Tag: school shooting

Witness Claims McLaughlin Faked Mental Disorder:

Dr. Katheryn Cranbrook testified today for the prosecution in the insanity trial of John Jason McLaughlin, and guess what she thinks. She thinks that McLaughlin is faking it. Who would have thought…

Katheryn Cranbrook said she originally diagnosed McLaughlin with an emerging psychotic disorder in 2003, but now believes he was faking his symptoms.

Cranbrook interviewed McLaughlin in November 2003, two months after the teenager took a gun to Rocori High School in Cold Spring and killed two students. She interviewed him again last month in anticipation of his murder trial.

Observations of McLaughlin in a juvenile detention facility, security hospital and later jail after his Sept. 24, 2003, arrest did not support his reports of hallucinations, Cranbrook testified.

“No one had noticed prior to that day any significant impairment in functioning,” she said in Stearns County District Court.

Cranbook said it was suspicious that McLaughlin’s reports of vision changed over time and between doctors. She said his reports of hearing voices in fifth and then sixth grade was also rare.

Schizophrenia is generally diagnosed in early adulthood and rarely before adolescence. McLaughlin also did not exhibit the lack of hygiene and disorganized speech that are common symptoms of schizophrenia, she said.

“He was organized. He was rational. He was very reality-based,” Cranbrook said.

You don’t say.

I received an e-mail today from someone who says they were at John Jason McLaughlin’s trial yesterday…

Dr. Hackett taped her sessions with Jason and they were introduced as evidence yesterday and she didn’t want that to happen, she was visibly upset and said “NO”. It wasn’t a matter of confidentiality because that was already waived. We think there was something on those tapes she didn’t want heard. We know she suggested a lot of stuff to Jason and he just answered her questions yes or no. She didn’t ask open-ended questions.

Interesting.

For more on Dr. Hackett, you can go here.

Rocori shooter’s mental state scrutinized: (Log in info)

Forensic psychiatric evaluation for Jason McLaughlin: (Log in info)

The first article is about the testimony heard in John Jason McLaughlin’s insanity trial. The second is the psychological evaluation of McLaughlin by Dr. Maureen Hackett. Read them both at your leisure. I’ll even have the evaluation posted on the second page of this entry because it’s worth saving.

A doctor for the prosecution had this to say…

But on Wednesday, Dr. Katheryn Cranbrook, a state psychologist called by prosecutors, said McLaughlin is faking his illness in part because of the teen’s “fantastical” symptoms and because his illness has gotten better even though he has been off medication for a time this summer.

I have to agree based on what I’ve read. According to Dr. Hackett’s evaluation, McLaughlin started having hallucinations while in the sixth grade. He shot Seth Bartell when he was a freshman in high school. So you’re going to tell me that for 3 years no one noticed anything was wrong with him. I find that very hard to believe.

Insanity phase of McLaughlin’s trial continues: (Log in info)

The insanity phase of John Jason McLaughlin’s trial continues.

The defense…

Dr. Maureen Hackett, a Twin Cities psychiatrist, was on the stand again this morning after testifying all day Monday. She said McLaughlin has schizophrenia. His mental illness was so severe at the time of the shooting that it meets Minnesota’s tough standards for finding that someone is not responsible for his or her criminal actions, she said.

Hackett’s testimony on Monday revealed that McLaughlin has an imaginary companion named Jake who talks to Jason and sometimes appears to him during court proceedings. Hackett also said McLaughlin believes he has interacted with drug enforcement agent types who live in the woods near his Cold Spring home.

The defense also called Dr. Richard Lentz, a Park-Nicollet Clinic psychiatrist, who testified that he believes McLaughlin has schizophrenia. McLaughlin asked for more medication after reportedly seeing dead people in his cell at a detention facility, Lentz said.

The Prosecution…

Prosecutor Bill Klumpp has argued that McLaughlin is faking mental illness and that his hatred and jealousy of more popular students drove him to kill.

This morning, Klumpp said that McLaughlin’s description of his mental illness has been inconsistent and that the teen has given three different versions of when he first began to hear voices.

Klumpp repeatedly pointed out that no one had suspected that McLaughlin was mentally ill before the shootings. He said there are other explanations for symptoms Hackett had described.

And what, I think, is the most damning argument from the prosecution…

Klumpp also noted that Hackett said schizophrenics have problems thinking clearly: McLaughlin was capable of high-level thinking and decided that a stint in prison was worthwhile if he could hurt Seth Bartell,14.

“He did a cost-benefit analysis,” Klumpp said.

I wonder what he thinks of the cost now.

Psychiatrist says McLaughlin heard voices before shooting classmates:

From the “You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me Department”…

A former chief psychiatrist at the Minnesota Security Hospital in St. Peter says John Jason McLaughlin was schizophrenic and heard a voice urging him to shoot Seth Bartell in 2003.

Dr. Maureen Hackett was the first person to testify on McLaughlin’s behalf Monday afternoon.

Hackett says that while McLaughlin was in custody, the voice he heard became a hallucination named Jake, who was a sort of mentor figure in a trench coat that changed colors and had changing hair to match.

She says McLaughlin was suffering from a major mental illness that affected his reasoning.

Emphasis mine.

If McLaughlin was having these kinds of mental problems, why was he still in school? If he was having hallucinations, I doubt they just manifested on the day of the shooting,

I’m sorry, but this just smacks of a desperate defense team trying to spare their client life in prison.

McLaughlin Found Guilty In Rocori School Shootings:

John Jason McLaughlin has been found guilty in the shooting deaths of Aaron Rollins and Seth Bartell, but it’s not over yet.

According to Minnesota law, the second phase of the trial will determine whether or not McLaughlin was mentally ill at the time of the shootings.

If he is found mentally ill, he could be found not guilty by reason of insanity but could be committed to the state mental hospital. If he is found to be competent, then he’s looking at life in prison without the possibility for parole.

Minnesota does not have the death penalty.

Judge in murder trial to view McLaughlin video:

Nothing of any earth-shattering importance about the Rocori trial from this article, except that the judge in the case is going to be reviewing the videotaped interview of John Jason McLaughlin that was taken while McLaughlin was in custody. The article says the interview took place 90 minutes after the shooting. There is one thing in the article I want to address…

(Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Agent Ken) McDonald had only a few details about the shooting at the beginning of the interview, not knowing how many students had been shot. When informed that a student had died, McLaughlin reacted with surprise, according to previous court filings by (McLaughlin’s attorney, Dan) Eller. McLaughlin thought it must be Bartell who was dead, when in fact it was Rollins, Eller has argued.

Eller has said the interview will be essential to convincing Kirk that McLaughlin didn’t premeditate murder. Kirk could have a verdict as early as Wednesday.

He didn’t premeditate murder? He took a gun to school, took careful aim, and when the first shot missed, he ran after his intended target and shot him in the head.

Sounds premeditated to me.

Attorneys differ over e-mails of Rocori suspect:

Some strange testimony out of the Rocori trial…

On the morning before the fatal shootings at Rocori High School, the accused gunman used a school computer to e-mail a farewell letter to another student.

John Jason McLaughlin’s chilling e-mail address? “sharpestshot290@yahoo.com”

The student who got that e-mail and others, Brittany Kelley, took the stand Friday as McLaughlin’s trial continued in St. Cloud.

Kelley, 16, tearfully told of the increasingly bizarre messages she had received from McLaughlin’s e-mail address during the summer before the shootings of Seth Bartell, 14, and Aaron Rollins, 17.

Two days before the shootings, an e-mail to Kelley from McLaughlin repeated the phrase “hi hi hi hi hi” for pages, before ending with “goodbye.”

One day before the shootings, another e-mail repeated “ok ok ok ok” for pages with brief interruptions for the phrases “i’m good” and “steve says hi too” before continuing on with the repeated “ok ok ok ok.”

Like that’s not enough, John Jason McLaughlin liked to write e-mails as a fictional girlfriend…

Some of the e-mails were written under the name Soki Renoko, a fictional girlfriend created by McLaughlin. Those repeatedly described him as a cold, steely action figure who beat up people who offended him or his family — and said he claimed to be a sniper.

Now, from the defense attorney…

Eller said the prosecution will use the e-mails to prove that McLaughlin planned the shootings and meant to kill that day, which is critical in making the first-degree murder charge stick. But Eller said he sees the e-mails as evidence of McLaughlin’s mental illness.

Yeah, he has a mental illness. He’s criminally insane. Isn’t it to be found not guilty by reason of insanity, don’t they have to prove that McLaughlin couldn’t tell the difference between right and wrong?

And this is the best quote of all…

Eller said McLaughlin believed he shot Bartell in the shoulder, not the forehead, and didn’t intend to kill anyone that day.

How can you get confused between the shoulder and head, especially considering he shot Seth Bartell at an almost point-blank range? Is it a defense attorney’s job to insult people’s intelligence? This isn’t even a jury trial so he’s basically insulting the judge’s intelligence.

Victim’s father testifies in Rocori shooting trial:

The father of Rocori High School shooting victim Aaron Rollins, Tom Rollins, testified yesterday in the trail of shooter John Jason McLaughlin. Mr. Rollins works as a responder, which I guess is some kind of EMT or paramedic, and he was the first on the scene in his own son’s shooting. He basically watched his own son die…

Tom Rollins became familiar with the look of death early in his 14 years as a Cold Spring first responder.
A doctor had suffered a heart attack, and Rollins was one of the first on the scene to try to save the man. It was his first call as a responder, and his job was to “bag him,” slang for squeezing a device that keeps air flowing into a stricken person.

That duty put him in close proximity to the doctor’s head, and he’ll never forget what he saw in that doctor’s eyes.

It’s the same thing he saw in his son’s eyes Sept. 24, 2003. Rollins was one of the first rescue workers to reach his son, Aaron, in a basement hallway at Rocori High School.

“Looking into his eyes, it was like his eyes would stare right through the back of my head, like he was looking into outer space,” Rollins said of that doctor’s eyes years ago.

What did that tell him, asked prosecutor Bill Klumpp, about what he saw when he looked into his son’s eyes?

“Aaron had the same look,” Rollins said. “Aaron was dead.”

There was also testimony from police on the shooter himself…

Two police officers and a school counselor testified Thursday afternoon that McLaughlin said nothing in the minutes after the shooting. McLaughlin was in the office of counselor Craig Lieser for about 15 minutes after the crimes, until a police officer led McLaughlin out of the school in handcuffs. McLaughlin stared at a wall and said nothing, Lieser said.

Cold Spring Police Chief Phil Jones and school liaison officer Kevin Hagen gave similar accounts of McLaughlin’s behavior after he was disarmed by a teacher and led to Lieser’s office.

Jones said he asked McLaughlin three times whether he had acted alone in the shooting before he could get a “yes” answer.

Jones then was asked to describe McLaughlin’s demeanor.

“I don’t know if I have right words to describe it,” Jones said before taking a noticeable pause. “Basically sitting in a chair, quiet. During the time I was asking questions and he wasn’t answering me, I interpreted it to be cocky.”

So now we have the shooter with a smirk on his face, using a two-handed grip, and being cocky towards police, and we’re supposed to believe that some mysterious mental illness caused him to kill.

Again, I don’t think so.