Laurie Dann

Attacks

In the days before May 20, 1988, Dann prepared rice cereal snacks and juice boxes poisoned with diluted arsenic she had stolen in Wisconsin. She mailed them to a former acquaintance, ex-babysitting clients, her psychiatrist, her ex-husband, and others. On the morning of May 20, she personally delivered snacks and juice samples to some intended recipients; others were delivered to Alpha Tau Omega, Psi Upsilon, and Kappa Sigma fraternity houses and Leverone Hall at Northwestern University.

Notes were attached to some deliveries, but the drinks were often leaking and the squares unpleasant-tasting, so few were consumed, and the arsenic was highly diluted so nobody became seriously ill. Around 9 a.m., Dann arrived at the home of the Rushe family, former babysitting clients, and persuaded them to let her take their two youngest sons to a fair. Instead, she drove them to Ravinia Elementary School in Highland Park, where she believed her ex-sister-in-law's two sons were enrolled (one was not even a student there).

She left the boys in the car, entered the school, and tried to detonate an incendiary device in a corridor; the small fire was discovered by students and extinguished by a teacher. Dann then drove to a Jewish daycare attended by her ex-sister-in-law's daughter and tried to enter with a plastic can of gasoline but was stopped by staff. She returned the boys home, offered them arsenic-poisoned milk (which they spat out because of the strange taste), then lured them downstairs and set the house on fire with gasoline, trapping them and their mother in the basement; they escaped.

Hubbard Woods Elementary School shooting

Dann then drove three and a half blocks to Hubbard Woods Elementary School in Winnetka, armed with three handguns. She wandered into a second-grade classroom briefly, then left. Finding six-year-old Robert Trossman in the hallway, she pushed him into the boys' washroom and shot him in the chest with her Beretta. Her Smith & Wesson revolver jammed when she tried to fire at two other boys, and she threw it and its spare ammunition into the trash.

She reentered the second-grade classroom, ordered all children into a corner, and after a struggle with the teacher who unloaded the Beretta, she drew another Smith & Wesson and shot five children, killing Nick Corwin with a single shot to the heart and wounding four others. She fled in her car but was prevented from leaving by roads closed for a funeral cortege. She drove backwards down a street, took a corner too fast, and crashed into a tree. Abandoning the wrecked car, she removed her bloodstained shorts, tied a blue garbage bag around her waist, and made her way through the woods to the Andrew family's house.

Hostage-taking and final stand-off

She entered and claimed she had been raped by a man in her car and had shot the rapist in self-defense but police were after her. The Andrews tried to convince her she need not fear police. Mrs. Andrew gave her a pair of her daughter's pants. While Dann was putting them on, Philip Andrew pocketed her Beretta.

At his suggestion, Dann called her mother, saying she had done something terrible and police were involved; Philip explained the rape story to Dann's mother, who said she could not come because she did not have a car. After Mr. Andrew arrived, the family insisted Dann give up her second gun. When Dann called her mother again, Mr. Andrew spoke with her, asking her to persuade Dann to give up the gun; he described Edith Wasserman as 'disinterested,' and she only remarked that she hoped her daughter would get home safely before hanging up.

During this call, Mrs. Andrew left and alerted police. Mr. Andrew told Dann he would not remain if she did not put down the gun and leave. Dann ordered Philip to stay. Just before noon, Dann saw police advancing and shot Philip in the chest.

Philip escaped out the back door before collapsing and being rescued by first responders. With the house surrounded, Dann went upstairs to a bedroom.

Her parents and ex-husband were brought to the house. Around 7 p.m., an assault team entered the house while Dann's father attempted to get her attention with a bullhorn. Police found her body in the bedroom; she had shot herself in the mouth.

Perpetrator

Laurie Wasserman was born on October 18, 1957, and grew up in Glencoe, Illinois, a north suburb of Chicago. Her father, Norman, was an accountant, and her mother was Edith Joy. The family was Jewish, and she had one older brother. As a child, Laurie was shy and had trouble socializing; she displayed signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder that seemingly disappeared when she started adolescence.

In high school, she had a couple of short-term romantic relationships. The Wassermans vacationed in Hawaii over the 1973 holiday season, during which time Laurie met Barry Gallup, a year older and also from the Chicago area; they dated until he finished high school and left for college. That summer, while vacationing in Aspen, Colorado, she met Wade Keats, another Chicago-area teen, and they dated for two months. She had several more brief relationships during her senior year and underwent plastic surgery to make her nose smaller.

Despite low grades, she enrolled at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. After improving her academic performance, she transferred to the University of Arizona, planning to become a teacher, though she told someone she was mostly looking for a husband.

There she dated pre-med student Steve Witt, but he ended things when he got a residency at an Arizona hospital. After that relationship ended in 1980, she moved back to her parents' house. She then transferred to Northwestern University but dropped all her classes and never earned a degree.

Aftermath

Nick Corwin was born on April 9, 1980, to Joel and Linda Corwin in Chicago. He was a student athlete known for his sportsmanship and skill. His name has since been attached to a popular soccer field and playground in Winnetka. According to a report in People magazine, 1,500 people attended his funeral.

Shortly after his death, playing on the meaning of his name ('giver of gifts'), his friends and schoolmates created a book, The Gifts that Nicholas Gave. Following Corwin's death, Winnetka passed a handgun ban, which stood until D.C. vs Heller and subsequent NRA lawsuits. Corwin is interred at Memorial Park Cemetery in Skokie, Illinois. All but one of the victims wounded by Dann recovered from their injuries, including a girl who was shot and suffered severe internal injuries.

The victims and their parents received extensive support to help them cope with the psychological after-effects of the attacks.

Search for a rationale

Laurie Dann's parents faced blame for protecting her despite clear warning signs of her worsening mental state. They refused to speak with police or hand over her psychiatric records, which a court eventually forced them to release. On the night of the shooting, they let officers do only a quick check of her bedroom, then cleaned the room and got rid of possible evidence. Norm Wasserman demanded that Dann's damaged Toyota be given back to him because it was in his name.

Police drew criticism for not treating the bedroom as a crime scene and sealing it off. The families of the children who were shot later sued Dann's parents for damages. Dann's psychiatrists also came under fire for not spotting or responding to her declining mental health. At the time she died, she was taking clomipramine, a drug not yet approved by the FDA.

Investigators first thought the medication might have worsened her condition, but later ruled that out. Among Dann's belongings were two newspaper clippings. One told of a man who shot two strangers in a public building. The other described a depressed young man who tried to kill himself the same way Dann did, lived, and found that his brain injury got rid of his OCD.

One idea about why Dann acted was that she went after people who had let her down in some way: her ex-husband, her former sister-in-law (through firebomb attempts at schools and a daycare), her ex-boyfriend and his wife, the family whose children she took, and old friends and babysitting clients. She was briefly looked at as a possible suspect in the Chicago Tylenol poisonings, but no link was ever found. In his book The Myth of Male Power, Warren Farrell wrongly stated that all of Dann's victims were male, that she set fire to a Young Men's Jewish Council, burned two boys in a basement, shot her own son, and said she killed Nick Corwin because he was a rapist.

Men's rights activists, scholars, and the media repeated these mistakes. Farrell later put a partial correction on his website.

Did You Know?

• Philip Andrew, who was shot by Dann, later became executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, then a lawyer and an FBI agent.
• A book on the tragedy, Murder of Innocence by Eric Zorn, was adapted into a made-for-television film in which Dann's name was changed to 'Laurie Wade' and she was played by Valerie Bertinelli.