violent episodes, if you listen carefully to the signals provided by po-
tential killers.

As you will read in Chapter 1, not all types of homicide are the
same. I began my research in this field several years ago when nu-
merous post office shootings were occurring. I was troubled by re-
ports that suggested the perpetrators showed no signs of their
intentions. People who knew them said the perpetrators seemed nor-
mal and they were shocked to learn of the gunmen's actions. As a
clinician, I could not believe that an individual would, with absolutely
no warning, commit homicide. My clinical experience with other
forms of behavior suggested otherwise.

Around that same time I was working as the vice president for
student life at Atlanta Christian College, an undergraduate college in
the Southeast. I was working on a case involving a student I believed
to be dangerous. I felt this student was a high risk to our commu-
nity, but I had no training on which to base my assumptions. I began
to research the cause-effect relationship between environment/
thoughts/behaviors and homicide, a process that has led to this book.
Why was the sheriff wrong when he said, "Don't we know that al-
ready?" regarding the cause-effect relationship in homicide? Human
behavior is too complicated and multifaceted to suppose that any
single factor causes any specific behavior. Any such supposition is
reductionist and unrealistic.

My work has focused on perhaps the most difficult form of hom-
icide to predict--homicide among the historically nonviolent. These
are people with no apparent violent patterns in their pasts. As with
all research in the social sciences, my goals in this line of research are
to describe what is happening in different types of homicide, under-
stand the nature of homicide, predict when it is likely or unlikely, and
control (prevent) it when possible. In the following chapters I address
all four elements of the research process as they relate to homicide.

Even though we may be shocked when we hear of murders in-
volving robberies, drug deals, and other criminal activities, we are
most distressed by homicides committed by seemingly normal indi-

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