Killings ‘may have been final statement of paranoid man’

THE murder of 12 people by Derrick Bird may have been the “final statement” of a paranoid man, a psychologist said yesterday.

Serena Simmons, a senior lecturer in psychology at Nottingham Trent University, said mass murderers often fit a “very specific type of profile”.

She said: “With this profile you see people who are not necessarily out of touch with reality but may have a paranoid personality.

“It may not have been weeks leading up to this. The decision to do this may have been taken in days.

“He may have felt angry and frustrated and the killing was a final statement.

“Very often it is work-related. The killer might have felt rejected in the workplace or rejected by a lover.”

She said the shooting spree which saw Bird kill strangers, friends and family alike over several hours – and across a wide geographical area – was “very unusual”. She said: “There is a big difference between a serial killer who has killed three or more people with a cooling-off period between each murder and this case.

“This is a mass murderer, someone who normally kills four or more people usually in one location, but he has killed over quite a wide area and that is very unusual.”

Ms Simmons said Bird’s job driving a taxi around west Cumbria could have influenced the way he behaved.

She said: “Mass murderers normally go to one location or multiple places within one location but he has covered such a wide area.

“Because of his job he would have had a very different take on the area geographically. He travelled around it all time so would have had a very different mental map of the area and would have thought of it as his home.”