Prayers - Mass Murder

MASS MURDER

Dear God,

I know that in 2012, James E. Holmes killed 12 people seated in the darkened Aurora motion picture theatre, at the preview of a Batman film, and wounded 58 others. Sadly, about one month before the rampage, Holmes told
a university psychiatrist that he was having homicidal thoughts, and she concluded he could pose a danger to the public. There was, clearly, no adequate follow up.

Shocking mass murders occur with devastating regularity in the United States. Other murderers have "taken out" many more victims in a single-killing spree.

Within a matter of minutes, mass killers destroy lives and families, create orphans, and disable individuals for the remainder of their lifetimes.

Help us, Jesus of Peace, to find effective ways to identify these potent killers among us,
to prevent their murderous rampages, and to stem this tide of senseless, impersonal slaughter.

Please receive the victims of these crimes into the glorious peace of Your Heavenly Kingdom. Please aid the surviving victims in putting their lives back together again in the terrible enduring aftermath of such unspeakable traumatic tragedy.

Help us all do what we can, Sweet Jesus,
to raise children who will never resort
to these atrocious bloody crimes, and to detect and care for in time, persons with lethal mental derangements.

Have mercy on the victims, and their killers, Jesus. May they all rest in peace.

All this I pray to You, Our God of Love
and Life, in fervent hope.

Amen

Perpetrators of mass attacks In the United States include the following.

2013 - Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
3 dead, 176 injured - Boston Marathon.
apparently motivated Islamic Jihadisism

2011 - Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
13 killed, 24 injured - Columbine High School. The two committed suicide in the library,
where they had killed 10 of their victims. Although early media reports attributed
the shootings to a desire for revenge
on the part of Harris and Klebold for bullying that they received, subsequent psychological analysis indicated that Harris, who conceived the attacks, was a predatory psychopath
with a deep superiority complex who lacked remorse or empathy for others, and sought
to punish them for their perceived inferiority.

2007 - Seung-Hui Cho
32 killed 24, injured - Blackburg, Virginia.
In middle school, Choe was diagnosed with
a severe anxiety disorder known as selective mutism, as well as major depressive disorder.
He received therapy and special education support until his junior year of high school. During Cho's last two years at Virginia Tech, several instances abnormal behavior, as well as plays and other writings he submitted containing references to violence, caused concern among teachers and classmates. In the aftermath
of the Virginia Tech massacre, a panel established by Governor Tim Kaine criticized
the failure of the educators and mental health professionals to notice his deteriorating condition and help him.

1996 - Charles Whitman
17 killed, 32 injured - Austin, Texas. He had made many notes, including one saying that
he was the "victim of many unusual
and irrational thoughts." He left loving notes at the corpses of his mother and wife before going to a Tower at the University of Texas
and firing randomly at strangers from the 28th-floor observation deck until he was killed b a police bullet.

1990 - Julio Gonzales
87 killed - Happy Land Social Club Arson NYC. On the evening of the fire, González had argued with his former girlfriend, Lydia Feliciano, a coat check girl at the club, urging her to quit. She broke off their relationship. González was was ejected from the club, screaming drunken threats in the process. He then returned with a container of gasoline which he spread on the only staircase into the club, and set the blaze. Fire exits had been blocked to prevent people from entering without paying the cover charge. Ms. Feliciano was not harmed. Mr. Gonzales will be eligible for parole in March 2015.

1987 - David Burke
47 killed in a plane crash after he shot two pilots. He had been recently terminated by USAir for petty theft of $69 from in-flight cocktail receipts and was suspected of other crimes.

1980 - Priscilla Joyce Ford
6 killed, 23 injured, by driving on three Reno, NV sidewalks. She told authorities that some people called her "Jesus Christ." She also claimed to be the first man, Adam, and also a prophetess. She said that she was tired of life and had deliberately planned to kill as many people with her car as she could as a way to get attention. She was sentenced to death, but died in prison in January 2005 of natural causes.

1973 - Mark Essex
19 killed, including ten police officers, 13 injured. Essex was discharged from the US Navy for "character and behavior disorders."On New Year's Eve 1972, in New Orleans, he killed a policeman but escaped. On January 7, he shot a grocer, drove to a Howard Johnson’s Hotel, and made it to the top floor of the building, telling employees he was there to kill white people. He killed a honeymoon couple and set their room afire. He then shot two hotel managers and two police officers. From the roof of the building he exchanged fire with police and a US Marine helicopter throughout the day, protected in a concrete cubicle. At nightfall he stepped out into the open and died from more than 200 wounds from the helicopter and from sharpshooter on the roofs of adjoining buildings.

1962 - Thomas Doty
45 killed - Over Centerville, Iowa. Doty, a suburban Kansas City salesman facing armed robbery charges, was responsible for the explosion of a commercial aircraft, killing all aboard. He detonated six sticks of dynamite in the plane's rear bathroom as part of a botched plan for his wife, 5-year-old daughter and unborn son to collect on a life insurance policy he purchased moments before takeoff. Investigators found that he had purchased six sticks of dynamite shortly before the crash.

1958 - Charles Starkweather
11 killed on road trip

A teenaged spree killer, Starkweather murdered eleven people, all but one during a two-month road trip with his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, in Nebraska and Wyoming, ending in early 1959. The e3xtend of Fugate's complicity was never determined. The couple was captured, and Starkweather was executed seventeen months later, while Fugate served 17 years of a life sentence in prison, paroled for good behavior.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Gilbert_Graham

1955 - John Gilbert Graham
45 killed in an airplane explosion. On November 1, minutes after departing from Denver, a plane exploded. There were no survivors. Aboard was Graham's mother, who had bought $37,500 worth of life insurance money in the airport terminal just before the aircraft's departure. The bomb, wrapped in Christmas paper, was in her suitcase. Graham confessed, then recounted. His defense was unable to counter massive evidence against him. A suicide attempt in his cell failed, and he was convicted and executed. Before his execution, he said about the bombing, "as far as feeling remorse for these people, I don't. I can't help it. Everybody pays their way and takes their chances. That's just the way it goes."

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