Snipers: the lurking hunters
Criminal snipers, or long-distance shooters, embody the epitome of deadly precision. These are the sniper archetypes, their modus operandi, and select examples.
“History shows that criminal long-distance shooters have similar motivations. Some are power- or thrill-seekers like Mohammad and Malvo, while others kill because of a mental illness. There are mission-oriented long-distant shooters like Oswald, Joseph Paul Franklin, or John Ausonius. And last but not least, there are contract killers who kill from a distance.”
— Nathaniel Colt in Wicked Hunt
Criminal snipers and active shooters
Criminal sniper and active shooter incidences represent chilling threats that can happen anywhere, anytime. Yet, their methods and motivations differ. The active shooter engages in a systematic, close-range assault, moving among victims. A sniper, however, shoots from distant vantage points, mostly from a position of concealment and/or cover.
A sniper attack is rarely a spontaneous event. They are meticulously planned endeavors that involve weapon acquisition, ammunition stockpiling, camouflage preparation, scouting, and rigorous practice.
Unless intended as a targeted assassination, the perpetrators rarely know their targets. Instead, these are faceless strangers, chosen at random on the spot or serving as symbolic substitutes for individuals the sniper associates with.
Sniper archetypes: hit-and-run vs. barricaded perpetrators
Long-distant shooters fall into one of two broad categories: the hit-and-run snipers who open fire before they either move to different a hide-out for another attack or withdraw completely from the scene.
Hit-and-run snipers unleash their deadly volleys and swiftly change locations. They either relocate to a different hideout for subsequent attacks or completely withdraw from the scene. Infamous cases are the attacks of Mark Essex, who targeted New Orleans police officers in 1972 and 1973, and the Beltway Snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo.
The barricaded perpetrators attack their targets and stay in their positions. They continue their rampage until the police stop them, or they end the attack on their own—like Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter from 2017.
Lee Harvey Oswald: Kennedy's assassin
Probably the most famous sniper is Lee Harvey Oswald who, on November 22, 1963, assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. Just two days after this fateful act, Oswald himself fell victim to an assassin's bullet, fired by Jack Ruby, as the police transported him to the county jail.
Oswald was a hit-and-run sniper who abandoned his Italian Carcano (also known as “Mannlicher-Carcano”) M91/38 bolt-action rifle immediately after shooting Kennedy and exited the Depository building, where he worked. The police later arrested him at the Texas Theater.
Oswald held no personal animosity towards President Kennedy, who was a moderate and democratic politician—unlike the far-right extremism of General Edwin Walker, whom Oswald also attacked, according to the Warren Commission.
One of Oswald’s motives for the President’s assassination was Kennedy's administration's aggressive stance toward the Cuban government, particularly after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Additionally, Oswald sought validation, aiming to prove himself to those who had rejected and humiliated him. The desire to settle a score with the FBI added another layer to his complex motivations.
Oswald's ideological path had been shaped in the early 1950s, fueled by an intense interest in the Rosenberg affair (American citizens Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union) and Marxist literature. He convinced himself that the “capitalist” and “oppressive” system he lived in caused all his misfortunes.
Joseph Paul Franklin: A tale of hatred and violence
Joseph Paul Franklin, (born James Clayton Vaughn, Jr.) was a white supremacist serial killer, attempted assassin, bomber, and homegrown terrorist whose reign of terror lasted from 1977 to 1980.
During his formative years in high school, Franklin encountered far-right ideologies and neo-Nazism. He eventually joined the National Socialist White People's Party, the National States' Rights Party, and the local Ku Klux Klan. Adolf Hitler's political manifesto, “Mein Kampf”, inspired Franklin to start a race war. “I've never felt that way about any other book that I read,” he would reflect later. “It was something weird about that book.”
In 1976, Franklin wrote a letter to Jimmy Carter, in which he threatened to kill the President for his pro-civil rights views. The same year, he adopted the name “Joseph Paul Franklin”, a macabre homage to Nazi minister of propaganda Paul Joseph Goebbels and Benjamin Franklin.
October 1977 marked his first foray into murder, when he opened fire on a Jewish place of worship, claiming one life and injuring two others. Franklin's targets varied, and in 1978, he attempted to assassinate the magazine publisher and pornographer Larry Flynt.
Throughout his killing spree, Franklin claimed the lives of 15 men, women, and children. Franklin meticulously planned every shooting. He scouted his hide-out, where to place the weapons he planned to use. As a countermeasure, he filed off the serial numbers of his guns, which he abandoned after each attack.
On September 25, 1980, authorities arrested Franklin in Florence, Kentucky, but he escaped from custody. The police would eventually recapture him in Lakeland, Florida. Franklin was executed by lethal injection in 2013.
John Ausonius: The Laser Man's reign of hatred
John Wolfgang Alexander Ausonius, born Wolfgang Alexander John Zaugg, was a Swedish serial killer, sniper, and vigilante. Ausonius first used a rifle equipped with a laser aiming device, which earned him the moniker “The Laser Man” in the Swedish media. He later switched to a Smith & Wesson revolver fitted with a silencer.
Diagnosed with an antisocial personality disorder, Ausonius' descent into darkness was swift and merciless. Fueled by an intense hatred for Communists, social democrats, and immigrants, Ausonius took a dark turn. Abandoning his role as a taxi driver, he ventured into stock and bond trading, initially with great success. However, when his fortunes dwindled, he turned to robbing banks to maintain his lifestyle.
Between August 1991 and February 1992, Ausonius shot eleven immigrants and killed one in the Stockholm and Uppsala regions. His objective was to terrorize immigrants, forcing them to flee Sweden. Adding a dark twist to his profile, Ausonius was a suspect in the assassination of Olof Palme, Sweden's Prime Minister, in 1986. However, as he was incarcerated during the attack, investigators ruled him out as a suspect.
June 1992 marked Ausonius's arrest during a bank robbery, leading to a life sentence in Österåker Prison. Years later, in 2018, German courts found him guilty of the murder of Blanka Zmigrod, a 68-year-old Jewish woman he shot during a robbery in Frankfurt in February 1992.
Ausonius shares several similarities with Franklin: both were right-wing extremists and assassin personalities. Both changed their identities and appearances, struggled academically, aligned with extremist groups, and committed long-distance shootings targeting people they deemed inferior. They also turned to bank robberies to sustain their twisted ideologies and lifestyles.
Buy Wicked Hunt
In Wicked Hunt, empath Nathaniel Colt becomes embroiled in the hunt for a ruthless sniper terrorizing Los Angeles.
It is the first book in "The Empath Series", a paranormal suspense series about a reclusive empath rejoining the world and the people he left behind.
