On Wednesday, May 20, 1998, 15-year-old Kip Kinkel was caught with a stolen gun in his locker and suspended from school, pending possible expulsion. Police booked him on criminal charges and sent him home with his parents. According to Kip’s confession, his father was sitting at the kitchen counter drinking coffee while Kip grabbed a .22 rifle from his room then fired a bullet into the back of his dad’s head. When his mother arrived home later that day, Kip met her in the garage, told her he loved her, then shot her multiple times.
The next morning, dressed in a long trench coat, Kip drove his mom’s Ford Explorer to a spot near Thurston High School and parked it. Carrying a rifle and two handguns, Kip walked down a hallway and into the school cafeteria, firing off over 50 rounds that killed two students and wounded about two dozen others. A group of classmates, including one teenager who had been shot in the chest, finally subdued him.
After he was arrested and taken to the police station, the freckle-faced teenager lunged at an officer with a knife that he had strapped to his leg, yelling, “Kill me, shoot me.” The officer stepped back and used pepper spray on him. Kip was sentenced to 112 years in prison for aggravated murder and was prosecuted as an adult. Under Oregon law he was too young to face the death penalty. Kip had once been voted as “most likely to start World War III,” according to a Thurston High School student. Before the shootings, students at the high school said that Kip had talked about shooting people. After the shootings, officials found 5 bombs at the Kinkel residence, one of which went off when it was being disarmed.
Authorities found a note in the living room that Kip wrote, saying: “My head just doesn’t work right. God damn these VOICES inside my head… I have to kill people. I don’t know why… I have no other choice.”
What drives some people to kill another human being? Or to gun down dozens of their schoolmates? America has been captivated by killers for centuries—digging into their family histories, psychological profiles, and so much more. Now, thanks to brain SPECT imaging, we can also see inside their brains. What do brain scans reveal about murderers?
America has been captivated by killers for centuries—digging into their family histories, psychological profiles, and much more. We use brain SPECT imaging to see inside their brains and have discovered 7 critical lessons.
Amen Clinics, which has the world’s largest database of functional brain scans (over 160,0000 and growing), has scanned the brains of over 1,000 convicted felons, including over 100 murderers.
Here are 7 lessons from the brain scans of murderers.
1. People who do the worst things often have troubled brains.
The brains of murderers typically don’t look healthy. Brain SPECT imaging is a technology that measures blood flow and activity in the brain. It shows 3 things: areas with healthy activity, areas with too much activity, and areas with too little activity. On SPECT, the brains of murderers show abnormal activity in a variety of brain regions, especially the prefrontal cortex involved with empathy, judgment, and forethought. Look at this scan of a healthy brain compared to a scan from Kip Kinkel.
The healthy surface brain SPECT scan shows full, even, symmetrical activity.Kip Kinkel’s surface brain SPECT scan shows several areas of low activity (the areas that look like holes indicate low blood flow).
2. Murder does not always look the same in the brain.
You might think there is a singular pattern in the brain of killers, but there isn’t. Look at the brain scans of two 15-year-old murderers, for example. They look very different. The brain scan of Kip Kinkel shows underlying damage and toxicity and is dramatically underactive. In the SPECT scan of Paul, a teen who murdered his mother and 8-year-old sister with a baseball bat, it is evident that his brain works too hard.
A healthy “active” scan shows the most active parts of the brain with blue representing the average activity and red (or sometimes red and white) representing the most active parts of the brain. In the healthy scan on the left, the most active area is in the cerebellum, at the back/bottom part of the brain.Kip Kinkel’s active SPECT scan shows severe underactivity.Paul’s active SPECT scan shows dramatic overactivity.
3. Traumatic brain injuries are a major cause of psychiatric illness and violence.
Few people know about the link between traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) and mental health problems because most psychiatrists never look at the brain. TBIs are associated with an increased risk of violent behavior, including suicide and murder. According to research in The Journal of Neuroscience, the rate of aggression and violence after a TBI ranges from 35%-90%. The brain scans of several of the murderers scanned at Amen Clinics show underlying damage to the brain from past head injuries.
4. Left temporal lobe abnormalities are common in violent people.
Many Amen Clinics patients who exhibited violence (murderers, arsonists, domestic assaults, rapists, bombers, etc.) had left temporal lobe abnormalities. The temporal lobes are located on either side of the brain behind the eyes and underneath the temples. Assault, murder, rape, arson, and other criminal behaviors are often associated with problems in this part of the brain. Other scientific research confirms that temporal lobe abnormalities are associated with increased aggression and violence.
5. Traditional mental health care is failing.
A number of our nation’s most notorious mass shooters—including Kip Kinkel (Springfield, OR, 1998), Eric Harris (Columbine, CO 1999), Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech 2007), James Holmes (Aurora, CO, 2012), and Nikolas Cruz (Parkland, FL, 2018)—had seen psychiatrists or mental health professionals and had received “standard of care” treatment before their crimes.
The brain imaging work at Amen Clinics shows that cookie-cutter treatment plans for psychiatric illnesses don’t work. Not all brain types react the same way to psychotropic medications. For example, SSRIs, the most commonly prescribed antidepressants, are considered safe for many people. However, in some people with low activity in certain brain regions, they may increase impulsivity and behaviors that are out of character.
Scientific research, including a 2017 study in BMJ, has shown that some antidepressants increase the risk of violence, suicide, and homicide, and the FDA issues a black box warning for antidepressants for people up to the age of 24. A growing body of neuroimaging research, including a 2020 study in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences and a 2019 study in The American Journal of Psychiatry, shows that brain imaging may help predict which patients will respond favorably to antidepressants.
6. Murderous behavior based on brain problems can’t be fully excused.
Although brain dysfunction contributes to violence, it is not an excuse for bad behavior. People who commit heinous acts should not be excused and allowed to go home because they have a bad brain. Many people who have troubled brains never do anything bad. In judgment we must consider the brain. At this point in time, science shows that the brain is very important to moment-by-moment behavior, and it must be considered in sentencing people.
7. Brains can be rehabilitated.
What if our society evaluated and treated troubled brains, rather than simply warehousing them in toxic, stressful environments? Based on over 30 years at Amen Clinics of helping patients enhance their brain health and improve their lives, it’s clear that our society could potentially save tremendous amounts of money by making a significant percentage of these people more functional. With better brain health, violent criminals who get out of prison are more likely to be able to work, support themselves, and pay taxes. The Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said, “A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens, but by how it treats its criminals.” Instead of just crime and punishment, SPECT imaging teaches us that we should also be thinking about crime, evaluation, and treatment.
Aggression, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and other mental health issues can’t wait. During these uncertain times, your mental well-being is more important than ever and waiting until life gets back to “normal” is likely to make your symptoms worsen over time. At Amen Clinics, we’re here for you. We offer in-clinic brain scanning and appointments, as well as mental telehealth, remote clinical evaluations, and video therapy for adults, children, and couples. Find out more by speaking to a specialist today at 888-288-9834 or visit our contact page here.
