Adam Lanza School Shooter Suspect Had Personality Disorder, Report Says :

At least 27 people, including 20 children, died in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. Authorities said that the shooting appears to have been carried out by a lone gunman, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to AP.

Adam Lanza, the man the Associated Press has identified as the gunman in Friday's mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, had a checkered past and a personality disorder, according to reports that cite law enforcement officials.

According to public records, Adam Lanza lived at 36 Yogananda St. in Newtown. His mother, Nancy Lanza, who was shot to death in her home on Friday, is also listed as a resident at that address, Slate.com reported. Adam Lanza's parents divorced in 2009. His father, according to The Stamford Advocate, is Peter Lanza, vice president of taxes for GE Energy Financial Services. Peter Lanza reportedly lives in Stamford, Conn.

Article on Female Suicide Bomber

Friedman (2008) noted that American news media has paid a great deal of attention to female suicide bombers in recent years. Friedman examined a sample of reports from 2002 to 2004 to see how these women were portrayed and found five typical motives: (1) strategic desirability, (2) the influence of men, (3) revenge, (4) desperation, and (5) liberation.

Dzhanet Abdullayeva (Female Suicide Bomber)

Dzhanet Abdullayeva, a 17 ear-old woman from Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim region of southern Russia, grew up without a father and was raised by her single mother who traded goods at a local market (Levy & Barry, 2010). Teachers remember Dzhanet as a promising student who recited poetry in local competitions.

The family moved to larger city after a few years, and Dzhanet met Umalat Magomedov, a 30 year-old militant leader, through the Internet. One source felt that the fatherless Dzhanet had been attracted to a strong (albeit brutal) man who gave her a sense of support.

The Russian forces killed Magomedov in a firefight on December 31, 2009, after which Dzhanet made the decision to become a suicide bomber. She traveled to Moscow with another female suicide bomber, accompanied by a man. They assembled the bombs in an apartment there, and Dzhanet blew herself up in a subway train.

A passenger in the train noted that Dzhanet was not wearing a scarf. “Her eyes were very open, like on drugs, and she rarely blinked, and it was scary… I thought that she might be just mentally ill.”

The Oklahoma City Bombing

A bomb carried in a Ryder truck exploded in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995. The bomb claimed 168 innocent lives. That a homegrown, war-decorated American terrorist named Timothy McVeigh drove and parked the Ryder truck in the handicap zone in front of the Murrah Building there is little doubt. In 1997, a jury convicted McVeigh and sentenced him to death. The federal government, after an investigation involving 2,000 agents, also charged two of McVeigh's army buddies, Michael Fortier and Terry Nichols, with advance knowledge of the bombing and participation in the plot. Despite considerable evidence linking various militant white supremacists to the tragedy in Oklahoma City, no other persons faced prosecution for what was--until September 11, 2001--the worst act of terrorism ever on American soil.

The Oklahoma City bombing trials raise questions more interesting than the answers they provide. How, in four years, can an army sergeant and Green Beret aspirant turn so violently against the government he served? If there had been no Waco, would there have been no Oklahoma City? Did McVeigh want to be captured? Why did the government only bring charges against three men in connection with the bombing, when compelling evidence suggests that others played significant roles in the crime? We do not have clear answers to any of these questions--but some possible answers to these and other intriguing questions have come into better focus in the years since the McVeigh and Nichols trials.

The childhood of Timothy McVeigh in Lockport, New York was far from idyllic. His parents divorced in 1978, when Tim was ten, and for the remainder of his school years he lived mainly with his father, Bill McVeigh. Scrawny and unathletic, "Noodle" McVeigh became a target for neighborhood bullies. He attributes a lifelong hatred for bullies of all kinds (a class which, in his view, included an overreaching federal government) to early beatings on softball diamonds and head spinning "swirlies" in flushing toilets. It is possible that McVeigh's fascination with guns, dating to pre-teen years spent admiring his grandfather's .22-caliber rifle, might have something to do with his view of weapons as the great equalizer. He dedicated himself to developing his marksmanship skills, spending hours shooting holes in soft-drink cans in a ravine. By age 14, Tim McVeigh's interests included survivalism. He began stockpiling food and camping equipment in preparation for possible nuclear attack or a communist overthrow of the United States government. 

Although McVeigh performed well on standardized tests in high school, school and its social life had considerably less appeal for him than his world of guns, fringe movements, and science fiction books. He struck classmates as somewhat introverted and disengaged, and his only extracurricular activity was track. Under the entry "future plans" in his high school yearbook, McVeigh wrote: "Take it as it comes, buy a Lamborghini, California girls." Despite his reference to "California girls," McVeigh seemed uncomfortable around women, never had a girlfriend, and--despite his own contentions to the contrary-- might have remained a virgin throughout his entire life

Dean Corll and the Houston Mass Murders

Dean Corll:

Dean Corll was a 33-year-old electrician living in Houston, Texas, who with two teen accomplices was responsible for kidnapping, torturing, raping and murdering at least 27 young boys in Houston in the early 1970s. The Houston Mass Murders, as the case was later called, became one of the most horrific series of murders in U.S. history.

The Early Years:

Dean Corll (December 24, 1939 - August 8, 1973) was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Mary Robinson and Arnold Corll. After his parents divorced, Dean and his brother Stanley moved with their mother to Houston, Texas. Dean seemed to adjust to the change, kept a good grade average and was described by teachers as being polite and well-behaved.

Serial Killer William Bonin

William Bonin was a habitual s*x offender turned serial killer, suspected of s*xually assaulting, torturing and killing at least 21 boys and young men in California.

The Early Years

William Bonin grew up in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father and a grandfather who was a convicted child molester. Early on he was a troubled kid which eventually landed him in a juvenile detention center where he was s*xually molested. After leaving the center, he too began molesting children.

Pedro Alonso Lopez - The Monster of the Andes

One Of History's Most Horrific Killers: Pedro Alonzo Lopez, whereabouts - unknown, was responsible for the murders of over 350 children, yet in 1998 he was set free despite his vows to kill again.

Lopez' Childhood Years: Lopez was born in 1949 in Tolmia, Colombia, a time when the country was in political turmoil and crime was rampant. He was the seventh of 13 children born to a Colombian prostitute. When Lopez was eight, his mother caught him touching his sister's breast and she kicked him out of the house forever