John Reid Meloy

University of California, San Diego | UCSD · Department of Psychiatry

This pilot study investigates the correlation of online and on-the-ground behaviours of three lone-actor terrorists prior to their intended and planned attacks on soft targets in North America and Europe: the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, the Buffalo supermarket shooter and the Bratislava bar shooter. The activities were examined with the definitio...

This case study is a detailed assessment of the paranoid schizophrenia and right-wing extremist beliefs of Tobias Rathjen, who amalgamated three low-base rate events: mass homicide, matricide, and suicide. The offender killed nine individuals during a terrorist attack in Hanau, Germany, on February 19, 2020, before murdering his mother and taking h...

*The only known existing formal psychological assessment of Charles Manson, a contemporary interpretation of his 1997 test results along with a transcribed publically available interview with Diane Saywer, tackles the decades-long question - was Charles Manson schizophrenic? Abstract: Charles Manson gained notoriety and infamy for orchestrating...

Envy is an emotion capable of producing distorted perceptions and cognitions. Intense envy is associated with adverse states such as shame, depression, inferiority, isolation, anxiety, paranoia, and even violent criminal behavior. The false logic of envy asserts that one has an unfavorable disadvantage, while obscuring the relative nature of advant...

A time sequence analysis is conducted on 125 lone-actor terrorists, most of whom mounted attacks in Europe and North America, utilizing the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18), a structured professional judgment instrument with demonstrable interrater reliability and criterion, discriminant, and predictive validity. Both frequenc...

Terrorism, especially lone-actor terrorism, is considered a major national security threat in both North America and Europe. The threat of terrorism has many faces and violence can arise from all ideological extremes. The authors present the theoretical model and current empirical validation of the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP...

Comprehensive reply to DeMatteo et al. 2020 in Psychology, Public Policy & Law provides evidence for the reliability and validity of the PCL-R in the assessment of risk for institutional violence.

Terrorism, especially lone-actor terrorism, is considered a major national security threat in both North America and Europe. The threat of terrorism has many faces and violence can arise from all ideological extremes. The authors present the theoretical model and current empirical validation of the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP...

The antisocial and violent behaviors of cult‐like religious groups (CRGs) and the maladaptive social consequences of their activities suggest clinical or character pathology and invite diagnostic and dynamic formulations of their members' personalities. The current study utilized secondary reports in the commercial media about CRG members, combined...

This validation study analyses data from a sample of North American terrorist attackers (n = 33) and non‐attackers (n = 23) through the lens of the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP‐18; Meloy, 2017) utilizing a multivariate statistical approach – multidimensional scaling – to visualize potential clustering (co‐occurrence) of risk f...

The main objective of this study was to analyze mass murder cases committed by adults from a threat assessment perspective, and to identify risk factors and proximal warning behaviors. Therefore, court records of 33 German mass murderers between 2000 and 2012 were systematically evaluated. One major focus was the comparison between psychotic and no...

This chapter provides a summary of the differences found in the sample between the two violence types, including the degree of IPV, criminal history, substance/drug offenses, assault, fraud, and trespassing. The relationship between the offender and the animal victim was more frequently found with the affective offenders. The type of animal cruelty...

The link between animal cruelty and interpersonal violence has been supported in this research project along with many other research findings. The theory that animal cruelty offenders will graduate from perpetrating against animals to perpetrating violence against humans was not supported in this or other studies. This finding reinforces the impor...

This section presents the results from the Bureau of Justice Statistics of 85,505 offenders who were incarcerated in jail. The study found that 47.5% were in jail for violence against family.

This section summarizes Meloy’s model and presents the individual/psychological components, the social/environmental components, the biological components, and other miscellaneous factors that contribute to someone being violent.

This section presented studies that support the contention that evaluating the animal cruelty incident could be used to predict future violence toward humans. Kellert and Felthous (Hum Relat 38:1113–1129, 1985) indicated that direct engagement in animal cruelty, evidence of a lack of restraint, no remorse, multiple animal cruelty acts and multiple...

The focus of the suggestions noted in this section was on utilizing a multidisciplinary approach to the investigation. Without a comprehensive view of the offenders’ behaviors, the patterns that may provide the context and the significance of the behavior would not be available. As a result, inaccurate conclusions may be made and effective, investi...

Results were presented and included the following categories case type (acts included beating, shooting, burning, kicking, punching, etc.). The 259 offenders commit active animal cruelty acts against 495 animal victims. Breaking down the affective and predatory violence, the sample comprises 33.5% affective violence and 59% predatory violence. The...

This section discusses the pattern of behaviors that may indicate an individual meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Although psychopathy is not a formal diagnosis, the lack of remorse, narcissism and low autonomic arousal may indicate overlapping symptoms and behaviors with ASPD, and only 14–25% of people diagnosed with A...

The importance of the link between animal cruelty and interpersonal violence was presented and indicated the importance of collaboration between law enforcement, animal control, legal, medical, veterinary, and mental health professionals. The section also summarized the “violence graduation hypothesis,” which was based on the McDonald triad as comp...

Motivations are difficult to measure since they rely on a combination of self-report from the offender, victim, crime scene, and act of violence. Animal victims cannot share their views of the offender’s behavior. Felthous (1986) noted that motivation is important to understand and along with Kellert presented nine motivations for animal cruelty.

The 139-questions animal cruelty protocol was developed by the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) for this project. Active animal cruelty was defined as the physical abuse toward animals such as torture, beating, burning, drowning, suffocating, shooting and other forms of physical violence. The forms of abuse were further broken down into intimate and...

This section explains different types of violence and explains the affective and predatory violence. The affective violence is characterized by high levels of autonomic arousal and emotions due to a perceived imminent threat. Predatory violence is characterized as an absence of autonomic arousal, emotion, but with greater planning and a lack of per...

This section provides an overview of general violence and aggression models and the difficulty in predicting violence due to the many static and dynamic factors impacting individuals. It briefly mentions a number of instruments that have been developed to assess risk for violence.

The methods section describes how the cases were identified through the pet abuse website. Letters were sent to the law enforcement agencies for investigative materials. Cases that involved puppy mills, dog fighting, hunting and/or overworking farm animals were excluded, along with cases of female or juvenile offenders. The study focused primarily...

This section provides studies that examined the overlap between interpersonal violence along with animal cruelty. It also supported the idea that animal cruelty is a “reliable red flag” regarding the presence of child abuse or domestic violence. Another study presented indicated that women who experience domestic violence and enter a shelter expres...

This chapter indicates that family violence and mistreatment of animals lerts law enforcement to potential mistreatment of children as noted in the cases.

The section on attachment summarized the basic attachment styles that develop in childhood and continue to impact people through adulthood. In addition, it suggests that some acts of animal cruelty are impacted by the relationship the offender has to the animal victim or to the owner of the animal victim.

In this chapter, family violence is noted, along with additional socially deviant behaviors.

The limitations for the study include the limitation of the access to cases being based on the public sourced website. The snowball sampling was included by asking law enforcement agencies for additional animal cruelty cases. The sample of the cases was not obtained from every state. The study only followed up on the offenders for a few years, so a...

The section and subsection focused on empathy provide a general definition of empathy and the importance of empathy on the healthy social and emotional development of children. Empathy has been important in the field of forensic psychology as a way to better understand offender motivations and offender typologies. The Perceptual Action Model is pre...

This section presents the long history of the link between animal cruelty and human violence. In addition, the chapter addresses the McDonald triad, which includes enuresis, firesetting and animal cruelty, from a historical perspective as well as the lack of empirical support for the theory.

The Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP–18) is a structured professional judgment instrument for threat assessment of the individual terrorist. It is a rationally derived theoretical model comprising eight proximal warning behaviors and 10 distal characteristics. Empirical research on the TRAP–18 is reviewed, including both nomotheti...

The relationship among sexual desire, violent death, and fundamentalist belief leading to acts of terrorism is explored through the psychoanalytic lens of structural and object relations theory. Using contemporary and historical cases of jihadist, ethnic nationalist, and single-issue terrorist violence, the author posits that both the fear of and d...

This book presents results from a BAU study including 259 active, animal cruelty cases. In addition, there were a total of 495 animal victims including numerous species, but dogs (64%) were the predominant animal victim. The offenders were all male, ranging in age from 17-years old to 82 years old (mean age of 34 years) and 73.44% had arrests for v...

This is a case report of the offender and offense characteristics of a targeted attack on a Swedish school using a sword, with a particular focus upon the offender's history, the relationship between mental disorder and ideology, and whether or not it was an act of terrorism. Findings indicate that the offender had no drug or psychiatric treatment...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has a lengthy history in criminal forensic mental health but is rarely discussed in the contemporary threat assessment literature as a cause of or contributor to targeted violence. In the popular media, ASD is sometimes associated with incidents of mass murder, influencing public impressions, but begging the question...

An archival descriptive study of public figure attackers in the United States between 1995 and 2015 was undertaken. Fifty-six incidents were identified, primarily through exhaustive internet searches, composed of 58 attackers and 58 victims. A code book was developed which focused upon victims, offenders, pre-attack behaviors including direct threa...

The Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18) is a structured professional judgment instrument for the assessment of individuals who present a concern for lone-actor terrorism. It consists of eight proximal warning behaviors and 10 distal characteristics. Previous research has demonstrated its interrater reliability and some concurrent...

The purpose of this study was to assess nonprofessional and professional related stalking victimization in a selective sample of 542 Swiss police officers. The stalking lifetime prevalence rate was 5.2% (N = 28). Four percent (n = 22, 4.1%) were stalked by nonprofessionally related stalkers, and 1.1% (n = 6) of the police officers were stalked for...

The conflicting reports and diagnoses presented by forensic psychiatrists at the trial of Anders Breivik did not address the threat posed by him prior to his crimes, that is, the warning behaviors that were evident that may have indicated accelerating patterns of risk during the period prior to his attacks on July 22, 2011. In this case study, the...

An open source sample of 111 lone-actor terrorists from the United States and Europe were studied through the lens of the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18). This investigative template consists of 8 proximal warning behaviors and 10 distal characteristics for active risk management or active monitoring, respectively, by nationa...

Psychopathy Assessment

Introduces this special section which focuses on individual terrorism in Europe. The first study introduces the TRAP-18 (Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol), a method to help determine which cases of concern need to be monitored, and which need to be actively risk managed. The authors of this article hope that it will stimulate other rese...

This article provides the keynote speech given at the 25th anniversary conference of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals by Dr. Meloy. The title reflects his goal: to outline to everyone, both scholars and operators, what they have learned over the past decades, and what the future may hold for them if they continue to steer a though...

The Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18) comprises 8 proximal warning behaviors and 10 distal characteristics, and is a rationally derived investigative template for risk of individual terrorism. It is coded on a sample of 22 individuals who carried out acts of terrorism in Europe between 1980 and 2015. Seven of these individuals...

Identification is one of eight warning behaviors-superordinate patterns of accelerating risk-that are theorized to correlate with targeted violence, and have some empirical validation. It is characterized by one or more of five characteristics: pseudo-commando behavior, evidence of a warrior mentality, a close association with weapons or other mili...

A review of the contemporary research on problematic communications, approaches, and attacks on public figures yields important findings. Analysis of both theory and empirical research is presented concerning the movement from communication to approach; the relationship among behavioral pathways, motivations, and psychiatric disorders; applied conc...

Threat assessment and management of those who communicate with, approach, stalk, and in rare cases attack public figures is an ancient art but a new science. In this inaugural special section of our journal, we reprint and comment on an article, written more than a century ago, on attacks against public figures to test its originality and truth. (P...

A typology of 8 warning behaviors for targeted violence— dynamic and superordinate patterns which may indicate accelerating risk of violence—were tested in a small sample of German school shooters (n 9) and students of concern (n 31) to see if any warning behaviors would be significantly different between the groups. Five warning behaviors were fou...

We examined the characteristics of offenders who harassed justice officials, comparing those who threatened or approached their victim with those who engaged in other problematic communications. We also explored predictors of subsequent violence. We identified 86 offenders from the files of a justice officials protection and investigation service i...

The existing research on lone wolf terrorists and case experience are reviewed and interpreted through the lens of psychoanalytic theory. A number of characteristics of the lone wolf are enumerated: a personal grievance and moral outrage; the framing of an ideology; failure to affiliate with an extremist group; dependence on a virtual community fou...

Mass murderers who capture media attention often appear to be suffering from psychosis. However, no research has clearly established that most are psychotic or even suffering from a serious mental illness (SMI). In contrast, individual case studies examining the psychological makeup of mass murderers often reveal paranoid themes in their cognitions...

The Journal of Threat Assessment and Management (JTAM) is devoted exclusively to the topic of violence risk. It focuses on operational or applied issues, that is, the development, implementation, and evaluation of policies, procedures, and programs for assessing and managing violence risk. It strives to promote the values of interdisciplinarity and...

This study describes the development of the WAVR-21, a structured professional judgment guide for the assessment of workplace targeted violence, and presents initial interrater reliability results. The 21-item instrument codes both static and dynamic risk factors and change, if any, over time. Five critical items or red flag indicators assess viole...

Stalking is a thriving social and criminal concern and a risk inherent in our personal and professional lives. Health care professionals, particularly psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners, are vulnerable to being stalked by their patients and, far from providing helpful insights that discourage the behavior, their training can be a h...

Site visits and crime scene visitation by forensic psychologists and psychiatrists may enhance the accuracy and credibility of their forensic work in criminal, civil, and other important contexts. This ethically sound technique of after-the-fact data collection and verification offers numerous potential benefits to the forensic mental health profes...

Since the mass murder committed by Karst T. on Queensday 2009 in the Netherlands, special attention has been drawn to threat assessment of people who are a concern because of their disturbing communications and/or problematic approaches to the Dutch Royal Family. This descriptive study examined all subjects (N = 107) referred to the Threat Assessme...

The assessment of antisocial and psychopathic personalities presents special challenges for the forensic evaluator. This chapter emphasizes use of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), Rorschach, and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) for a comprehensive evaluation of these patients. These measures lend incremental validit...

The concept of warning behaviors offers an additional perspective in threat assessment. Warning behaviors are acts which constitute evidence of increasing or accelerating risk. They are acute, dynamic, and particularly toxic changes in patterns of behavior which may aid in structuring a professional's judgment that an individual of concern now pose...

The Science of Predatory ViolenceMeasurementPredatory Violence and the PsychopathLegal and Judicial IssuesTheWay Forward: Future Research and ApplicationsReferences

Wood et al. (2010) published a meta-analysis in which the authors challenged the utility of the Rorschach Inkblot Test in delineating key differences between psychopathic and non-psychopathic individuals identified by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991/2003). In this article, Gacono et al.’s (2001) five conceptual and four methodo...

Leakage in the context of threat assessment is the communication to a third party of an intent to do harm to a target. Third parties are usually other people, but the means of communication vary, and include letters, diaries, journals, blogs, videos on the internet, emails, voice mails, and other social media forms of transmission. Leakage is a typ...

  A case study of a 44-year-old woman who committed a mass murder is presented. Following a chronic course of psychotic deterioration, and a likely diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia that remained untreated, she returned to her workplace after 3 years from her termination and killed seven people and herself. Her history is reconstructed through in...

  On September 10, 2003, Anna Lindh, the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, was assassinated. The offender, a 24-year-old man, was a socially isolated, culturally and familially dislocated, yet academically quite competent young man who became enthralled with the habitual criminality of some of his relatives and their associates, and then psychi...

In a subsample of a multisite stalking study (Mohandie, Meloy, McGowan, & Williams, 2006) comprising 78 offenders from one site, 77% committed new offenses within an average follow-up of 106 months (8.8 years). Over half (56%) were charged for new stalking related offenses and 33% for violent recidivism. Violent reoffending, including sexual offens...

A study of 143 female stalkers was conducted, part of a large North American sample of stalkers (N=1005) gathered from law enforcement, prosecutorial, and entertainment corporate security files (Mohandie, Meloy, Green McGowan, & Williams, 2006). The typical female stalker was a single, separated, or divorced woman in her mid-30s with a psychiatric...

Fourteen non-terrorist attackers of public figures in Germany between 1968 and 2004 were intensively studied, with a particular focus on warning behaviors, attack behaviors, and the relationship between psychiatric diagnosis, symptoms, and motivations for the assault. A large proportion of the attackers were severely mentally ill, and most likely t...

An analysis of suicide by cop (SBC) among female subjects in a large sample (n = 707) of officer-involved shootings (OIS) is reported. Women represented 3% of the total sample (n = 21) and 5% (n = 12) of the 256 SBC cases. Therefore, 57% of the women (n = 12) were classified as SBC, and 81% of the women (n = 17) behaviorally evidenced some suicidal...

Study of risk factors for violence to prominent people is difficult because of low base rates. This study of harassers of the royal family examined factors suggested in the literature as proxies for violence--breaching security barriers, achieving proximity, approach with a weapon, and approach with homicidal ideation. A stratified sample of differ...

  Detailed comparison of factors associated with abnormal approach to the prominent and with escalation from communication to approach has not hitherto been undertaken. This partially reflects the failure of individual studies to adopt compatible terminologies. This study involves a careful dissection of six public figure studies, three involving U...

Despite the growing research in the area of stalking, the focus has been on adults who engage in this behavior. Unfortunately, almost no studies investigate the prevalence of this behavior in adolescents. Two cases are presented demonstrating not only that stalking occurs during the period of adolescence, but also that there is a significant differ...

Abnormal approach and escalation from communication to physical intrusion are central concerns in managing risk to prominent people. This study was a retrospective analysis of police files of those who have shown abnormal attentions toward the British Royal Family. Approach (n = 222), compared with communication only (n = 53), was significantly ass...

The study analyzed 84 hostage, barricade, and jumper cases from within a large sample (n = 707) of officer-involved shooting (OIS) cases occurring between 1998 and 2006. Seventy-six percent of these incidents involved suicidal individuals—66% were ultimately determined to be suicide by cop (SbC), nearly twice the likelihood in the overall sample. M...

In stalking research, the risk domain of persistence concerns the likelihood that intrusive behaviours will continue towards the same target. This is a major source of anxiety to victims, and is of practical importance in the allocation of expensive protective resources. This study examines the associations of persistence in two different samples:...

A case of infanticide committed by a 37-year-old married man, the father of three sons, is reported. Clinically depressed since adolescence, and also diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and a dependent personality, the subject began to worry about killing someone a decade before the homicide. Increasingly disabled by his major depression,...

Stalking is an old behavior, but a new crime. It is composed of three elements: a pattern of unwanted following or harassment; a credible threat; and the induction of fear in the victim. Females are targeted in 80% of the cases, and 8–32% of adult women will be stalked at some point in their lives. About half of stalking cases involve prior sexual...