Trouble with the Other: The Role of Romantic Rejection in Rampage School Shootings by Adolescent Males

Introduction

On the morning of March 24, 1998, accompanied by his 11-year-old friend, 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson drove his mother's car to their middle school in a rural community near Jonesboro, Arkansas. At the school, the 2 boys readied a sniper site and opened fire, shooting 15 people, 5 fatally. Some years later, Mitchell was asked at a disposition related to another case whether or not he had been rejected by any girls he had approached at Westside (his middle school). The back-and-forth went like this:

Mitchell's dismissive responses regarding earlier romantic rejections are strongly contradicted by his reactions during his years at Westside. In fact, as a pre- and young teen, Mitchell had had an obsessive need for loyal girlfriends, at times telling male peers that he planned to marry one or another girl. Rejections were unbearable for him. After one breakup, according to a friend, Mitchell began to cry and said he was going to kill himself (Langman 2009). He was particularly concerned about the effect of a romantic rejection on his reputation and spoke disparagingly of his rejecters to his male peers. One of Mitchell's female friends reported that just a day before the rampage, he had said he would kill her if she told anyone that his then-girlfriend had rejected him (Newman et al. 2004). Despite crying in front of one friend, in general Mitchell refrained from displaying reactions to romantic rejection that might communicate to his peers that he felt sad, weak, or vulnerable, that is, that he was failing to repudiate emotions linked to the feminine. Interestingly, given his 13-year-old marital assertions, he seems to suggest in his statement a decade later that any former identity as a rejected suitor had been negated by the fact that he now has a fiancée.

Additionally, while at Westside, Mitchell had regularly attempted to impress his male peers through self-presentations as tough and fearless (Langman 2009). Over a dozen friends noted that he repeatedly spoke of plans to kill people at school who hated him or whom he hated. According to peers, he also expressed fascination with firearms and falsely claimed that he was a member of the Bloods gang. Peers dismissed these claims; that is, his efforts to prove his “manliness” were repeatedly rejected (Langman 2009).

While there is a sizeable literature on adolescent school shooters' experiences as victims of taunting and bullying by male peers (Dutton et al. 2013; Langman 2009; Newman et al. 2004), less has been written about shooters' troubles with female peers. This research examines the role of one such trouble, romantic rejection, as it relates to adolescent shooters' anger issues, masculinity concerns, and eventually their decision to carry out an attack on their school. Specifically, I consider the arguments that (1) adolescent school shooters perceive romantic rejections as one of a number of undeserved insults that have damaged their gender credibility at their school; (2) the norms of traditional masculinity that insist on the repudiation of feminine emotionality constrain these young boys from publicly expressing feelings of sadness or vulnerability in response to these hurtful losses; and (3) the experience of romantic rejection is a factor in adolescent shooters' growing anger and eventual rampage. My broader study of adolescent school shooters (Farr 2018) provided the sample for an in-depth examination of these gendered phenomena.

Review of the Literature

School shooters, anger, and masculinity

Many adolescent school shooters react with undue anger toward what they perceive as unfair criticisms or put downs of them. Holders of privilege (male, and mostly white and heterosexual), they tend to view others as denying them their entitlements, becoming, in O'Toole's (2012) words, “injustice collectors.” In Kalish and Kimmel's (2010) view, school shooters' growing anger is provoked by their sense of “aggrieved entitlement”—a masculine emotional reaction to what they perceive as unjust humiliations that call for revenge. Like their anger, the rampage decision of most adolescent school shooters grows over time (Langman 2009). However, the final decision to carry out the shooting is often preceded by a series of or single negative event. Such triggers frequently involve an emasculating loss, such as rejection by an actual or hoped-for girlfriend (Leary et al. 2003).

During the period of gender intensification in early adolescence, the salience of being seen as masculine increases for boys, calling on them to be particularly mindful of their gendered social performances in their interactions with peers (Galambos et al. 1990; Pascoe 2007). Accompanying the prescriptive norms of a traditional masculinity, for example, being tough, aggressive, cool, and (hetero)sexually successful, is an insistence on the repudiation of all that is traditionally feminine, as in no crying, no signs of weakness, and no sissy stuff. Given that male peers are typically the arbiters of boys' performance of masculinity, and thus of their social status at school, displays of adolescent masculine bravado tend to be directed primarily toward boys' male peers (Kalish and Kimmel 2010; Kimmel 2008).

Finally, there is considerable evidence that boys are more likely than girls to express and feel comfortable expressing their anger openly, and to react to anger with impulsivity, physicality, and an entitled desire for revenge (Boman 2003; Cox et al. 2000).

Romantic rejection

Prior research suggests that romantic rejections are particularly devastating to adolescents in general, leading, for example, to depression, suicidality, and aggression (Furman et al. 2009). However, reactions to such rejections vary. In their experimental study, Romero-Canyas et al. (2010) found that the romantic rejection–aggression connection was particularly strong among people who scored high on a measure of rejection sensitivity, that is, an inclination to expect, perceive, and strongly react to rejection (Ibid.). Relatedly, from their study of 247 young adults, Murphy and Russell (2018) found that individuals with high rejection sensitivity had a greater propensity for jealousy, and subsequently, aggression. Reactive aggression, linked to peer rejection in several studies, is more common among male than female youth (Gordon et al. 2014). Relatedly, London et al. (2007) found in their study of adolescents that peer rejection resulted in an increase in angry expectations of rejection for boys, but not girls; notably, angry rejection expectations are a known predictor of aggression. Moreover, research indicates that, relative to girls, boys may be more frequently the recipient of direct aggression from peers who dislike them, contributing to their feelings of anger and injustice (Werner and Crick 2004). Although such studies have not been conducted on a sample of adolescent school shooters, there is ample evidence that such shooters are especially sensitive to teasing and bullying, and that they find coping with loss and failure extremely difficult (Leary et al. 2003).

Other research indicates that having and keeping a girlfriend are important testaments to boys' heterosexuality, and thus their masculinity. In her ethnographic study of masculinity and sexuality at a suburban high school in north central California, Pascoe (2007, p. 89) found that the ways boys talked in their interviews made it clear that “their public sexuality was as much about securing a masculine social position as it was about expressions of desire or emotion.” One of her interviewees told her that it was important for guys to have girlfriends because “[I]t shows you're a man.” Additionally, in a school skit called “Revenge of the Nerds,” Pascoe continues, “the deciding factor in the nerds' ascendance to masculinity was their ability to reclaim their girlfriends.” From the young men (college students and others in their early 20s) he interviewed for his book, Guyland, Kimmel (2008, p. 206) concluded that “hooking up” with a girl “may have less to do with guys' relationships with women and more to do with guys' relationships with other guys.” Describing his relationship with “Melissa,” one of his college interviewees explained, “So, I'm into Melissa because my guy friends think she is so hot, and now they think more of me because of it. It's totally a guy thing.”

Assessments of the frequency of romantic rejection experienced by school shooters vary. In their study of 15 U.S. shootings (in high school or lower grades), Leary et al. (2003) found that the shooter had experienced a recent rejection by an actual or desired girlfriend in 46% of the cases. Findings from Sommer et al.'s (2014) study of high school and university shootings in 13 countries showed romantic rejection to be a factor in 29.9% of 67 cases. In addition, in her study, Dumitriu (2013) found that of 93 shooters primarily below age 30, 76.3% lacked friends, were bullied, and had problematic relationships with girls.

Methods and Materials

The focus of my broader study (Farr 2018) was on adolescent school shootings that appeared to be an act against the school or school body as a collective. As such, the definitional criteria for inclusion in the study were:

• the attacked school was a high, middle, or elementary school

• the shooter was a current or former student at the school and under 21 years of age

• the shooting took place in the school, on the school grounds, or at a school event

• the shooter shot at two or more people, at least one of whom was a student, or shot at or into a group or gathering of school-affiliated people that included students

• at least one of the persons shot or shot at was not a specifically targeted victim.

For my sample, I examined multiple lists of school shooters whose shootings took place between 1995 and 2015 (see, e.g., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.; Langman 2008–2018; List of attacks related to secondary schools 2015; Moore et al. 2003; National School Safety and Security Services 2010; Statistic Brain Research Institute 2015). Through this search, I identified 31 shooters who met the above standards; all were male. Due to a lack of relevant data on them, I excluded two of the shooters from this study.

Data on the shooters and shootings came in part from my above-cited study. For those data, I relied heavily on websites that report on school shootings. Of particular use was Peter Langman's website, www.schoolshooters.info, which provides material, including articles, reports, and court transcripts, on most school shooters/shootings (including all but one of the 31 shooters in my study). A search of LexisNexis by shooter name yielded listings on all but 5 of the shooters; the Wikipedia website provided references to data on 26 of the 31 shooters. Pairing adolescent school shooters with phrases such as romantic relationships, romantic rejections, and girlfriends, I obtained additional citations through Google Scholar. The plethora of sources identified through these searches allowed me to crosscheck my data for reliability purposes.

The data consist largely of qualitative accounts—that is, statements and testimony—provided by the shooter himself or by his classmates, teachers, administrators, family members, or neighbors. Furthermore, many of the findings are expressed through direct quotations from these individuals, a style increasingly favored by a number of researchers, who suggest that verbatim quotations are particularly helpful in the interpretation of data (Spencer et al. 2003). This approach is consistent with Schutt's (2015) description of a case-oriented methodology, aimed at understanding a social phenomenon “from the standpoint of the participants” and focusing in depth on a small number of cases.

Several caveats should be noted. To begin, only in cases in which the experience of romantic rejection was verifiable (came from the shooter or more than one other source) was it recorded as affirmed. Additionally, the volume and depth of information varied across cases. Shootings that resulted in a small number of victims or in which there were no fatalities garnered less attention. As such, I would suggest that should there be inaccuracy in the frequencies of shooters' romantic rejections, it would most surely involve an undercount.

The sample

As found in my earlier study (Farr 2018), all but one of the shooters had longstanding anger and anger control problems that seemed to intensify over time. Many were described by peers and school personnel as quick to take offense at perceived slights or criticisms. Over 80% suffered from self-reported or diagnosed depression, and 3/4 reported experiencing ongoing suicidal thoughts or had actually attempted suicide. About 1/3 of the boys had grown up in highly abusive households, in which they experienced paternal and/or maternal rejection. Additionally, most (but not all) of these young shooters held a marginalized or outsider status at their school and were made aware of such status by male peers who, in their view, unjustifiably taunted, bullied, or sometimes disregarded, them. The majority of the shooters complained of bullying (at times physical and sexualized) by male peers, and/or were reported by peers to be both bullied and bullies themselves. Based on their own remarks, peers were found to hold either negative or mixed feelings about 2/3 of the shooters. The shooters' efforts to counter these humiliations and bolster their low social standing often featured acts of bravado and toughness associated with a traditional masculinity, but misplaced. For example, they brought guns to school to show their male peers, emphasized themes of violence in class writings and presentations, talked with admiration about prior school shootings, and bragged about their own escapades.

Results

Table 1 lists the school shooters by age, location and year of shooting, and the number of victims, along with each shooter's experiences of romantic rejection. As indicated, the 29 shooters shot 210 victims, killing 87 of them. Eleven boys also killed themselves at the end of their rampage. Over 80% of the boys were under 18 at the time of their rampage crime, that is, children in the eyes of most juvenile justice systems in the United States. Finally, the overwhelming majority of the shootings took place in rural or suburban communities in which the boys lived.

As also shown in Table 1, slightly over half of the shooters (n = 15) were known to have experienced rejection by a girlfriend or girl in the months leading up to their rampage. The rejection commonly came in the form of a breakup initiated by the girlfriend, but in eight cases, the shooter had (instead or also) experienced rejections over failure to attract a particular girl or girls in general. The following sections provide examples of the accounts of these rejections and shooters reactions to them.

Rejection by girlfriend(s) or girl(s)

For at least 5 of the 15 boys who had experienced a romantic rejection, a particular breakup appeared to serve as a trigger to the shooting. After his girlfriend broke up with him shortly before his rampage, an extremely distressed Douglas Bradley had begun asking if anyone knew where he could get a gun. Relatedly, a breakup with his girlfriend shortly before his rampage left Jaylen Fryberg distraught; moreover, Jaylen believed that one of his cousins might have been courting the girlfriend. In several tweets just days before the shooting, he wrote to her: “I hate that I can't live without you….” “I know it seems like I'm sweating it off…. But I'm not….” Then, “I set the date. Hopefully you regret not talking to me,” followed by “Bang bang I'm dead” (Jaylen Fryberg: Shocking tweets 2014). T.J. Solomon had also experienced a recent rejection by a girlfriend and had come to believe that this ex-girlfriend was dating a more popular boy by whom he had been bullied. Similarly, T.J. Lane believed that his girlfriend had broken up with him and that she was now dating a boy who had threatened to beat him up. (Indeed, friends reported that T. J. had taken up weightlifting in preparation for such a fight) (Lieberman 2012). After his perceived rejection, T.J. told several friends that he was going to bring a gun or bomb to school, or that he was going to kill himself. When asked to explain the reason for his rampage, Evan Ramsey said that his “girlfriend [had] said ‘fuck you' and disappeared, and everybody constantly coming at me and messing with me” (Fainru 1998, quoted in Langman 2009, p. 117). One of Evan's intended victims was a boy who had bullied him and beaten him up and was also described by classmates as very popular, attractive to girls and a basketball team star. In the latter four of these cases, the alleged rival was one of the shooting victims; however, three of these boys shot an additional five, and one of them, Evan, shot an additional three classmates.

Luke Woodham had been angry and upset over a putative girlfriend's rejection of him a year to the date before his rampage. (The girl's mother told authorities that her daughter had never thought of Luke as her boyfriend.) Luke told the police postrampage that the leader of a cult-like group of boys who had befriended him “knew I'd been hurt by Christina … and he said that there was a way to get revenge on her.” He said that “Satan was the way … Satan would give me anything … money, power, sex, women, revenge” (Fast 2008, quoted in Lieberman 2008, pp. 106–107). In addition, “[O]ne second I was some kind of broken-hearted idiot, and the next second I had power over many things” (quoted in Langman 2014, p. 2). That is, like Jaylen Fryberg, Luke expressed not only his revengeful anger at the “girlfriend,” but also bemoaned his failure to contain his feminine emotional reactions (sadness, powerlessness) to the rejection. Luke began his rampage by shooting and killing Christina, then shot another nine people, two fatally.

Several male peers described Karl Pierson's persistence but lack of success in getting a girlfriend (Langman 2016). One classmate said that Karl “had trouble getting dates and would be sullen about that,” and that he tried to obtain dates with girls who were “out of his league” or “unavailable” (Langman 2016, p. 4). One girl noted that Karl had pursued her, and said that “when I told him I was not interested he got very upset” (Langman 2016, p. 5). Shortly before his rampage, Karl's mother received a phone call from a man who told her that a male from this number had called his daughter (who also had rejected Karl's pursuits) and threatened to kill her. Upon being confronted by his mother, Karl admitted that he had made the call.

Like Karl, Andrew Wurst had also experienced rejections by would-be girlfriends. As DeJong et al. (2003, p. 87) found: “[A]ndrew's inability to get and keep a girlfriend tapped into his insecurity, touching him to the core.” When a second girl brushed off his invitation to go to the dance (the site of his rampage) with him, Andrew reportedly told her, “Then I'll have to kill you.” Additionally, after the rampage, a female classmate told the police that Andrew had been stalking her at school and making sure that she was aware of it.

In a more symbolic but nevertheless threatening act, Jon Romano's newly ex-girlfriend later told authorities that the night before his rampage, Jon had emailed her a picture of himself holding a long gun (Donovan 2004).

Several shooters wrote about the pain of unrequited love. In his journal, Kip Kinkel wrote of his anger at a particular girl for not helping him, but also, like others, castigated himself for his feminine response to this girl's “unjust” treatment of him:

Eric Harris expressed anger at girls for their unwillingness to have sex with him. “Right now I'm trying to get fucked … why the fuck can't I get any [sex], I mean, I'm nice and considerate and all that shit, but nooooo.” Eric wrote that if he could “get laid,” he might not have perpetrated the school shooting: “You know what, maybe I just need to get laid. Maybe that'll just change some shit around” (Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, n.d.). In his list of classmates whom Eric believed should have died were girls who had refused to date him.

Dylan Klebold, Eric's coshooter in the Columbine massacre, expressed both hope and tenderness in his writings about a particular girl. Shortly before his rampage, in a never-mailed letter to this girl, he wrote: “The reason that I'm writing you now is that … I want to go on to a new existence…. However, if it was true that you loved me as I do you … I would find a way to survive.” In a less hopeful writing, Dylan said about girls more generally, “I know I can never have them” (quoted in Lieberman 2008, p. 96).

Relatedly, Alvaro Castillo obsessed over a girl who had attended his high school. He wrote, “I will send Anna an email telling her how much I love and care for her.” But, Alvaro blamed himself for his failure to attract this girl. Just a week before his rampage, he wrote, “I miss Anna.” “I don't deserve her though. I don't deserve anyone” (Castillo, n.d.).

With the exception of Luke Woodham, however, none of the shooter's intentionally shot, shot at, or physically attacked an actual or fantasized girlfriend who had rejected him. On the other hand, at least three of the shooters shot, among other victims, a male classmate whom they believed contributed to their breakup with a girlfriend. Additionally, several shooters indicated that they had intended or wanted to shoot one or more male peers or teachers who had bullied or otherwise humiliated them. None of the shooters identified a female peer as a bully whom they had targeted.

Conclusion

Romantic rejections played a role in the growing anger and desire for revenge of just over half of the 29 shooters in this study. In several cases, the rejection appeared to serve as a trigger in the timing of the school shooting. In others, the shooter seemed to perceive the rejection as one more in a growing pile of undeserved “injustices,” many of which involved ongoing emasculating bullying by male peers.

Romantic rejection appeared to cause the boys substantial emotional pain, which they expressed privately in journals, texts, or occasionally to a particular friend. However, their public displays in front of male peers postbreakup reflected, not the feminized emotions, but rather the norms of an exaggerated traditional masculinity, for example, toughness, aggressiveness, swagger. Shooters responded to bullying by male peers with similar shows of masculine bravado.

Shooters typically expressed anger toward and issued threats to their romantic rejecters. Yet, only one of the shooters targeted and shot his rejecter(s). On the other hand, some of the shooters described particular male peers whom they wanted to or actually did shoot. In the end though, most of the shooters shot people at random—a public, revengeful act against their school collective that, it could also be said, was the ultimate display of violent masculinity.

Suggestions for Intervention and Prevention

As has been shown in this and prior research, adolescent male shooters tend to have longstanding anger issues that appear to be exacerbated in response to rejection and loss. Although myriad biological, family, and other environmental factors likely played a role in the development of these boys' temperament and psychological issues, schools are the site of their self-described miseries, the location of those they believe to be responsible for such miseries, and the chosen setting for their own expressions of reactive anger. Somewhat surprisingly, given that he had lived most of his life in severely abusive households, Evan Ramsey could have been speaking for others of the shooters when asked why he had decided to attack his school. His answer: “That's where most of my pain and suffering was” (Dedman 2000, p. 16). As such, schools should take the lead in the early identification of and the provision of appropriate intervention resources for students exhibiting behaviors and attitudes consistent with those identified in this study.

Schools could also educate students and teachers about rampage school shootings and shooters. Emphasis should be given to the importance of reporting any student's expressions of a desire or intent to carry out a school shooting, or to engage in violence toward others more generally. In particular, students should be apprised of the need to report threats of individual harm, found in this study to be commonly made by shooters to girls who had rejected them.

Findings from this study suggest that shooters had notable, often intertwined, problems with both cross-sex and same-sex rejections. While only a handful of boys, even among those who do show warning signs, will become school shooters, students in general would likely benefit from open discussions about romantic and peer rejections during adolescence. School curricula could regularly include required classes or forums—facilitated by experts—for both cross- and same-sex discussions about these relational issues. As indicated in this and other studies, their efforts to avoid feminized emotionality may contribute in particular to adolescent boys' reluctance to initiate serious conversations with one another about romantic and peer rejection, as well as conceptualizations of masculinity.

Author Disclosure Statement

No competing financial interests exist.