Laurie Dann

Laurie Dann (née Wasserman) (18 October, 1957 - 20 May, 1988) was an American murderer. She shot and killed a boy and wounded two girls and three boys in a school in Winnetka, Illinois, then took a family hostage and shot a man before killing herself.

Early life
Dann was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Glencoe, an affluent northern suburb of Chicago, the daughter of accountant Norman and Edith Wasserman.

Laurie was described as frail, timid, withdrawn, but attractive. She dated a number of her male peers in her teenage years and graduated from New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois in 1975.

While in high school she earned poor grades, but still was able to attend Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Better grades at the end of her first year allowed her to transfer to the University of Arizona with the goal of becoming a teacher. She began dating a pre-med student and the relationship quickly became serious, with Laurie's behavior becoming possessive, dependent and demanding. In 1980, with the relationship failing, Laurie moved back to her parents' home and transferred to Northwestern University to complete her degree, though she dropped out of all the courses she began and never graduated. She subsequently worked as a clerical worker and waitress in various short-lived jobs. She met and married Russell Dann, an executive in a successful insurance broking firm in September 1982, but the marriage was quickly in trouble as Russell Dann and her family noted signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder and other strange behavior, including leaving trash around the house. Laurie saw a psychiatrist for a short period, who identified her childhood and upbringing as a cause of her problems.

Separation and divorce
Laurie and Russell Dann separated in October 1985, and the divorce negotiations were acrimonious, with Laurie claiming that Russell was violent and abusive. In the following months, the police were called to investigate various incidents including the harassment of Russell, his family and friends by hang-up phone calls. In April 1986, Laurie Dann accused Russell of breaking into and vandalizing her parents' house where she was then living. Shortly after, Laurie purchased a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum, telling the salesman that she needed it for self-protection. The police were concerned about her gun ownership and unsuccessfully tried to persuade Laurie and her family that she should give up the gun. She was being followed periodically by a psychiatrist but this did not affect her right to own a gun. In August 1986 Laurie contacted her ex-boyfriend who was by then doing a residency at a hospital, and claimed she had had a child by him. After he refused to believe her, the hospital in which he now worked as a doctor received an anonymous phonecall claiming to have been raped by him in the emergency room. In September 1986, Russell Dann reported that he had been stabbed in his sleep with an icepick, and accused Laurie Dann of the crime, though he had not actually seen his attacker. The police, bolstered by a medical report which suggested the injury might have been self-inflicted, Russell Dann's abrasive attitude towards the police and his failed lie detector test, decided not to lay charges against Laurie Dann. Harassing hang up phone calls continued to Russell and his family, and Laurie was arrested for calls made to Russell's sister, though charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. Just before the divorce in April 1987, Laurie accused Russell Dann of having raped her with a steak knife. Once again there was contradictory evidence: there were no physical signs that the story was true but despite the wild claims, Laurie passed two lie detector tests. In May 1987, Laurie Dann accused Russell of placing an incendiary device in her home. No charges were laid against Russell for either alleged event. Laurie's parents believed her claims and supported and defended her throughout. By this time, Laurie Dann was being followed by another psychiatrist for obsessive-compulsive disorder and a 'chemical imbalance', but he told the police that he did not feel that she was suicidal or homicidal.

Last year
Laurie Dann worked as a babysitter, and some employers were happy with the care she provided their children. Others made complaints to the police about damage to their furniture, and the theft of food and clothes. Despite the complaints no charges were laid, though Laurie Dann's father paid reparations in one case.

In the summer of 1987, Dann sublet a university apartment in Evanston, Illinois. Once again, strange behavior was noted, including riding up and down in elevators for hours, wearing rubber gloves to touch metal, and leaving meat to rot in sofa cushions. She took no classes, but made friends within fraternities on campus and dated some of the fraternity brothers.

In the fall of 1987, Dann claimed to have received threatening letters from Russell and that he had sexually assaulted her in a parking lot, but her story was not believed by the police. A few weeks later she purchased a .32 Smith and Wesson revolver. Her condition deteriorating, Dann and her family sought specialized help and she moved in November 1987 to Madison, Wisconsin to live in a student residence while being followed by a psychiatrist who specialized in obsessive-compulsive disorder. She had already begun taking clomipramine, a new drug for OCD, and her new psychiatrist increased the dosage, adding lithium carbonate to reduce her mood swings, and initiating behavioral therapy to work on her phobias and ritualistic behaviors. Despite the intervention, strange behaviors continued, including riding elevators for long periods, changing TV channels repetitively, and obsessions with good and bad numbers. There were also concerns about whether she was bulimic. Dann purchased a .22 automatic Beretta at the end of December 1987, and in March 1988 stopped attending her appointments with the psychiatrist and behavior therapist. At about the same time, she began to make preparations for the attacks. She stole books from the library about poisons, as well as diluted arsenic and other chemicals from a lab. She also shoplifted clothes, and wigs for disguising herself, and was arrested for theft on one occasion. Her psychiatrist and her father attempted to persuade her to enter hospital as an inpatient, but she would not agree.

Dann continued to make large numbers of nuisance, hang-up phone calls to her former in-laws, friends and babysitting clients, and these now escalated to death threats. Her ex-boyfriend and his wife also received dozens of threatening calls, and in May 1988 a letter, later confirmed to have been sent by Laurie Dann, was sent to the hospital administration where he now worked, again accusing him of sexual assault. Since the phone calls were across state lines, the FBI became involved, and a federal indictment against Dann was prepared. However, the ex-boyfriend, fearful of publicity, and concerned about Dann getting bail and then attempting to fulfill her threats against him, decided to wait until other charges were laid in Illinois. In May 1988, a janitor found her lying in a fetal position inside a garbage bag in a trash room. This precipitated a search of her room, and her departure back to Glencoe.

Attacks
During the days before May 20, 1988, Laurie Dann prepared rice cereal snacks and juice boxes poisoned with the diluted arsenic she had stolen in Madison. She mailed some to a former female friend, ex-babysitting clients, her psychiatrist, Russell Dann and others. In the early morning of May 20, she personally delivered snacks and juice "samples" to other friends, acquaintances and families for whom she had babysat, some of whom had not seen her for years. Other snacks were delivered to Alpha Tau Omega, Psi Upsilon and Kappa Sigma fraternity houses at Northwestern University in Evanston. Notes were attached to some of the deliveries. The drinks were often leaking and the squares unpleasant tasting, so little was actually consumed. In addition, the arsenic was highly diluted and as a result nobody was made seriously ill.

At about 9 am, the 30-year-old Dann arrived at the home of former babysitting clients in Winnetka, Illinois to pick up the youngest two children. The family had just told Dann that they were moving away. Instead of taking them on the promised outing, she took them to a local school, Ravinia Elementary School, attended by her former sister-in-law's two sons, and left them in the car while she entered the school and tried to detonate a fire bomb inside. The small fire she set was quickly blown out by a teacher. She then drove to a local daycare attended by her ex-sister-in-law's daughter, but was prevented by staff from entering the building with a plastic can of gasoline. Returning her two passengers to their home, she offered them some arsenic-poisoned milk, but the boys spat it out as it tasted strange. Once at their home, she used gasoline to set fire to the house, briefly trapping the mother and her two children in the basement. She then drove three and a half blocks to the Hubbard Woods School carrying three handguns. She wandered into and observed a second grade classroom for a short while, then left and finding a boy in the corridor, pushed him into the boys' washroom and shot him with a .22 semi-automatic Beretta pistol. Her .357 Smith and Wesson Magnum revolver jammed as she tried to fire it at two other boys in the washroom, and she threw it into the washbasin along with the spare ammunition she had brought. The boys ran out of the washroom and raised the alarm. Dann then re-entered the same second grade classroom where the students were working in groups on a bicycle safety test. She ordered all the children into the corner of the room, but the teacher refused, and attempted to disarm Dann, managing to unload the Beretta in the struggle. Dann drew a .32 Smith and Wesson from the waistband of her shorts and shot at several groups of the students. She killed eight-year-old Nicholas Corwin, and wounded two girls and two boys before fleeing in her car.

Dann was prevented from leaving the area by closed roads due to a funeral cortege. She abandoned her car and, taking off her bloodstained shorts, tied a blue garbage bag around her waist. Together with her two remaining guns she made her way through some woods before reaching the house of the Andrews family. She entered the house and met a mother and 20-year old son who were in the kitchen. Dann claimed that she had been raped and had shot the rapist in the struggle. The Andrews were sympathetic and tried to convince her that she need have no fear of the police since she had acted in self-defense. Mrs. Andrews provided her with some of her daughter's pants to wear. While she was putting them on, Philip Andrews was able to pick up and pocket the Beretta. He suggested that she call her family, and she agreed, calling her mother and telling her that she had done something terrible and that the police were involved. Philip took the phone and explained about the rape and shooting and suggested that Mrs. Wasserman come to pick up Laurie, but according to Philip Andrews, Mrs. Wasserman said that she could not come as she did not have a car. After Mr. Andrews arrived, they continued to argue that Dann should give up the gun. Dann called her mother again and this time, Mr. Andrews spoke to Mrs. Wasserman and asked her to persuade Dann to give up the gun. While Dann spoke again to her mother, Mrs. Andrews left the house and alerted the police. Mr. Andrews told Dann that he was not staying if she did not put down the gun, and also left the house, but Dann ordered Philip Andrews to stay. Just before noon, seeing the police advancing on the house, she shot him in the chest, but he managed to escape out the back door before collapsing and being rescued by the police and ambulance personnel. The house surrounded, Dann went upstairs to a bedroom. The Wassermans and Russell Dann were brought to the house, and at about 7:00 pm, an assault team entered the house while Mr. Wasserman attempted to get her attention with a bullhorn. The police found her body in the bedroom: she had shot herself in the mouth.

Aftermath
Despite the severe injuries that some had received, all the wounded eventually recovered. One victim from the school, a girl who had very severe internal injuries, received innovative emergency surgery and was lucky to survive. The wounded, the other children in the school and their parents received extensive support to cope with the psychological after-effects of the attacks.

Members of the community, and in particular Philip Andrews, became involved in gun-control issues. Philip Andrews gave interviews about gun-control from his hospital bed, became active in local and state gun-control organizations and executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence. The incident also created a debate about the criteria for committing mentally ill to mental health facilities against their will. Some favored the involuntary commitment of a person who was determined to be mentally ill and incapable of making informed decisions about treatment, while others, including civil libertarians, opposed the idea. "It would be a shame if we cut back on the civil liberties of literally millions of mentally ill people because of the occasional bizarre incident," said Benjamin Wolf, staff counsel for the ACLU of Illinois.

Search for a rationale
Investigations were made difficult by the Wassermans' refusal to be interviewed by the police or to allow access to her psychiatric records, though the latter were eventually obtained by court order. The night of her death, the Wassermans only allowed a very brief search of her bedroom, and subsequently cleaned it up, removing potential evidence. The police were criticized for not freezing her room as part of the crime scene. However, two newspaper clippings were found among Dann's possessions after her death. One described a man who randomly killed two people in a public building. The other described a depressed young man who had attempted to commit suicide in the same way that Laurie was to do: he survived and discovered that his brain injury had cured him of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Others have noted that she targeted people who had "disappointed" her in some way, including her ex-husband, her former sister-in-law (through the firebombing attempts at their schools/daycare), her ex-boyfriend and his wife, the family who was moving away, as well as former friends and babysitting clients.

Some criticized her psychiatrists and the police for not having identified the danger Dann posed, despite the clear signs available. One of the drugs that Dann was taking, anafranil, generically known as clomipramine, was at the time not licensed. The effect of this drug was considered as a possible cause, though this was ultimately ruled out.

Others blamed the actions of her family in defending and protecting her in spite of signs of her deteriorating mental health. The parents of the shooting victims sued the Wasserman family for damages.

In his book "The Myth of Male Power", author Warren Farrell suggested Laurie Dann's actions were an example of women's violence against men. He claimed, erroneously, that Dann's victims had only been boys and men, and that she had burned down a Young Men's Jewish Council, burned two boys in a basement, shot her own son and had alleged that an eight-year old had raped her. Men's rights activists have repeated the errors.

References in popular culture
A made-for-TV movie, Murder of Innocence, was broadcast by CBS on November 30, 1993. The movie was based on the book of the same name by Eric Zorn, but the names of the characters were changed. Valerie Bertinelli was cast as Laurie Wade, a character based on Laurie Dann.

The American death metal band Macabre wrote and recorded a song about Dann, titled "Hey Laurie Dann". It was recorded on the Gloom album.