James Swann

Last updated
James Swann
Born
James Edward Swann, Jr.

1964 (age 5859)
OccupationFormer security guard
Parent(s)James Swann, Sr.
MotiveMental illness
Details
DateFebruary, 23–April 19, 1993
CountryUnited States
Location(s) Washington, D.C.
Killed4
Injured5
WeaponsShotgun

James Edward Swann, Jr.a.k.a.The Shotgun Stalker (born 1964), is an African-American serial killer whose random drive-by shotgun shootings in Washington, D.C. in 1993 earned him his nickname in the press. Swann was living in the Iselin section of Woodbridge Township, New Jersey before the attacks. [1] He has been confined to St. Elizabeths Hospital since 1994 as a forensic patient since he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. His request for a furlough in 2011 was denied.

Contents

Murders

Swann drove to Washington to carry out the attacks, which took place in the Mount Pleasant and Columbia Heights neighborhoods. Each of the attacks followed a standard format: Swann would slow his car down next to a pedestrian and fire a 20-gauge shotgun at the target before driving away. Swann killed four people and injured five in 14 attacks before he was apprehended by the Metropolitan Police on April 19, 1993. [1]

In custody

Swann was found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to Saint Elizabeths Hospital. [2] He claimed to have been driven to the killings by voices in his head, including that of the ghost of Malcolm X, who told him to kill people in Northwest Washington—the "civil rights side of town"—because they had been responsible for the civil rights leader's assassination in 1965. [2] [3]

In 2011, Swann applied for a 12-hour furlough from the psychiatric hospital where he has been committed in order to visit his father. Such a visit was to be under his father's supervision. Witnesses for Swann noted that he had earned an associate degree in Computer Science while incarcerated. [4] A psychologist testifying on his behalf said that he had reviewed Swann's records, which showed that Swann "had not had a violent episode at the hospital since 2003, and his aggression with his psychosis was gone." This psychologist felt that Swann has a "low risk" of violence. But Swann was still suffering from hallucinations as recently as 2008. [4] According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Colleen Kennedy, who opposed the furlough, Swann's father had given him a t-shirt with the phrase "Thrill to Kill" emblazoned on it, which Swann enjoyed wearing. [4] The request for a furlough was denied. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Hinckley Jr.</span> Attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan (born 1955)

John Warnock Hinckley Jr. is an American man who attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Washington, D.C., on March 30, 1981, two months after Reagan's first inauguration. Using a .22 caliber revolver, Hinckley wounded Reagan; police officer Thomas Delahanty; Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy; and White House Press Secretary James Brady, who was left permanently disabled and eventually died due to the extent of his injuries. Hinckley was reportedly seeking fame to impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had a fixation. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and remained under institutional psychiatric care for over three decades. Public outcry over the verdict led state legislatures and Congress to narrow their respective insanity defenses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark David Chapman</span> American murderer

Mark David Chapman is an American man who murdered English musician John Lennon in New York City on December 8, 1980. As Lennon walked into the archway of his apartment building The Dakota, Chapman fired five shots at Lennon from a few yards away with a Charter Arms Undercover .38 Special revolver. Lennon was hit four times from the back. He was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital and pronounced dead on arrival. Chapman remained at the scene following the shooting and made no attempt to flee or resist arrest.

Lee Boyd Malvo, also known as John Lee Malvo, is an American convicted murderer who, along with John Allen Muhammad, committed a series of murders dubbed the D.C. sniper attacks over a three-week period in October 2002. Malvo was aged 17 during the span of the shootings. Currently, he is serving multiple life sentences at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia, a supermax prison. Muhammad was executed in 2009.

Park Elliot Dietz is a forensic psychiatrist who has consulted or testified in many of the highest profile US criminal cases, including spousal killer Betty Broderick, mass murderer Jared Lee Loughner, and serial killers Joel Rifkin, Arthur Shawcross, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Kaczynski, Richard Kuklinski, the D.C. sniper attacks, and William Bonin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Woodcock</span> Canadian serial killer and child rapist (1939–2010)

David Michael Krueger, best known by his birth name, Peter Woodcock, was a Canadian serial killer, child rapist and diagnosed psychopath. He gained notoriety for the murders of three young children in Toronto in the late 1950s, as well as for a murder in 1991 on his first day of unsupervised release from the psychiatric institution in which he had been incarcerated for his earlier crimes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Cullen</span> American serial killer (born 1960)

Charles Edmund Cullen is an American serial killer. Cullen, a nurse, murdered dozens—possibly hundreds—of patients during a 16-year career spanning several New Jersey medical centers until being arrested in 2003. He confessed to committing as many as 40 murders at least 29 of which have been confirmed; though interviews with police, psychiatrists and journalists suggest he committed many more.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Denyer</span> Australian serial killer

Paul Charles Denyer is an Australian serial killer currently serving three consecutive sentences of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 30 years for the murders of three young women in Melbourne, in 1993. Denyer became known in the media as the Frankston Serial Killer as his crimes occurred in the neighbouring suburbs of Frankston.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Toppan</span> American serial killer

Jane Toppan, nicknamed Jolly Jane, was an American serial killer who is known to have committed twelve murders in Massachusetts between 1895 and 1901; she confessed to a total of thirty-one murders. The killings were carried out in Toppan's capacity as a nurse, targeting patients and their family members. Toppan, who admitted to have committed the murders to satisfy a sexual fetish, was quoted as saying that her ambition was "to have killed more people—helpless people—than any other man or woman who ever lived".

Wayne Clifford Boden was a Canadian serial killer and rapist active between 1969 and 1971. Boden killed four women, three in Montreal and one in Calgary, earning the nickname The Vampire Rapist for biting the breasts of his victims, and received four life sentences. Boden's was the first murder conviction in North America due to forensic odontological evidence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ion Rîmaru</span> Romanian serial killer

Ion Rîmaru was a Romanian serial killer dubbed the Vampire of Bucharest or the Blondes' Killer. Rîmaru terrorized Bucharest between 1970 and 1971, killing four women and attacking more than ten others. Authorities had made over 2,500 arrests before his capture. The women were attacked with an axe, bitten on the breasts and thighs, and raped after they were already dead.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Harvey</span> American serial killer (1952–2017)

Donald Harvey was an American serial killer who claimed to have murdered 87 people, though official estimates are between 37 and 57 victims. He was able to do this during his time as a hospital orderly. His spree took place between 1970 and 1987.

Jones v. United States, 463 U.S. 354 (1983), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the court, for the first time, addressed whether the due process requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment allows defendants, who were found not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) of a misdemeanor crime, to be involuntarily confined to a mental institution until such times as they are no longer a danger to themselves or others with few other criteria or procedures limiting the actions of the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Christopher</span> American serial killer

Joseph Gerard Christopher was an American serial killer who gained infamy for a series of murders in the early 1980s. He is believed to have killed at least twelve African American men and boys and wounded numerous others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Ramirez</span> American serial killer and sex offender (1960–2013)

Ricardo "Richard" Leyva Muñoz Ramirez, dubbed the Night Stalker, the Walk-In Killer and the Valley Intruder, was an American serial killer and sex offender whose crime spree took place in California from June 1984 until his capture in August 1985. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989, and died while awaiting execution in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony and Nathaniel Cook</span> American criminal brothers

Anthony Cook and Nathaniel Cook are American serial killer brothers who committed a series of at least 9 rapes and murders of mostly couples in Toledo, Ohio, area between 1973 and 1981. Their guilt was established in the late 1990s thanks to DNA profiling, after which both brothers were convicted and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

Russell Maurice Johnson, also known as The Bedroom Strangler, is a Canadian serial killer and rapist who was convicted of raping and murdering at least three women in London and Guelph in the 1970s, although the total number of victims later turned out to be higher. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and indefinitely confined at Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care in Penetanguishene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Danks</span> Convicted American serial killer (1962-)

Joseph Martin Danks, known as The Koreatown Slasher, is an American spree killer and serial killer who killed six homeless men in January 1987 in Los Angeles' Koreatown neighborhood. Convicted of the six killings and sent to serve his life sentence at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi, he was sentenced to death in 1990 for the murder of his cellmate, 67-year-old Walter Holt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Liberty</span> American serial killer

Robert Willard Liberty, known as The Candlelight Killer, was an American serial killer who murdered two men in Southern California from March to June 1970 in ritualistic style, and left taunting messages behind for authorities to find. Liberty had spent three years in a mental hospital prior to the murders for killing his girlfriend in 1966. In 1971, while awaiting trial for the new killings, Liberty was murdered by a fellow inmate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Washington</span> American serial killer (1948–2004)

Steven Washington Jr., known as The Window-Screen Rapist, was an American serial killer who murdered three elderly women in St. Petersburg, Florida, in late 1963. At the time of his arrest in January 1964, he was only 15 years old. His victims ranging in ages between 52 and 80 and were raped beforehand. Having been convicted and sentenced to life in prison, he died while serving his sentence in 2004.

Robert Elwood Askins was an American murderer, sex offender and suspected serial killer from Washington, D.C. who was convicted for the fatal poisoning of Ruth McDonald in 1938, and was a prime suspect in two other murders committed decades apart. He was also a suspect in the Freeway Phantom murders in the early 1970s, in which at least five girls and one woman were abducted and killed in the area.

References

  1. 1 2 Kovaleski, Serge F. (20 April 1993). "N.J. man arrested after another shotgun slaying". Washington Post.
  2. 1 2 Duggan, Paul (27 September 1994). "Shotgun stalker ruled insane, not guilty". washingtonpost.com.
  3. McKay, Jack. "The Shotgun Stalker -- a two-month nightmare". DCJACK.org. Retrieved 2007-12-19.
  4. 1 2 3 Alexander, Keith L. (15 February 2011). "D.C. shotgun shooter seeks 12-hour release from St. Elizabeths". washingtonpost.com.
  5. Alexander, Keith L. (25 February 2011). "Judge denies D.C. shotgun stalker 12-hour release from St. Elizabeth's". washingtonpost.com.