Delusions that can drive a lone killer

KILLER Thomas Hamilton may have been nursing a grudge against the community, or harboured a delusion that he was being victimised in some way, a psychiatrist said yesterday.

Delusions of persecution is one of the main features of paranoic schizophrenia, the illness which drove Stephen Wilkinson to attack a class of teenage schoolchildren in Middlesbrough two years ago.

Police believe this would have turned into a spree killing like yesterday's had not two teachers at Hall Garth comprehensive overpowered Wilkinson. He was later detained without limit of time after pleading guilty on grounds of diminished responsibility to the manslaughter of 12-year-old Nikki Conroy and the attempted murder of two of her classmates.

Factors which might promote delusional disorder include social isolation, distrust and suspicion of others, envy and jealousy, and diminished self-esteem.

Dr Placid Coorey, a forensic psychiatrist at the high-security Ashworth Psychiatric Hospital on Merseyside, and one of the doctors who diagnosed Wilkinson, yesterday said any of probably half-a-dozen different motives could have prompted Hamilton's actions, some of which might be connected with a mental illness.

``You might get someone with a child at the school who has been assaulted, or it could be that they are suffering from some kind of schizophrenic illness - it is difficult to say in this case without knowing more about the individual,'' he said.

``But they are often perfectly normal people who suddenly go berserk. It may be a person who has been harbouring grudges for many years.

``There have been a large number of cases in America where multiple killings have taken place. They often involve people who have shown some kind of mental disorder.

``It might be something that could be predicted in advance but often they come across as very calm and collected, and it is difficult for the lay person to spot that anything is amiss. So unless they have been in psychiatric care, their state of mind may go unnoticed until it is too late.

``It is very unlikely that he would have talked to anyone beforehand about his plans, although there have been people with paranoid schizophrenia who have written that they were being persecuted, and they were going to do something about it.

``The age of the children is particularly unusual, I have never heard of anything of that nature being perpetrated on children so young.''

Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Leonard, who led the police inquiry into the Cleveland case, said Wilkinson's motives remained a mystery.

``We have had no explanation to date and he gave no explanation to the psychiatrists but clearly he was going to take a few more out if he hadn't been stopped,'' he said.

Wilkinson was overpowered by two teachers, deputy head Chris Bielby and colleague Dave Eland. He had been armed with three knives and an axe, although a gun he was carrying proved later to be a replica. Mr Bielby and Mr Eland learned last week that they are to be honoured for their bravery.

Mr Leonard said: ``The incident had a really shattering effect on the school. A lot of the kids had counselling and some are still getting it.''

The Dunblane massacre has left a small community bereft of young children on a scale not seen in Britain since the Aberfan disaster 30 years ago, when a waterlogged coal bing collapsed, engulfing the local primary school and killing 116 children and 28 adults.

For all the sympathy provoked world-wide by the disaster, expert counselling - of the type which was quickly being mustered yesterday to help the people of Dunblane - was largely unknown in those days, and members of the close-knit Welsh pit community helped each other through the aftermath.

Community spirit in Dunblane will also be vital in the coming months but post-traumatic stress counselling is now as much a part of the professional response to disaster as the doctors and nurses who heal the physical wounds.

``The first line of response is coping with the emergency itself, in terms of medical and social work,'' said Ms Anne Douglas, a psychologist at Stobhill Hospital in Glasgow. ``The Red Cross get involved in this kind of thing - psychological first aid, cups of tea. People are in a state of shock.

``The second line is for people to talk to the surviving children and adults and help them get over the immediate aftermath. In the longer term, it will be a trauma for the whole community to overcome.

``It is difficult to think of a precedent for this in this country, involving children. There have been a number of incidents in America where children have been shot by snipers but for children's deaths on such a scale in Britain, Aberfan is what springs most closely to mind.''

The parents of the murdered children will go through a period of denial before they begin to come to terms with their loss, Glasgow consultant psychiatrist Dr Prem Misra said last night.

``They won't be able to believe it - they will go through a state for two weeks where they will think the child is away on a school trip or something. Their emotions will be disorganised,'' he said.

``Normally, the period of grieving is six months but in this situation it will be 10 months before they can come to terms with it. We don't live in a violent society so it will leave deep shock.

``The whole spectrum of help will be needed. For parents who have lost an only child, it will be the end of the world.

``Parents of surviving children will also be deeply affected. They won't want to send their children back to the school for a while. They will wonder if it could happen again.''

As well as cutting a swathe through the youngest stratum of Dunblane's school population, the massacre will leave a long, dark shadow on Scotland's childhood mortality records. Statistically, it would normally take eight years to murder as many primary schoolchildren as Thomas Hamilton killed yesterday in the space of two or three minutes.