The chilling details about the brutal rape and murder of young high school teacher Colleen Ritzer, at the hands of one of her students 14 year-old Philip Chisholm, are now emerging. Now, comes the questions as to how a seemingly “nice” kid could commit such a heinous crime. According to CNN, “Philip Chism, the Massachusetts teenager accused of raping and killing his algebra teacher, became visibly upset when the teacher, Colleen Ritzer, spoke about the teen’s home state of Tennessee after class, according to a police affidavit unsealed Friday.”
Why would a student react this way and what were the missed warning signs?
Here, we are left to wonder again about a brutal homicide that occurred seemingly out of the blue. An outstanding athlete kills and rapes his teacher. He leaves a hate note at the body. He was seen talking to himself that day while in the presence of the victim after she talked about his home state of Tennessee from which he had just moved from a short time ago. We know little else. We have no knowledge of his prior state of mental health. We do not know if he used drugs or was intoxicated that day. We know nothing about his prior relationship with this teacher. We know he came from a divorced family but little else except some reports that his father might have had some problems leading to restricted visitation. But we do know that he came to school prepared to commit this crime. It appears to be premeditated. Thus, there were some factors leading to this violence. He did not just snap in a moment of fury. There were reasons in this youngster. He was already boiling that day. Sometimes our intuition is a help. I intuit that there was a combination of attraction towards the victim, feelings of rejection by, and anger at the victim. It is not so uncommon for young men to “fall in love” with their teachers. Sometimes an almost delusional preoccupation can occur in a fragile youngster leading to profound rejection when reality intrudes. Combine this with a feeling of alienation from his community, possible psychotic or drug induced dyscontrol and we have a perfect storm. But this is intuition. The facts will emerge, and then we will know more.
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Information contained in this blog is intended for educational purposes only. It is not intended as medical or psychiatric advice for individual conditions or treatment and does not substitute for a medical or psychiatric examination. A psychiatrist must make a determination about any treatment or prescription. Dr. Paul does not assume any responsibility or risk for the use of any information contained within this blog.
