Author(s): Al Cimino

True Crime

Spree killers are probably the most notorious and infamous of all multiple murderers, yet these criminals confuse and fascinate us more than any other. Kids going on the rampage have captured the headlines recently, but William Cruse was a sixty-one-year-old retired librarian when one day he snapped, killing six including two policemen then attempting to kill another 24. Nor is it possible to understand why the perpetrators kill, many of whom were killed by the police at the end of their sprees, and therefore unanswerable to their crimes. Those who survived are usually certified insane famously when Brenda Spencer, who had killed two and wounded nine, was asked why she had done it, she simply replied: 'I dont like Monday.' Spree Killers provides the horribly fascinating sometimes enigmatic and inexplicable but always terrifyingly gripping stories of 45 spree killers, from the first recorded incident in 1913 through to the most recent high school and shopping mall slaughters. Entries include: Charles Whitman, the 'sniper in the tower', Texas, 1966, killed 15, wounded 32; Brenda Spencer, San Diego, 1979, killed two, wounded nine; Edward Mann, Maryland, 1982, killed two, wounded eight; Woo Bum-kon, South Korea, killed 57, wounded 35; Marc Lepine, Montreal, 1989, killed 14, wounded 14; Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Columbine, 1999, killed 13, wounded 24; Abbas al-Baqir Abbas, Sudan, killed 27, wounded 53; Virgin Tech massacre, 2007, killed 32, wounded 17; Isaac Zamora, Washington state, 2008, killed six, wounded two; Tim Kretschmer, Germany 2009, killed of 15, wounded nine; Jiverly Antares Wong, Birmingham, Alabama, 2009, killed 14.