Going Postal Goes Fed-Ex!

by Starks Shrink

Last week, in Atlanta, a FedEx employee went postal. A disturbed young man of 19, Geddy Lee Kramer, took a shotgun to his place of employment and went on a rampage, injuring six of his coworkers before fatally shooting himself in a loading bay at the facility. He left a long and rambling suicide note that illustrated a teen struggling with personality and identity issues. Kramer claims to have tried to get help from his therapist and wanted to assure police and the public, through his notes, that he alone was responsible for the ‘massacre’, not video games, music or other external influences. He labels himself a sociopath who just wants to kill people but unlike most sociopaths, his note indicated his despair with life and a yearning for the peace he felt death would bring. Not the feelings one expects of a sociopath.

Workplace rampages are nothing new; in fact, the colloquialism “going postal” was born of a series of rampages perpetrated by US postal workers against their coworkers in the late 80s and 90s. Going postal, however, is obviously not something that is unique to postal workers; they just had the misfortune of receiving the label due to some clever reporter, though I would imagine that Patrick Sherrill, the man whose rampage inspired the term, would likely be delighted by his notorious legacy.

Patrick Sherrill epitomizes what the term “going postal” is all about. His killing spree took 14 lives, and injured 6 others, before he turned his weapon on himself. There’s no evidence he had mental issues prior to the rampage; rather he simply felt slighted and abused, and was intensely angry about it, so he decided to take his frustrations out on the human race. Obviously, there must be more to the man’s motivations, but when we think of “going postal”, his profile is what we have in mind – an intense buildup of anger that sends someone hurtling over the edge.

When people experience constant repeated frustration and perceived degradation in front of peers, combined with some mental disturbance, they often take it out on those nearest to them. I’m not saying that these people are legally or even clinically insane; they just appear to have a lack of coping skills so they internalize perceived slights which fuels their rage. They may initially have a specific target in mind but once the carnage begins, any convenient target will do.

Take for instance, Omar Thornton, who in 2010, killed eight and injured two coworkers at a beer distributor’s warehouse in Connecticut where he worked. Thornton opened fire as he was being escorted from the building after having been fired for stealing beer. Even though his theft was caught on video, Thornton, an African American, believed himself to be the long-suffering victim of workplace racism. Getting fired was the final straw. He ended the police standoff by taking his own life, as most rampage murderers do, leaving the task of understanding his motivation to forensics and guesswork.

There are those who fall into the “going postal” category, however, who prior to their rampage, have demonstrated histories of instability, though whether they were in the throes of psychosis at the time of their massacre is unknown. Take, for instance, Mark Barton, who shot and killed nine people at two Stock Day Trading companies in Atlanta Georgia in 1999. After the murders occurred, police discovered the bodies of his wife and two children in his home. They had been murdered with a hammer. They also found notes written by Barton indicating that he had killed his wife two days prior to his rampage and his children one day later. It was speculated that Barton had gone berserk because of some significant losses he had incurred as a stock trader; however, his suicide note, found in his apartment, suggests a different motive. He had a history of paranoia and delusions and had been fired from his job due to his instability. He indicated that his current wife was the cause of his demise (he had been a suspect in the beating death of his first wife). Whatever his precise motivation, he fit the characteristics of most rampage killers; he had poor or broken personal relationships and a perceived axe to grind.

Another former postal employee, Jennifer San Marco, went postal in 2006. She is rare amongst mass murderers, simply because she’s a woman. San Marco had a history of mental instability and, in fact, had been placed on psychological leave from the post office, where she worked as a clerk after departing the police force. Records show that she was committed to a mental hospital in California for a short time approximately five years before her rampage shooting. She had been witnessed around town talking to “an imaginary friend” and was frequently seen on her knees praying at inappropriate times and locations. She exhibited behavior so odd and at times frightening that police were called on several occasions, though she was never actually questioned. She also apparently had a racist streak (which is not uncommon in a person experiencing psychosis) and was angry when she was denied a business license for a newspaper she dubbed “The Racist Press”. The day prior to the murders, San Marco, who believed that the Goleta postal facility was at the heart of a conspiracy against her, drove from her home in New Mexico to her former home in Santa Barbara County, CA, where she unleashed her fury. She was clearly unstable and likely psychotic, but her actions illustrate that anxieties and delusions are often directed at those closest to the perpetrator. Like most mass killers, she didn’t have other close personal relationships so her former coworkers became the object of her obsessions and delusions.

Most school shootings, where the shooter is a student at the school, fall into a similar category. The killer is taking out those in his circle, those he knows, and those he feels slighted by, whether the insults are real or imagined.

The word Columbine evokes thoughts and memories for most of us that have nothing to do with a pretty flower. Rather, we think of the infamous massacre at the high school in Colorado. The image is so powerful that the suburb of Denver actually considered changing its name after Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris changed the town’s image forever. The same will be true of Sandy Hook, at least for a while. Words, however, are just that — words. In time, “going postal” will mean nothing to the younger generation, much the way the Tower at the University of Texas and Port Arthur in Tasmania have faded away into obscurity. Yet, sadly, the intermittent mass murders that haunt the families of the innocent victims and pique the interest of crime fans are unlikely to cease any time soon.