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JONESBORO,
Arkansas––Why did Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden,
11, on March 24 steal seven pistols and three rifles, set off a fire
alarm at Westside Middle School, and as the children ran out, kill
classmates Natalie Brooks, Britthney Varner, Stephanie Johnson, and
Paige Ann Herring, plus teacher Shannon Wright? |
Andrew Golden |
Probably
for the same reason a powerful politician might think he can get away
with repeated self-exposure and other acts of uninvited sexual
aggression against female subordinates: each alleged offender learned
early, when an older man he admired gave him a gun, that normal rules
don’t apply to hunters.
A
hunter can attack any so-called fair game at any time. He can trespass
on any property that isn’t posted and guarded. If he doesn’t
get what he wants, he can vent his frustration by shooting sitting
ducks, as allegedly did Fred Drasner, chief executive officer of both
the New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report, last December
21, and––although Drasner was an American SPCA board member ––pay
no public price for the deed.
A
hunter can even show he’s a good old boy, like U.S. President Bill
Clinton and former U.S. President George Bush, by providing photo
opportunities as he kills cage-reared ducks or doves at a so-called “hunting
preserve,” a euphemism for “canned hunt.”
If
a hunter kills a person by accident, he usually gets less jail time than
many hunting opponents have already served for nonviolent protest. In
early April, for instance, the Michigan Court of Appeals overturned the
conviction of Brian Cummings, 40, of Parma, for fatally shooting fellow
hunter Stacey Bensch, 26, of Toledo, Ohio, in November 1995. Cummings
was to have served just nine months in jail and three months on tether
for firing two shots, one of which hit Bensch, before sun-up.
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few days later, Kenneth Elkins, 30, of Industry, Pennsylvania, drew just
a year to 23 months on work-release for firing three shots at long range
in December 1996, apparently while legally drunk, one of which killed
his cousin Roberta Ferrabee in her living room, in front of her
three-year-old daughter. |
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At
about the same age that the trapper boys learn to pull the heads off
wounded pigeons at the annual Labor Day shoot in Hegins, Pennsylvania,
Johnson and Golden demonstrated skills the grown men in their lives had
taught them since they could walk. |
Mitchell
Johnson's father, Scott Johnson |
| As
Newsweek recounted, “Andrew Golden’s father had
introduced the boy to ‘practical shooting,’ a competition to
hit moving or pop-up targets. His grandfather Doug Golden, who works at
a fish and game reserve, had helped introduce Andrew to hunting. He
recently built a duck blind for the boy, who, he said proudly, ‘killed
his first duck this year.’” |
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Johnson too was familiar with guns––and had reportedly already
been charged with sexually molesting a two-year-old girl in 1997 in
Minnesota. |
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Mitchell Johnson |
But, added Newsweek, “Arkansans, predictably, rejected the
idea that the familiar pastime of shooting could have contributed to the
tragedy. ‘It’s a sport, like fishing,’ said Jonesboro
mayor Hubert Brodell.” The five-member Newsweek reporting
team failed to note that fishing also centers on the recreational
killing of animals.
“This
is a part of the country where it’s unusual if a child doesn’t
have a gun growing up,” Arkansas state police spokesperson Bill
Sadler told Sam Howe Verhovek of The New York Times. “People enjoy
their hunting privileges and don’t want this ruining those
privileges.” Fund for Animals anti-hunting campaign coordinator
Michael Markarian pointed out in frequent press releases over the next
two weeks that like wildlife agencies in many other states, “The
Arkansas Game and Fish Commission holds special youth hunts, and trains
public school teachers to instruct ‘hunter education’ courses
during school hours as part of the physical education curriculum.”
Markarian
also offered media free copies of the Fund’s 30-page report Killing
Their Childhood: How Public Schools and Government Agencies are
Promoting Sport Hunting to America’s Children––as
they are doing with increasing desperation, since most state wildlife
agencies are funded by hunting license sales, while the hunting
population has dwindled by more than a third since 1980.
Ethical fabric
Arguing against a pending New York bill to allow 14-year-olds to
hunt deer and bear, Markarian warned that “The ethical fabric of
society is made weaker and more dangerous by encouraging children, who
are in the process of learning values, to inflict pain and suffering
upon animals. Under current law,” Markarian explained, “a
kitten must be treated with kindness,” unless caught by ‘accident’
by a fur trapper, “but a deer or a bear can be treated in the most
inhumane manner possible. This contradiction confuses children and
promotes violence. The state has a duty to protect youth, yet favors an
activity that deliberately transforms children into bullies.”
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Markarian’s
words were ignored by most media. So careful was most Jonesboro massacre
coverage to avoid offending hunters that none reaching ANIMAL PEOPLE
even mentioned another recent Arkansas case, that of the Eldridge family
in Buttermilk village, Pope County. |
This
contradiction confuses children and promotes violence. |
As
ANIMAL PEOPLE summarized in March 1998, father Rick Eldridge
pulled his sons James Neal and Jesse Ethan, 14 and 15, out of school. He
barred visitors from their farm, including their grandfather, Dan Brown.
And he taught the boys to hunt. On January 24, 1998, James Neal and
Jesse Ethan were charged as adults for allegedly shooting Rick Eldridge
dead on the family front porch that morning. Their mother, Sonja
Eldridge, turned them in.
The
parallels were perhaps less obvious than contrasts: the Eldridge boys
allegedly shot a family member, but the Jonesboro boys did not. The
Eldridge boys allegedly targeted one particular person, but the
Jonesboro boys did not. The Eldridge boys allegedly fired from close
range; the Jonesboro boys killed as snipers. Rick Eldridge
psychologically abused his killers, according to Brown. Investigators
have had difficulty even identifying the Jonesboro boys’ motives.
Yet both sets of young killers had been taught to kill animals early in
life, and to crush qualms about killing. Killing was made a central part
of their understanding of what defines manhood. Hunting weapons and
ammunition were at hand, so when adolescent conflicts flew out of
control, young men trying to assert their dominance took rifles and
opened fire.
Reports
of similar cases reach ANIMAL PEOPLE more often than anyone not
actively studying the association of violence toward animals with
violence toward humans might suspect. Among the more memorable:
- Jimmy
Lackey, 17, of Concord, Tennessee, is to be sentenced on July 13
for killing neighbor Billy Joe Bowling, 45, while hunting
three runaway pigs on October 4, 1997. Allegedly waving a pistol,
Bowling according to trial testimony confronted Jimmy Lackey, his
younger cousin Tommy Lackey, and his uncle George
Lackey, 21, for alleged trespassing, and directly threatened to
kill George Lackey, who is reportedly a convicted child molester.
- Luke
Woodham, 16, of Brandon, Mississippi, on October 1, 1997 took
his hunting rifle into the lunch room at Pearl High School, killing
two female students and wounding seven, after allegedly stabbing his
mother to death with a butcher knife earlier in the day. Six other
boys were later charged in purportedly related murder plots. Woodham
and the alleged ringleader, Grant Boyette, 18, had tortured
Boyette’s dog to death in April 1997, according to a manuscript
reportedly found in Woodham’s notebook.
- Eric
Borel, 16, of Cuers, France, on September 24, 1997 clubbed his
father, mother, and brother to death, then used his hunting rifle to
kill eight people plus himself.
- Kevin
Lynn Gregory, 18, David Allen Cook, 19, and Cory
Alan Lewis, 18, of Corbett, Oregon, were charged in October 1996
with killing Ronald Cary Dunwoody, 36, and James William
Boyles, 48, for live target practice. “I heard one of the
boys wanted to know what it was like to kill someone,” Dunwoody’s
mother Shirley Sinclaire told Kristine Thomas of the
Gresham Outlook. “He thought it was terrific killing an
animal, and now he wanted to kill a human.”
- Jillian
Robbins, 19, reportedly an avid hunter, on September 17, 1996
killed Melanie Spalla, also 19, and wounded Nicholas
Mensah, 27, in a sniper attack at State College, Pennsylvania.
She didn’t know either victim.
- Brandon
Roses, age 9, of Oregon City, Oregon, in June 1995 allegedly
shot his five-year-old sister Charolette Roses dead with his
father’s hunting rifle because she wouldn’t go to her room
when he told her to.
- Steven
Pfiel, 17, the son of a meatpacking executive, was free on $1
million bail on March 18, 1995, while awaiting trial for the July
1993 hunting knife murder of Hilary Norskog, 13, in Palos
Hills, Illinois. That night Steven Pfiel bludgeoned his brother Roger
Pfiel as he slept, then cut Roger’s throat, allegedly raped
his 14-year-old sister, and departed the family home in Crete
Township, Illinois, carrying three hunting rifles and shotguns. He
was subsequently convicted of both the Norskog and Roger Pfiel
murders.
- Brian
Nemeth, 16, of Steubenville, Ohio, on January 7, 1995 killed his
mother, Suzanne Nemeth, 40, with five close-range arrow
shots from his hunting bow. He is apparently now serving
15-years-to-life in prison.
- Andrew
McCoy, 17, was convicted in October 1994 of organizing the
attempted crossbow murder of his stepmother, Helen McCoy,
who survived the June 23, 1993 attack but was partially paralyzed.
Andrew McCoy allegedly furnished the crossbow to the friend,
Michael Breaux, who allegedly shot Helen McCoy, after scoring
100% in a bowhunting safety course.
- Cameron
Robert Kocher, two months short of age 10, of Kresgeville,
Pennsyvlania, in March 1989 ended a dispute over a video game by
using one of his father’s 10 hunting rifles to ambush Jessica
Ann Carr, age 7, as she rode with a neighbor on a snowmobile.
Kocher told a psychiatrist he had just been playing hunter. “All
Kocher did wrong,” Cleveland State University law professor
Victor L. Streib told The New York Times, “is
kill the wrong animal.”
Seventeen
cases in 10 years of young hunters allegedly using hunting skills and
weapons to murder 31 people doesn’t “prove” anything,
statistically speaking, nor might much greater numbers, inasmuch as
about two million Americans under the age of 18 hunt each year. Hunting
defenders will be quick to argue that Borel (not an American) and Pfiel
also used baseball or softball bats in their fatal attacks. As the
National Rifle Association claims, “Guns don’t kill people;
people do.”
But
15 million Americans under the age of 18 play baseball or softball.
Cases of children or teens using ball bats to commit murder are
nonetheless so rare that the Borel and Pfiel cases suggest hunting
background may be as common among ball bat killers as actual
ballplaying.
In
any event, syndromes underlying abnormal criminal behavior are rarely
recognized through quantification. They are discovered, rather, through
case study.
Syndrome
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Case study suggests the Jonesboro massacre belonged to a syndrome, and
not a syndrome limited to youth. The common elements are that the
killers have or had troubled relations with often absent or abusive
fathers, have low self-esteem and poor social skills, and vent
frustration most often on female, juvenile, and animal victims. If the
killers target adult males, they do so in situations where the victims
cannot fight back. |
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Click
on the image above to view a video clip of memorable moments from the
Jonesboro memorial service. This 2-MB clip takes approximately 25
minutes to download at 28.8 bps. |
Aware
of the possible consequences, most stop short of killing humans. As
hunters, fishers, and trappers, they find legal ways of killing animals.
What
they do to children does show up in statistics. In 1994-1995, ANIMAL
PEOPLE compared hunting license sales with crimes committed against
children in the 232 counties of Michigan, New York, and Ohio, which
cumulatively have 14% of all the licenced hunters in the U.S. and each
keep records pertaining to child abuse in a similar manner.
Michigan
and upstate New York, exclusive of New York City, had closely parallel
per capita income, population density, and unemployment rates––but
Michigan, selling twice as many hunting licenses per capita, had nearly
eight times as much child abuse, and twice as much sexual abuse of
children. Within New York, in 21 of 22 comparisons of counties with
almost identical population density, the county with the most hunters
also had the most child molesting. Twenty-eight of the 32 counties with
more than the median level of hunting also had more than the median
level of child molesting.
In
Ohio, counties with more than the median level of hunting had 51% more
child abuse, including 15% more physical violence, 82% more neglect, 33%
more sexual abuse, and 14% more criminal emotional maltreatment.
As
children emulate adults, the cycle of violence is self-perpetuating.
Some just “kill the wrong animal” before learning whom they
may kill and injure with impunity.
––Merritt Clifton |