Later, when the authorities pieced it together, it became obvious that the three mass killings were planned as one. The five deaths in Morin Heights near Montreal, the 22 in Cheiry, and 25 in Granges, both in Switzerland, shared both a date and a modus operandi. Most of the victims wore some kind of exotic …
In 1990, when he took control of the Branch Davidians religious cult, David Koresh believed he was an angel with a direct channel to God. Disillusioned ex-members accused him retrospectively of offences that brought him under the intense scrutiny of the FBI, ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), and Texan authorities. The ATF planned to arrest …
Luby’s Cafeteria was a popular restaurant on US Highway 190 at Killeen, Texas, right next to America’s biggest military base, Fort Hood. The lunchtime crowd was bigger than usual with folk from Killeen’s small businesses affectionately celebrating ‘National Bosses Day’. Around 80 people were at the tables when Luby’s huge plate-glass window crashed inwards as …
The uneasy relationship between Tamils and Sinhala has persisted for centuries, with cyclical exchanges of political power effected by means including war, economic dependence and turning-a-blind-eye coexistence. Periodically, the opposition explodes in frenzied violence – at which both sides have considerable practice – without any warning. In 1990 there was just such an explosion at …
In America, it is called a ‘spree killing’. In the UK, nothing like it had ever happened before, so it was known simply as ‘the biggest mass murder in British history’ – which was not technically true, but represented the magnitude of the nation’s trauma. Nothing was the same afterwards. A major factor in the …
The history of the Middle East’s only democracy is soaked in the blood of Arabs who tried to destroy the new state of Israel from the day it was proclaimed and Israelis who died defending their homeland. Both sides have perpetrated atrocities that seem unbelievable to outside observers, who do not share or entirely understand …