Before we begin, I'd like to offer a warning. This episode discusses a mass shooting event.

According to a 2015 article in Smithsonian.com, although the United States only represents about 5% of the population on the planet,

we are home to almost 33% of the world's mass shooters

over a more than 60 year period between the mid 60s to 2012.

Mass shooters could also be called mass murderers, which the Federal Bureau of

Investigation defines the phrase mass murderers as someone who kills four or more people during a single incident.

Mass murderers aren't the same as spree killers.

A spree killer or killers certainly kill more than one person, usually two or more, but not necessarily

within the same incident and usually have what the FBI describes as little to no cooling

off period between murders.

These definitions, they make my brain hurt.

But I imagine if you're in law enforcement

or the criminal justice system, the variances

between the types of people who kill others are quite important,

especially when profiling these individuals to identify suspects, behavioral patterns, and better

understand their motives.

One of the first mass shootings in the United States occurred in Chester, Pennsylvania, not

far from the city of Philadelphia on November 7, 1948.

Melvin Collins was a 38-year-old man living in a rundown apartment building.

He'd only arrived in Pennsylvania about a week before the shooting on October 31st, from his home in Exmoor, Virginia.

Why he moved outside of Philadelphia wasn't actually clear. He'd send his belongings

ahead of him and took up residents in an apartment building on Market Street in Chester.

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