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Alone in his bedroom, week after week, the young killer-in-waiting stares into his computer screen, plotting the worst and telling the world.
But his plans to shoot up his high school or university campus never materialize. Instead, there's an early-morning door knock from police who've been stealthily tracking his online activities.
A plausible scenario? Could mass school shootings be averted with cyberspace snooping and sleuthing?
Probably, say experts who study such things, if the resources were there. The obstacles, however, are formidable.
Warsaw University criminologist and lecturer Kacper Gradon believes with the right resources, mass school shootings could be averted by scouring the Internet for graphic warnings that have been in plain view on Internet discussion boards and websites.
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In Montreal Tuesday morning, such theories met reality when Cegep du Vieux Montreal junior college was locked down in response to an online threat from a possible gunman, intercepted by U.S. authorities.
While no arrests were immediately made, the scare struck a familiar nerve.
In September, 2006, Kimveer Gill burst into Montreal's Dawson College with a rifle and a pistol, murdering one person and wounding 20 others before committing suicide. Previously, in Internet postings under name of fatality666, he had written of wanting to die in a “hail of bullets.”
There's a pattern, Warsaw University criminologist and lecturer Kacper Gradon told a recent Toronto forensics conference: Time after time, the graphic warnings have been in plain view on Internet discussion boards and websites.
And while the shooters come from all backgrounds, two traits are commonly shared: A lonely sense of grievance, often nurtured by bullying, and use of the Internet to brag about their plans.
The April, 1999, Columbine, Colo., slaughter that left 12 people dead set the benchmark.
In profanity-laden postings, killer Eric Harris began warning months earlier that “I will be armed to the fucking teeth and I WILL shoot to KILL and I WILL fucking KILL EVERYTHING … It'll be very hard to hold out until April.”
Mr. Gradon detailed half a dozen similar cases, including Finnish teen-ager Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who last November methodically stalked his high school, killing eight students and teachers before shooting himself. Ahead of time he created a YouTube clip describing himself as a mass killer whose ultimate target was “the human race.”
Mr. Gill posted numerous sinister warnings on the Vampirefreaks.com website, cursing society and the police for his miserable life.
“This was his statement, day after day,” said Mr. Gradon, who has studied more than 600 mass killers.
“He spent his entire adult life sitting at his computer in his basement. He had nothing else.”
But how to separate real threats from the hoaxes and idle boasts in which the Internet is awash?
Mr. Gradon proposes an ambitious, two-step solution.
A Western-focused international agency devoted to military-style intelligence-gathering – spying – would use custom-made software to scour cyberspace in search of threats. Then, sites or communications deemed genuinely dangerous would be assessed by police psychologists and perhaps academics and criminologists who would decide if action is warranted.
“You would be looking for certain keywords and keyword combinations to profile individuals who might be dangerous,” he said. “Right now, it's not possible for any police force to do that.”
Could anybody?
Western intelligence agencies routinely monitor cyberspace in search of terrorist activity. So do police who combat child pornography.
But widening the net on the scale Mr. Gradon suggests would be daunting.
In theory it's possible – not just with the printed word but also with audio and video – said e-commerce author and Seneca College professor Tim Richardson. The big hurdle, however is the volume of what's generated and erased.
“The content on the web every day is increasing at a faster pace than the ability to index it,” he said. Only big, hugely expensive computers such as are deployed by the United States' National Security Agency could keep track because “the software would have be so complex.”
And who would pay for it?
“This would be very difficult to sell in my opinion because of the cost, “ said security consultant Alan Bell, president of Toronto-based Globe Risk Holdings.
“The chances that a particular school anywhere in the world might be attacked by a terrorist group, or a deranged child or father are slim, and right now all the resources are going into more tangible things.”
Add to that some thorny privacy issues, said Constable Scott Mills, the Toronto police force's Crime Stoppers officer for the city's schools.
In contact with more than 800 students via Facebook, Constable Mills is familiar with threats, real and perceived.
Earlier this month he was alarmed to discover a posting in which an Etobicoke boy of 12, a recent immigrant, was posing online with a sawed-off shotgun and AK-47 assault rifle. The boy also made mention of the jailed serial killer known as Son of Sam. And had Constable Mills ever shot anybody, he inquired.
A visit to the boy's home by Detective-Constable Todd Jones of Toronto's 23 Division youth bureau dispelled some of the concern.
The photos were taken in Eastern Europe on a trip home and the weapons belonged to a retired soldier, a friend of the boy's father. The boy has good grades, and wants to be a policeman, Det.-Const. Jones also found. The references to Son of Sam and to shooting people, he concluded, were unusual but hardly unique in the world of adolescents.
In short, a potential problem was flagged and dealt with. And that's the way school threats and school violence need to be primarily tackled, Constable Mills said.
“It's great, he's definitely on the right track but we need to build relationships, we can't just be enforcement,” he says of Mr. Gradon's idea.
“We also have to be prevention and intervention. Put a guy like him and a guy like me at the same table and let's come up with a multi-disciplinary plan. These cries for help, we have to find them before major catastrophes happen.
“But if you're just going to be Big Brother in the sky, it's not going to work.”
