Covered corpses on the shores of Utøya. Anders Behring Breivik ordered youngsters to gather around him, then fired indiscriminately and later executed survivors.
On 26 April 2002, Robert Steinhauser, dressed like a Japanese ninja, burst into a school in Efurt, Germany, and murdered 13 teachers, two students and a police officer. Steinhauser had been recently expelled from the school for truancy. He chose the day deliberately as his former classmates were sitting examinations. He burst into a classroom armed with a pump-action shotgun and a pistol and began indiscriminately picking off members of staff. Shooting at anyone who moved, he roamed around the school. The police took around 10 minutes to respond and Steinhauser killed the first of them to appear. A history teacher managed to push him into one of the classrooms, after ripping the mask he wore from his face. With the police arriving in ever-increasing numbers, Robert turned the gun on himself.
Hinterkaifeck Massacre - Hinterkaifeck was the name of a little farm located in the forest, 43 miles or so north of Munich, not far from Ingolstadt. Andreas Gruber, the 63-year-old owner, was not too well-known to his neighbors. An odd, taciturn man, he was not well-liked, either. Living with Andreas at Hinterkaifeck were his 72-year-old wife, also named Cäzilia; his widowed daughter, Viktoria, age 35; the younger Cäzilia, Viktoria’s 7-year-old daughter; Viktoria’s young son Josef, age 2; and a servant, Maria Baumgartner, age 44. On March 30, 1922, Maria Baumgartner was the newest resident of Hinterkaifeck. A servant named R. Kreszenz had quit the farm in 1921, claiming a “strained atmosphere.” Kreszenz even hinted that the farm might be haunted. Strange things did seem to happen there. Equipment broke down. Crucial rings of keys went missing. At some point prior to March 30, old man Gruber found a newspaper in his house that wasn’t typically distributed in the area. The postman had no knowledge of the paper being delivered. The day Maria Baumgartner arrived, Andreas Gruber noted something so odd that the usually retiring man told a few neighbors about it. Gruber found tracks in the snow, leading from the forest to his house. Gruber saw no evidence that the owner of the tracks ever returned from house to wood. Strange as this was, Gruber apparently saw no need to tell the local authorities. Four days after Gruber spoke of the tracks in the snow, some concerned citizens headed out to his farm. The young Cäzilia had been inexplicably absent from school. There they found a scene from a nightmare. Everyone, the 5 members of the Gruber family and Maria Baumgartner, had been hacked to death. Autopsies were done in the barn, where Gruber, his daughter, wife and little Cäzilia were killed. Maria Baumgartner was murdered in her room. Josef was hacked to death in his bassinet. The murder weapon was determined to have been a Kreuzhacke, or pickaxe. It may have taken little Cäzilia two hours to die as she lay on the straw, pulling out handfuls of her hair. Dr. Johann Baptist Aumüller removed all the heads of the dead, as the worst damage had been done there. The 6 victims were buried headless. The skulls were ultimately lost during confusion and chaos at the end of World War II. The following year, the farm was torn down. Today all that remains is a field and a monument reminding any passers-by of the crime. Nobody was ever arrested for the crime and it still remains a mystery to this day.
In 14 February 1929, St Valentine’s Day, four men disguised as police walked into a garage on North Clark Street, Chicago, lined up the seven people inside against the wall and shot them dead. At the height of the 1920s - the era of Prohibition, which was dominated by gangsters - the murder of seven men stunned the nation. It was later revealed that Chicago mobster Al Capone ordered the ‘hit’ but that the real target, mob leader George ‘Bugs’ Moran, escaped the carnage. Ultimately, the St Valentine’s Day massacre turned the American public against urban folk heroes like Al Capone and ushered in a new era - the Depression.
Hungerford Massacre - On 19 August 1987, Michael Ryan stalked the streets of Hungerford, Berkshire, shooting at will. He murdered 16 and wounded 14, eight of whom were seriously injured. Ryan was an unemployed labourer with a love of guns and weapons. He had begun the slaughter across the border in Wiltshire, with the cold-blooded killing of Susan Godfrey; he had then driven into Hungerford on the town’s market day in order to find more victims. As the firing started, one of the victims, a police officer, Robert Bereton, managed to contact another officer who called in firearms units and a helicopter. Bereton then died where he lay. After rampaging through the town, Ryan barricaded himself in a school and the police surrounded the building with snipers. Negotiators made contact with Ryan, who told them “I have killed all those people, but I haven’t got the guts to blow my brains out.” Just after 7.00 p.m. Ryan found the courage and the police discovered him dead in one of the school’s classrooms. The massacre prompted the government to ban semi-automatic rifles in Britain under the Firearms Act of 1988. Ryan’s chosen weapon, unlicensed, had been a Russian-designed AK47.
Relatives identify the dead after the Germans had massacred most of the russian men in a village in Russia.
In 14 February 1929, St Valentine’s Day, four men disguised as police walked into a garage on North Clark Street, Chicago, lined up the seven people inside against the wall and shot them dead. At the height of the 1920s - the era of Prohibition, which was dominated by gangsters - the murder of seven men stunned the nation. It was later revealed that Chicago mobster Al Capone ordered the ‘hit’ but that the real target, mob leader George ‘Bugs’ Moran, escaped the carnage. Ultimately, the St Valentine’s Day massacre turned the American public against urban folk heroes like Al Capone and ushered in a new era - the Depression.
Hinterkaifeck Massacre
Hinterkaifeck was the name of a little farm located in the forest, 43 miles or so north of Munich, not far from Ingolstadt. Andreas Gruber, the 63-year-old owner, was not too well-known to his neighbors. An odd, taciturn man, he was not well-liked, either. Living with Andreas at Hinterkaifeck were his 72-year-old wife, also named Cäzilia; his widowed daughter, Viktoria, age 35; the younger Cäzilia, Viktoria’s 7-year-old daughter; Viktoria’s young son Josef, age 2; and a servant, Maria Baumgartner, age 44.
On March 30, 1922, Maria Baumgartner was the newest resident of Hinterkaifeck. A servant named R. Kreszenz had quit the farm in 1921, claiming a “strained atmosphere.” Kreszenz even hinted that the farm might be haunted. Strange things did seem to happen there. Equipment broke down. Crucial rings of keys went missing. At some point prior to March 30, old man Gruber found a newspaper in his house that wasn’t typically distributed in the area. The postman had no knowledge of the paper being delivered. The day Maria Baumgartner arrived, Andreas Gruber noted something so odd that the usually retiring man told a few neighbors about it. Gruber found tracks in the snow, leading from the forest to his house. Gruber saw no evidence that the owner of the tracks ever returned from house to wood. Strange as this was, Gruber apparently saw no need to tell the local authorities. Four days after Gruber spoke of the tracks in the snow, some concerned citizens headed out to his farm. The young Cäzilia had been inexplicably absent from school. There they found a scene from a nightmare.
Everyone, the 5 members of the Gruber family and Maria Baumgartner, had been hacked to death. Autopsies were done in the barn, where Gruber, his daughter, wife and little Cäzilia were killed. Maria Baumgartner was murdered in her room. Josef was hacked to death in his bassinet. The murder weapon was determined to have been a Kreuzhacke, or pickaxe. It may have taken little Cäzilia two hours to die as she lay on the straw, pulling out handfuls of her hair. Dr. Johann Baptist Aumüller removed all the heads of the dead, as the worst damage had been done there. The 6 victims were buried headless. The skulls were ultimately lost during confusion and chaos at the end of World War II.
The following year, the farm was torn down. Today all that remains is a field and a monument reminding any passers-by of the crime. Nobody was ever arrested for the crime and it still remains a mystery to this day.
On 26 April 2002, Robert Steinhauser, dressed like a Japanese ninja, burst into a school in Efurt, Germany, and murdered 13 teachers, two students and a police officer. Steinhauser had been recently expelled from the school for truancy. He chose the day deliberately as his former classmates were sitting examinations. He burst into a classroom armed with a pump-action shotgun and a pistol and began indiscriminately picking off members of staff. Shooting at anyone who moved, he roamed around the school. The police took around 10 minutes to respond and Steinhauser killed the first of them to appear. A history teacher managed to push him into one of the classrooms, after ripping the mask he wore from his face. With the police arriving in ever-increasing numbers, Robert turned the gun on himself
March 16, 1968, the Army’s Charlie Company murdered 347 unarmed men, women and children in the Vietnamese village of My Lai. It became known as the “My Lai Massacre.”
Richard Castaldo, a Columbine Massacre survivor, arrives at a groundbreaking ceremony for a memorial near Columbine High School on June 16, 2006.