Abstract
My dear friend Dr. Stuart W. Twemlow, MD, forensic psychiatrist, and associate editor of Violence and Gender died recently in his beloved New Zealand.
Dr. Twemlow was a luminary in the field of school violence and specifically bullying behavior. If he were with us today, I know Dr. Twemlow would have much to say about the recent mass shootings in Texas and New York from both a causation and intervention perspective.
I met Dr. Twemlow in 1999 when the Federal Bureau of Investigation hosted its first conference on school violence and mass shootings, and we invited subject matter experts from around the world to speak to us on this topic. Also, in attendance were survivors from the only 18 mass school shootings we could identify at that time. For a week, located in a remote site in northern Virginia, we sat in a room huddled together trying to better understand this new kind of violence. Dr. Twemlow spoke to us about his research and his incredible insights into school violence and the role that bullying behavior can play in these cases.
He always emphasized the complicated trajectory of violent behavior and all the possible causes that are instrumental in someone's evolution into becoming a violent offender. This conference was held 3 months after the Columbine High School mass shooting and survivors and investigators from Columbine attended the conference with us. Everyone was still stunned and heartbroken by the viciousness of the Columbine attack and the extent of the lethality we witnessed by the two shooters. When Dr. Twemlow was not providing the conference with his expertise, I saw him reaching out to the Columbine participants in such a kind and compassionate way to provide them with much needed consolation because their trauma was palpable and at times inconsolable.
I then had the opportunity to travel with Dr. Twemlow to Finland where we presented on school violence to an audience that had recently experienced their own mass shootings. In 2007 an 18-year-old entered a high school with a semiautomatic pistol and killed eight people and injured one. Influenced by the 2007 shooter, a year later, a 22-year-old entered the Seinajoki University of Applied Sciences where he shot and killed 10 people with a Walther P22 Target semiautomatic pistol, before shooting himself in the head. Like Columbine, our Finnish friends were still wheeling from these two mass shootings, and, once again, I saw the remarkable two sides of Dr. Twemlow, the scientist and the compassionate caregiver.
But one of the most remarkable memories I have of Dr. Twemlow is when he and I traveled to Austin, Texas, on multiple occasions to work with a group of first responder officers and victims of the Texas Tower Shooting. On August 1, 1966, the United States experienced its first major mass school shooting on the campus of the University of Texas (UT). Charles Whitman, an undergraduate student at UT entered the tower, pulling behind him a metal trunk full of a long barrel guns—1966s version of weapons of mass lethality. For more than 90 min that day Whitman shot randomly but with great precision at anyone walking below the tower. Sixteen people died as a result of Whitman's actions that day and 31 people were injured.
Through the lens of 1966 science and medicine, experts at the time opined that Whitman's behavior was the result of a single tumor found at the base of his skull during his autopsy. Dr. Twemlow, who had been a noted surgeon before switching to psychiatry, reviewed those 1966 reports and opined that the kind of deadly predatory behavior manifested by Whitman that day could not be defined by a single biological source like a tumor. Instead, Dr. Twemlow believed there were many contributing factors to Whitman's trajectory toward violence that day including social, family, and psychological influences. Dr. Twemlow, like me, were very frustrated by the rush to judgment made by so many experts all those years ago and it is a legacy we continue to live with today regarding the Whitman case.
At a time when we need Dr. Twemlow's wisdom, experience, and expertise the most, sadly he is not with us. I have no doubt his voice would have been loud and strong about the most recent mass shootings in Ulvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, … and, the shootings yet to happen.
As researchers, teachers, and practitioners in this field, I hope you will join me in honoring Dr. Twemlow for his work, his passion, and understanding of violence. I think Dr. Twemlow would be deeply honored to remain a part of this journal's work and ambitious efforts to continue to study gun violence and the motives and causes for such extreme and violent human behavior. And for these reasons I would like to designate Dr. Stuart Twemlow as Associate Editor—Emeritus.
Disclaimer
The views expressed in this piece do not represent the views of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are solely the views of Dr. Mary Ellen O'Toole.
Mary Ellen O'Toole, PhD
Editor-in-Chief