Richard Benjamin Smith: The first fame seeking pseudo-copycat shooter

Richard Benjamin Smith was a 18 years old young man who was obsessed with the mass murders of Richard Speck and Charles Whitman, that greatly shocked the nation.
On the 12th of November 1966 he entered the Rose-Mar College of Beauty to kill people and become famous. At the College he forced five women and two children into a back room, lie down in a circle with their heads towards the center and killed 5 of them and wounded 2 with a gun.
The newspaper would call it "The wheel of death".
He even idolized figures such as Lee Harvey Oswald (Even if he really like president Kennedy) and Adolf Hitler.

I've heard a theory that Whitman himself was inspired to commit his murders after seeing the press attention Richard Speck got. Make of it what you will.

QuestionMark wrote:

I've heard a theory that Whitman himself was inspired to commit his murders after seeing the press attention Richard Speck got. Make of it what you will.

Really? I've always thought it was Whitman's brain tumour that made him commit his shooting.

Tommy QTR wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

I've heard a theory that Whitman himself was inspired to commit his murders after seeing the press attention Richard Speck got. Make of it what you will.

Really? I've always thought it was Whitman's brain tumour that made him commit his shooting.

That was debunked decades ago.

TheGoodGuy wrote:

Tommy QTR wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

I've heard a theory that Whitman himself was inspired to commit his murders after seeing the press attention Richard Speck got. Make of it what you will.

Really? I've always thought it was Whitman's brain tumour that made him commit his shooting.

That was debunked decades ago.

Oh, I never knew that.

TheGoodGuy wrote:

Tommy QTR wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

I've heard a theory that Whitman himself was inspired to commit his murders after seeing the press attention Richard Speck got. Make of it what you will.

Really? I've always thought it was Whitman's brain tumour that made him commit his shooting.

That was debunked decades ago.

Source?

TheGoodGuy wrote:

Tommy QTR wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

I've heard a theory that Whitman himself was inspired to commit his murders after seeing the press attention Richard Speck got. Make of it what you will.

Really? I've always thought it was Whitman's brain tumour that made him commit his shooting.

That was debunked decades ago.

Honestly, I think it was the brain tumor combined with intrusive homicidal thoughts, as well as PTSD. A lot of serial killers had some form of PTSD, and considering that the brain tumor was located right near the part of the brain that controls impulse control, as well as Whitman writing that he doesn't understand why he thought the way he did makes me think it was a cocktail of those three things that led him to do what he did.