A new type of crime: Pseudo-amok and the Internet as amplifier

To the Editor

On 6 March 2017, a 9-year-old child was stabbed to death by a 19-year-old male from his neighborhood in the German city of Herne. On the following day, the same perpetrator killed an acquaintance in the same manner and subsequently distributed pictures of the dead victims and himself via the Internet, causing an immense media interest. Three days after his first crime, the perpetrator gave himself up to the police.

Typically, media coverage of a similar scale is only seen during more spectacular attacks with a significant higher number of victims or large-scale terrorist threats. By initiating the coverage of his crimes via the Internet himself, the perpetrator set a precedent for a novel phenomenon: the pseudo-amok. Similar to the intentions of people running amok, the perpetrator wanted to reach the attention of the public. However, aside from choosing the victims arbitrarily and making no effort to try to conceal his crimes, the perpetrator did not fulfill the criteria that are being used to characterize persons running amok (Adler et al., 2006).

To prevent inspiring copycat killers, the German press usually follows a codex when covering killing sprees and does not publish details of the deeds or the suspect (German Press Council, 2017). In the present case, these rules were circumvented by the perpetrator self-publishing his deeds.

Probably, it was the exact calculation and intention of the murderer to kindle such an immense media-firework. The fact that the culprit dictated his murders proudly and provided detail without any emotion to the police supports the suspicion that narcissistic personality aspects (Bobadilla, 2014) could have played an important role in the emergence of these cruel crimes. Criminals, who share pictures and videos of their crimes on the Internet, are still a rare yet increasing phenomenon. A prominent example, which supports this observation, is the internationally reported case of the so-called ‘Facebook Murderer’, who in April 2017 published a live-video of his crime on a social network. Social networks, which are being used more heavily by people with narcissistic personality characteristics, may encourage at-risk persons to commit crimes in order to reach a wider audience. In this regard, it seems necessary to educate Internet users primarily by highly specialized teaching programs, in schools and other educational institutions that their (online) reactions to videos and pictures of crimes may inspire or motivate future perpetrators. A main aspect of such specialized teaching programs should be online and social media–based exercises.