Disbelief spread with the news of the bombing. “I felt like a bullet went through my heart,” Jahar’s old wrestling coach, Peter Payack, told Rolling Stone magazine about Jahar. “To think that a kid we mentored and loved like a son could have been responsible for all this death. It was beyond shocking. It was like an alternative reality.” And later, “There are kids we don’t catch who just fall through the cracks, but this guy was seamless, like a billiard ball. No cracks at all.”
But there were cracks. They just weren’t visible. Beneath the surface, Jahar was tormented by his family’s broken dreams. And as was the case with other lone wolf killers, his torment turned to deadly fury, searching for an outlet and a focus. The eventual cause Jahar found became radical Islam.
Killing for a cause was McVeigh’s mantra as well. The day of the bombing, he wore what was said to be his favorite T-shirt. On the front was a picture of Abraham Lincoln and the words “sic semper tyrannis,” which is what John Wilkes Booth was said to have shouted either before, as, or right after he shot Lincoln. Thus ever to tyrants. The entire statement is “Thus always I eradicate tyrants’ lives.”
On the back of the T-shirt, a tree with blood dripping from the branches illustrated the statement “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” This quote, which originated in a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Smith in 1787 in reference to an uprising in Massachusetts after the American Revolution, is frequently taken out of context. The rest of the letter suggests that we must accept a certain amount of violence to keep freedom free, but it is not intended to incite violence. Both McVeigh and Breivik, however, used that quote to explain their acts. Jefferson could never have imagined that his eloquent statement would be used to justify the bloodshed in Oklahoma and Norway.
KILLING THE GOVERNMENT
When I heard the news in the afternoon on July 22, 2011, I was driving up to our mountain chalet in Switzerland, with my young son and daughter in the car. A friend called and told me about the killings, her voice breathless and panicked on the phone. I immediately turned on the radio. A bomb at the government building. The gunning down of young people on an island, many of whom jumped into the icy water only to drown or be shot.
Paralyzed with shock and disbelief, I felt an even greater blow when I learned that the terrorist was Norwegian, one of us. How could something like this happen in my native country?
Soon, the world knew the details. Yet no one has answered the question I asked myself that day.
That summer afternoon in southern Norway was rainy and cold. Until that day, the only thing in the country that wasn’t predictable was the weather. Anders Breivik had dressed for it in the uniform of a private security guard, a move to distract attention from himself. He pulled into the parking lot in front of the Justice Department building, despite the no-entry sign. Having been raised there, Breivik knew that people in Norwegian society are basically sleepwalking, the citizens going about their daily lives as if in a daze. No one would be focused on guarding the gate. He would have had a more difficult time carrying out his plans in most other countries, where security is always a cause for focus and diligence. But here, where even the king and the prime minister are accessible to the public, no one responded fast enough to remove the van that should not have been there.
The parking spot Breivik wanted was occupied. He had planned to place his white Volkswagen Crafter so that the explosion would destroy the support structure and collapse the whole building as McVeigh’s bomb had done in Oklahoma City. Instead, frustrated, he parked in the next space over.
Due to the public holidays, the offices weren’t well guarded. A silver-gray Fiat waited at Hammersborg Square, and Breivik hurried in its direction, away from what he knew would happen next.
At 3:25 P.M., the Volkswagen exploded near the offices of the prime minister. Chaos ensued. Phone lines were jammed. Norway was not used to dealing with a disaster of this magnitude. Witnesses managed to get the license plate number of the Fiat; but in the confusion, the police couldn’t act fast enough, and Breivik was able to flee the city.
News of the bombing spread to the tiny island of Utøya, which is only about 600 yards into Tyrifjorden Lake, about twenty-five miles northwest of Oslo, where participants of the Labor Party’s Youth League summer camp annually come together in the camp’s main house. The island is only 26 acres in size, 1600 yards in circumference.
At approximately 4:55 P.M., Breivik arrived at the landing, where he boarded the ferry to his next target—Utøya and the young people gathered there. Still in uniform, wearing an ID card around his neck, and carrying a handgun and rifle, he introduced himself to his victims as Martin Nilsen from the Police Intelligence Service and asked if they would help him carry his large black suitcase onto the ferry. Trusting of the police and unaware that the suitcase was full of weapons and ammunition, they agreed.
At 5:18 P.M., Breivik arrived at Utøya. Four minutes later, he began shooting.
When I finally went to sleep that Friday night, ten people were reported dead on Utøya, and no number of victims had yet been confirmed from the bombing in Oslo. When I awoke the next morning and immediately turned on the news, eighty-four people were reported dead. Chaos and disorganization hindered the job of identifying victims. By Monday, it was confirmed that seventy-seven people had died, and hundreds more, most of them teenagers, had been injured. The entire country was in mourning; in my home in Switzerland, so was I.
Although no one knew it then, Breivik would inspire copycat killers, including Adam Lanza, the Connecticut school gunman, who imitated him in much the same way Breivik had borrowed from Kaczynski and McVeigh. But in the wake of the aftermath, before the copycats, Breivik would go through a trial where Norwegian experts would deem him sane. He would be sentenced to Norway’s maximum penalty of twenty-one years in prison.
As the drama and debates played out, I continued reflecting on my original question. How could this happen? How could the Norwegian society create a monster who would attack his own government and young teenagers? How, in Norway, the second wealthiest nation in the world in monetary value, with the second highest gross domestic product per capita? How, in Norway, with its 2.6 percent unemployment rate and its Nobel Peace Prize?
Any country can produce madmen, one might argue. But Breivik’s story is more than pure coincidence. Some of the books published in Norway look at his life, blaming his childhood and parents. Many blame capitalistic influences in the country, while others target anti-Muslim Internet blogs and contra-jihadists. No one, least of all the Norwegian authors, is examining the psychological and sociological issues that help form similar killers in our societies. And perhaps most incredibly, none have brought up the issues raised by Breivik himself in his manifesto.
Maybe they’re afraid or in denial. And maybe I would be too, if I hadn’t left Norway when I did. But I did leave. I do understand the issues; I have lived them. And although I could never justify his crimes, let alone empathize with such a killer, I can relate to a great deal of the suffering Breivik endured.
That is how this book began, as a sociological study. I believed it would confirm my theories about how Norway facilitated the personality disorders that led to Breivik’s killing spree. I wanted to understand how a country could be so stunned and unprepared that the killer himself had to call the police to come out and arrest him.
Writing this book became an act of discovery for me, as I began researching and interviewing experts. I began to discover information I’d never dreamed of when I was originally shocked into writing about Breivik in the context of Norwegian society.
An attorney by profession, I began researching the book by speaking to psychologists. This led me to Kathleen M. Puckett, Ph.D., FBI Behavioral Analyst (ret.). In her work as an FBI profiler, Dr. Puckett wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on what she calls lone wolf killers. Her co-authored book on Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, examines the psychological
development of these killers, and she is considered one of the leading experts in the United States on this rare type of mass murderer who symbolically “kills his government” for reasons we will examine shortly.
Although her dissertation belongs to the FBI, Dr. Puckett spoke candidly with me in great detail and explained why she believes Breivik, like Kaczynski and McVeigh before him, is indeed a lone wolf killer. What I learned from her was confirmed by my own research, but Dr. Puckett was the expert who first changed my thinking and greatly altered my plans for a book regarding the Norwegian massacre. As a result, this book is no longer just a sociological study.
Instead, the information I present here will show how countries such as Norway and the United States facilitate lone wolf killers. It will also describe how to separate and identify the lone wolf—the murderer who plans for a major event, as Kaczynski, McVeigh, and Breivik did—though he leaves no paper trail to lead authorities to him.
The lone wolf doesn’t murder for fun, for profit, or as a shortcut to suicide. This killer is so shut off and shut down from humanity that the only way for him to matter is to connect so completely with a cause that he is compelled to kill for it.
When she studied the psychological profile of Timothy McVeigh, Dr. Puckett was surprised to find that his personality echoed Kaczynski’s. “He didn’t write down every thought he’d had as Kaczynski did,” she said, “but there were persistent and compelling similarities in the way they saw themselves and their places in the world.”
The same is true of Breivik. And though he didn’t write down every thought, his manifesto is both an unparalleled glimpse into his psychology and a key to the psychology of others like him.
The lone wolves of the world can be stopped before they strike. We don’t have to wait for the next attack at a marathon in Boston, in an outwardly peaceful country such as Norway, or anywhere else. We can take aggressive, positive steps toward stopping these killings.
According to Dr. Puckett, we first need to understand the mental state of these killers—before they strike. By analyzing Breivik, we will also be able to shed light on other mass murderers like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of the Columbine massacre. The Columbine killers and other school shooters are not lone wolves in the strictest sense of the term. They are often suicidal and leave a paper trail that can lead authorities to them, and can be easier to stop—if we know what to look for.
Because of Breivik, we now know what that is.
CHAPTER ONE
PLANNING THE ATTACK:
TRAINING FOR CARNAGE
I have been storing three bottles of Château Kirwan 1979 (French red wine), which I purchased at an auction 10 years ago with the intention of enjoying them at a very special occasion. Considering the fact that my martyrdom operation draws ever closer, I decided to bring one to enjoy with my extended family at our annual Christmas party. . . .
—ANDERS BREIVIK MANIFESTO
Once the lone wolf decides on a plan, he still goes undetected by family and friends. These killers may have already been perceived as “weird” by those who know them, so even bizarre behavior is frequently overlooked. Yet the signs are clearly there.
McVeigh had been buying and reselling guns to those who didn’t want those weapons traced to them. On September 13, 1994, he learned that laws were being passed to halt manufacturing of handguns, semiautomatic rifles, and other weapons. Not only did this threaten his ability to make a living, but it stirred his feelings of paranoia, and he knew he could no longer wait. He wrote to Michael Fortier, with whom he had briefly stayed in the Fortiers’ mobile home in Kingman. He, Fortier, and Terry Nichols planned to blow up a federal building. Even though Fortier refused to join them in the end, McVeigh and Nichols, using bomb-building manuals as their guides, began stockpiling materials—such as blasting caps and liquid nitromethane—to make a bomb, just as Breivik did on his façade of a farm.
In May 2009, Breivik founded a farming company he named Breivik Geofarm. Registered to his mother’s address in Oslo, the enterprise’s functions were listed as the purchase, sale, and management of stocks and project development, including the acquisition and development of real estate. He tried to be as vague as possible, because he wanted to have options regarding what he did with this company. His primary goal was creating the best cover with which to build his bomb, and possibly even a hiding place for after the attacks. By pretending to be a farmer, he could order fertilizer without arousing suspicion.
His descriptions, buying and selling shares and real estate, weren’t exactly functions one would associate with the name Geofarm, but his plan worked. Even after he had failed to change the registered purpose of his company, nothing prevented him from ordering the fertilizers, chemicals, and other products needed for building a bomb. When ordering the fertilizer, he said that his farm was set up to cultivate vegetables, melons, roots, and tubers, and again the changes in the list of functions drew no suspicion.
Breivik sought isolation on his phony farm, just as Kaczynski also sought isolation. Once Kaczynski left Berkeley, he moved in with his parents for two years in Lombard, Illinois. Just outside Lincoln, Montana, he built a cabin with no running water or electricity, where he hoped to live without interference from society. Kaczynski being jobless, his parents supported him financially. But even in this self-enforced isolation, society invaded. He wrote about how developers were ruining the land around him, and he planned retaliation.
Much about how Breivik was preparing for his massacre is divulged in the final pages of his manifesto, which he wrote at the farm. He referred to this section as his “Knights Templar Log—Personal reflections and experiences during the preparation phases.” Although his matter-of-fact tone remained constant during this several-thousand-word essay, there is something ominous in its totality.
“This log,” Breivik wrote after his day’s work, “contains a lot of what can appear as ‘wining’ [sic], but it serves to reflect my mental state during the stay, a relatively detailed list of events, and how I overcame the obstacles that arose. It can also serve as an educational guide or a blueprint for which the goal is to create a more efficient time budget. Learning from other people’s mistakes is always preferable to making them all yourself. It should be possible to drastically reduce the time spent on preparation, assembly and manufacturing based on the experiences shared in this log.”
Within this detailed account, one can picture how consumed he had become with his project. His transformation was complete. In 2006, at the age of twenty-seven, without a job and in an effort to save money and drop out of the daily social mingling, Breivik moved back in with his mother. The first set of psychiatrists who evaluated him before the trial said in their report that his mental health had deteriorated at this stage, and he had gone into a state of withdrawal and isolation.
“Sure,” Breivik stated at the end of his manifesto, three years after moving in with his mother, “some people will think you are a freak for living with your parents at the age of thirty-one but this is irrelevant to a Justiciar Knight.” He lived with his mother because he was unable to connect with others. It was a way of removing himself further from society, into isolation, in order to refine his ideology, become one with it, and carefully plan the attacks.
A RETREAT INTO GAMES
After settling into his mother’s basement, Breivik spent hours playing games on the Internet, on some days as many as sixteen hours at a time. Yet no one was aware that he was also working on his manifesto. His friends from this time stated that they were frustrated with him for withdrawing himself and avoiding them. His mother and sister were also worried and frustrated by the way he had apparently retreated from all social activity to stay inside, brood, and play computer games. Although he had shut the door on Norway, he was very active in his own way. And in that strange world, he had friends under any number of identities.
In World of Warcraft, the biggest and most well-known of the so-called Massive Multiplayer Role-Playing Gam
es or MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online), he logged in using three different avatars. They were Andersnordic (a part-man, part-magical creature), and, later, Conservatism and Conservative. These last two avatars were attractive, blond females, just like his mother and sister. In various places throughout the manifesto, he expresses his attraction to blond women. However, his motive for using them as avatars was probably to gain cooperation from the other male players.
Other players liked Breivik under any number of his fictional selves. When he announced that he was considering leaving to play Age of Conan instead, many wanted to follow him. One even wrote him this e-mail on May 17, 2008: “. . . Things are going ok in the guild but new mage sucks compared to you and xxxxx’s missing you so much he’s losing hair even faster than before! . . . Anyway, we miss you a lot in the guild and i [sic] hope you’re (not :P) having fun in AoC and that you’ll come back to us soon :( ”
He communicated with about forty preferred websites and blogs, using approximately twenty different e-mail addresses and thirty different nicknames and aliases.
The last couple of years, Breivik spent a considerable amount of time on a Call of Duty series, called Modern Warfare 2. In his manifesto, he wrote that the game was excellent target practice. He also played other war-strategy games and watched Dexter, the American TV series about a forensic specialist who has a secret life as a serial killer. For Breivik, the TV series must have also been inspiring, for here was a hero who every week committed murder for the most honorable of reasons—and got away with it.
In his manifesto, Breivik claimed that the games were a cover for his real activity, namely organizing his plan of attack into “phases,” as well as writing his masterpiece. The games also allowed him to escape from his old life and to feel part of something, a feeling that he had failed to achieve for very long in school or politics. After dropping out of high school, Breivik had attempted to have a career as a politician for the Progressive Party; however, despite all the efforts he made, the party rejected him.
The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer Page 2
