As the RCMP dig into the psyche of the man who killed 22 people in Nova Scotia last weekend, a former FBI profiler who worked on such notable cases as the unabomber and the D.C. sniper says he expects investigators will likely find that the shooter was a dangerous “grievance collector.”

James R. Fitzgerald says serious mental health issues — or perhaps some recent “trauma” such as a failed business — could be part of what caused a 51-year-old Nova Scotia man to become a “monster” who went on a shooting rampage. But the reasons why are likely more complex.

Fitzgerald stressed he wants to be careful about diagnosing the killer from a distance because he isn’t working on the case and said his knowledge of it stems from what he’s read in media. But what he’s read has left him with some clear impressions.

“People who study him after the fact will see some indications of psychopathy; in other words, he was a psychopath,” Fitzgerald said. “There’s a numerical scale (for psychopathy) — you can be low on the scale, you can be high on the scale.”

The Nova Scotia shooter, he said, would be near the top of the scale due to the extremely violent nature of his crimes.

Fitzgerald said the shooter appears to have been a “grievance collector,” someone who remembers every slight or perceived slight from other people and begins to attribute their own shortcoming or failures to those alleged affronts. The grievances fester and can boil over into acts of vengeance.

The retired supervisory special agent was a profiler and forensic linguist with the FBI and author of the series A Journey to the Center of the Mind, detailing his years in the agency.

He spoke to the Star about the shootings in Nova Scotia where Gabriel Wortman killed 22 people during a rampage he carried out while wearing an RCMP uniform and driving a replica police cruiser.

Fitzgerald played a key role as a profiler and forensic linguist in capturing Ted Kaczynski, also known as the unabomber, who killed three people and maimed two dozen others via mailbombs over a 20-year period before his 1996 arrest. Fitzgerald also worked on the D.C. sniper case in Washington, D.C., in 2002 when 17 people were shot over a three-week period until the perpetrators, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, were arrested.

Fitzgerald said police in Nova Scotia have a complex operation ahead of them as they try to gather evidence and conduct a “psychological autopsy” to determine why the killer committed his crimes.

Police have said some of those killed knew the shooter, while others appeared to be random targets.

Fitzgerald also said the shooter fits into the category of an “organized offender.” These are often violent offenders who take the time to prepare for their crimes and are the most difficult to predict because of their careful and calculating nature.

Part of such preparation will often include studying the same types of crimes they intend to commit, Fitzgerald said.

“These people almost always will have looked and did their best to learn from the mistakes of others, if you will, in an attempt to carry out their spree,” he said. “They’re going to see a fantasy this guy had probably going years back with these types of violent behaviour.”

For example, Fitzgerald said, the killer’s computer search history could reveal if he studied incidents like the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, or the case of the D.C. sniper — also a grievance collector who ultimately wanted to kill his ex-wife.

Another factor in analyzing the shooter’s crimes is his apparent obsession with policing. According to Fitzgerald, violent offenders with police or military obsessions tend to be among the most dangerous.

“We found out years ago it’s not so much the guys with the hardcore porn or fetishes with women, or whatever their sexual desire was,” he said. “The ones who are really the scariest or most violent were the ones who were not police, not law enforcement, never were, but they’re really into the whole power trip and authority thing.”

Sometimes they have contact with and friendships with police, Fitzgerald said, noting past cases where serial killers such as Ed Kemper were discovered to have frequented bars where police hung out.

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He said by the end of the shootings, the Nova Scotia killer may have decided he was on a suicide mission and was judging his “success” on the number of people he killed.

Police will likely speak to people who knew the shooter all the way back into his childhood, Fitzgerald said, in an attempt to understand his motives and profile. Computer searches and finding people who had recent interactions with the shooter will also be key.

According to the RCMP, the shooter’s girlfriend survived the attack, and Fitzgerald said she will be one of the most important people the police can speak to as they try to piece together why he committed his crimes.

In conducting their work, he said, police will learn valuable information about what caused the shootings and potentially learn lessons for the future.

“(They will) try to piece together just what made this guy turn into the monster that he did,” he said. “And that will be the most valuable information gathered of all, and the police will want to know how we can better identify these types of people in advance next time.”

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