translated by the New York Post, read, "I don't want to dress girly all the time but I guess sometimes I really like it. I know I am not a woman but I definitely don't feel like a man … I really like my outfit.”

"I look pretty, smart and modest. I think I want to wear something like this for my shooting," added the 23-year-old, who identified as a transgender woman. "I hate my face. I hate when I can see it. I don't want to be seen.""

I think the word they wanted was transliterated, not translated.  Someone needed to be steered away from this confusion a lot earlier. 

This is Becoming a Pattern

8/27/25 NBC News:

"The shooter has been identified as Robin Westman, 23. FBI Director Kash Patel identified them as a male. Documents requesting a name change for Westman say they identify as a female."

Does anyone besides me think there is nothing about a person cannot tell what sex they are perhaps indicates crazy?  Does anyone want to make any wagers on how Robin voted?

Why So Many False Mass Shooting Events?

8/25/25 College Fix discusses the sudden burst of false mass shooting reports at universities over a few days.  Commenter over there suggest that seems coordinated.  Why?

Scared college students into fear of mass shootings as a strategy for gun bans.  Make universities see reports skeptically, slowing down response to real incidents.   For whatever reason, whoever is doing it needs severe punishment.   If there is an NGO behind it, destroy it.

Another Mental Health Failure, Another Mass Murder

7/28/25 Daily Mail:.

"Authorities say Tamura, who had a 'documented mental health history', arrived in Manhattan by car on Monday afternoon following a mammoth cross-country trip. "

Other reports list that his "medications" were in his car.  Was he taking them?

7/29/25 ABC News:

"Manhattan shooting suspect claimed to have CTE, mentioned NFL in note: 'Study my brain'"

CTE is a side effect of the long series of concussions from football.  (He played football in high school.)  He apparently took the wrong elevator for the NFL offices.