Head Strong: Let's give killers their due: Anonymity

Here's the payoff for the 41-year-old man who barged into a Binghamton, N.Y., immigration center and killed 13 people before turning the gun on himself: 369,000. That count, the number of hits his name generates when entered into a Google search, had been more than one million immediately after his mayhem. That number doesn't include mentions on radio and television.

That means he, like others before him, got what he was looking for. Next time, let's withhold the murderer's name.

The Binghamton killer didn't deserve the posthumous thrill of achieving any level of fame - or infamy - which he solicited via a rambling two-page letter that he sent to News 10 Now, a Syracuse television station. In the missive, dated two weeks before the massacre, he introduced himself to readers before detailing how undercover police officers drove him over a period of years to perpetrate the violence in Binghamton. "And you have a nice day," reads its final line.

We've seen letters like this from others. Between the two violent outbursts in which he killed 33 people, including himself, the 23-year-old responsible for the massacre at Virginia Tech two years ago found time to send a package of letters, pictures and videos to NBC News in New York.

In one video, he promised: "You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people." At another point, he referred to the two killers of more than a dozen people at Columbine High School as "martyrs."

That duo had a grand scheme. They originally intended to execute their plan on April 19, 1999, the fourth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people - no doubt as a means of eclipsing that day's carnage. In one homemade video found after the Columbine massacre, they revealed their intention to cause "the most deaths in U.S. history."

None of this surprises Frank Farley, professor of psychology at Temple University and former president of the American Psychological Association. Farley's area of expertise is psychology and human behavior.

According to Farley, research suggests that the desire to achieve power or induce terror are among the motives for perpetrators of mass homicides. Some could be attracted to the perceived impact or influence their actions would bring. Others are after the "thrill value" of their crime.