Robert Hawkins Analysis

Robert Hawkins

"I just don't want to be a burden on the ones that I care for my entire life. I just want to take a few pieces of shit with me."

Birthdate: May 17, 1988

Date of Attack: December 5, 2007

Location: Westroads Mall, Nebraska, United States

Outcome: Suicide

Psychological type: Psychopathic/Traumatized

BACKGROUND:

Hawkins' biological parents were both U.S. Air Force personnel. They had two children, those being Robert's older sister and Robert himself. They traveled extensively- so much so that their children weren't natively born in America. Robert's sister was born in Athens, Greece, and Robert was born at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, a military base close to London.

The two's marriage was tumultuous. When Robert was just two years old, they filed for a divorce and separated; Robert's father alleged that his wife smoked marijuana and drank obsessively, affecting her ability to parent. He was awarded custody and the two later remarried. Already from an incredibly, almost laughably young age, Robert was forced into an incredibly unstable home life.

This perhaps was why he began showing severe behavioral problems around this age. At age 4, he was incredibly violent and even had an incident where he hit and slammed a teacher's head against a door. He also hit, kicked, and bit teachers. This resulted in him being hospitalized, put on medication, and put in therapy. How did his parents react? Robert's mother, in a custody battle, cited these as reasons why she should have custody. This was unsuccessful and even resulted in her having to take counseling to improve her parenting skills.

Robert's elementary school years were a marked improvement. Two former teachers interviewed did not recall any sort of violent behavior. One described him as "a quiet, scrawny student who sometimes was picked on." Another said, "He did some quirky, silly kids thing to draw attention to himself, I think that was his defense mechanism."

At age 14, Robert was hospitalized once again. Why? After being hit by his stepmother, the ring on her finger creating a gash on his forehead, he muttered under his breath that he "was going to kill her." He also tried poisoning her. He stayed at a treatment center for 9 months and became a ward of the state due to his father's military insurance refusing to pay more. He was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiance Disorder and Attention Deficit Disorder. He spent 3 years in group and foster homes while receiving treatment.

Robert's experience here wasn't entirely bad. He was excited to see his father whenever he came to pick him up. He also made a small group of friends with common interests in skating and video games. His friends were said to view Robert reverently; "The friends looked at him like he was the smart kid," recalled Jamie Heimann, a youth care worker supervising Robert, "That probably made him feel good." Heimann also said they liked him because he knew how to game the system, for example, he knew how to get special passes for activities.

Some of the other youths at the facility picked on Robert. "People would say he got picked on. After bottling up, he'd lash out a bit. But out of the type of population we worked with, they were much more physically aggressive than he was." Another employee recalls Robert as being mostly shy, keeping to himself. Robert also was sad about his parents not being more involved with him.

While Robert was going through all of this turmoil, his older sister excelled, receiving a college scholarship for those in the top 10% of their class.

After 2 and a half years of absence, Robert's biological mother would re-enter his life and began visiting him regularly again. Robert also moved back in with his father around this time, who was getting another divorce. 

Hawkins attended Papillion-La Vista High School and would get in trouble for selling weed and getting into fights with students, resulting in court appearances. His attendance was incredibly flaky; his principal noted he was a student "off-and-on," though beyond this he said he was "low-key and laid-back". Hawkins quit school in his senior year in 2006, later getting a GED. The juvenile court ended his jurisdiction in August of that year. He also had gotten a girlfriend, but would end up cheating on her; strangely, his biological mother seemed to rally behind him and supported this decision.

By all means, it seemed as if Robert's life was improving. In July, he got his driver's license and in November he registered his own car. He also had gotten a job at McDonald's. After becoming estranged from his family and moving in with a friend's family, he began to use his newfound income source to help out with rent.

It all seemed to come crumbling down in 2007. He broke up with his girlfriend, got ticketed on two drug and alcohol charges, and got fired from his job for stealing $17. During the summer, he attempted to enlist in the army but was denied on account of his mental health record. He had an impending court date on December 19, 2007, two weeks before the attack. He also threatened to kill a girl and her family and burn their house down, suspecting she had stolen his CD player; however, no charges were pressed because Robert was known for "shooting his mouth off."

THE ATTACK:

On December 5, 2007, Robert Hawkins wrote a suicide note addressed to family and friends, ominously saying he was going to "take a few pieces of shit with [him]", and that "he was gonna be fuckin' famous." He took his father's AKM 7 semiautomatic rifle that he had stolen the previous day and showed to the friend he was staying with and drove to Westroads mall. He first entered the store, walked a short distance through it, and walked back out. He then armed himself with his father's gun and balled it up in his sweater, before entering an elevator and opening fire on the third floor. He killed eight and wounded six before turning the gun on himself near the customer service desk. The attack lasted around 6 minutes. His friend's mother had turned the note in to the police an hour beforehand, but unfortunately, it was too late.

Prior to the shooting, his mother had found out he'd stolen the gun, and on the day he stole it he also took pictures of it and sent it to his friends. The day of the shooting, after he had written the notes, while playing video games with the aforementioned friend he begun crying and ranting to him about everything wrong with his life- he worried about his court date, the money he had to pay for fines and a lawyer, and he was afraid his mom would take back his jeep. Right before he left the house, he seemed to be in some sort of disassociative state, as his friend noted that when he hugged him it "didn't feel like Robert was in control of his body, like it wasn't actually him."

ANALYSIS:

Robert had an unstable home life, one parent engaged in criminal activity, was estranged from his parents, and had both frequent relocations and changing caregivers. Not only was this incredibly devastating for any child, but it also fits very well with Peter Langman's "traumatized shooter" categorization. Why do I choose to classify him as a psychopath, and not a psychotic shooter? Firstly, he had no delusions, hallucinations, or disorganized thoughts. His suicide note was incredibly cognizant and he seemed aware of what he was doing. He had done a short amount of reconnaissance on the area he attacked, showing some level of forethought. He did not display any paranoia or eccentricity. Why the psychopath category, then? He was incredibly reckless and didn't show a lot of empathy, and from a very young age showed signs of violent and sadistic behavior. He didn't care about school, flaking regularly before dropping out entirely. His recklessness showed in his regular use and selling of drugs. There was one incident where he planned on becoming a drug dealer after being fired from McDonald's, but had such little impulse control he had used up his entire stock himself. He threatened people so regularly that the girl he threatened to murder didn't press charges because this was expected of him. His sadism can be seen in his final writings; though he only briefly mentions he's going to murder people, he preemptively views them as "sons of bitches" he wants to take with him. Perhaps he wanted to do a murder-suicide because he was a sadist. Also, note the recollection of him being someone who bottled up his anger before lashing out. This is similar to other psychopathic shooters such as Eric Harris and Laurie Dann, who also would seem to bottle up their anger and collect grievances before exploding. Was he outwardly narcissistic? He certainly liked having other youths at the mental health facility he was at look up to him. However, most others regarded him as being shy and withdrawn; yet again, another similarity to psychopathic shooters such as Robert Poulin and Tim Kretschmer. His entitlement can also be seen in his explosive outbursts, thinking that it was fair to threaten murder over someone stealing a CD player he owned.

What are other patterns congruent among psychopathic shooters? He had family in the military (both of his parents), had military aspirations (tried applying and was rejected), and had occupational, educational, and romantic failures. Hawkins, as previously demonstrated, fits all of these categories. While he had no known severe physical defects and never seemed to display any loathing over how he looked, he was acutely aware of his mental problems. Most of his suicide notes are apologizing to friends and family, not wanting to be a burden on them, and acknowledging they'll probably view him as a monster. His awareness and comprehension of his actions are yet another recognizable pattern in psychopathic shooters. Eric Harris seemed apologetic to his family in the infamous "Basement Tapes". Robert Butler Jr. apologized for his actions before his attack, and Charles Whitman expressed distress and concern over killing his wife and mother and over his own impending attack, saying he was truly sorry. Like many of these people, Robert also had frequent trouble with authority, fighting with teachers, and getting frequent charges for drug and alcohol use. Hawkins also wanted to "be famous" because of his massacre, similar to people like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, TJ Lane, Christopher Harper-Mercer, Robert Benjamin Smith, and Brenda Spencer, most of whom are psychopathic. Like Lane, Hawkins is also a very rare traumatized and psychopathic shooter.

Hawkins can be classified as an "explosive psychopath", based off of his tendency to repress anger and let it explode. Explosive psychopaths also tend to commit crimes and are disobedient and are a bad influence on others. Hawkins seemed to have good impression management skills. Most friends, family, and school or mental health treatment staff were incredibly surprised by the attack and recalled him as a shy and withdrawn boy.

Hawkins' attack might've also been spurred on by his impending court date. This was a similar situation to Professor Valery Fabrikant's shooting, who was yet another psychopathic shooter; Fabrikant was due for court just a day before he went into the college where he worked and shot at colleagues. More than anything else, the attack seemed to be him trying to avoid responsibility- a psychopathic trait. It is unclear if Robert actually planned an attack of some kind before the day of the attack, and how long he was doing so. It's also unclear why he chose a mall as a venue for an attack. Perhaps it was because of the high density of people. If so, he seemed to be deliberately maximizing the amount of carnage. Like many mass murders, a lot is unclear, and a lot of the answers to possible questions most likely are dead along with Robert. It seemed as if Robert's life was a domino effect of trouble. His traumatic childhood and frequent relocations led to attention-seeking behavior and lashing out, which led to frequent hospitalizations and trouble with authority and police, which led to repressed rage that eventually exploded into a massacre taking the lives of eight other people and himself. He was like a balloon with too much air, waiting to pop. Perhaps if it wasn't for the large amount of dysfunction and failure in his life, that impending court date wouldn't have seemed so bad.