March 9, 2001

Charles "Andy" Williams bears a striking resemblance to the classic profile of the "classroom avenger" -- a boy who inexplicably explodes in violence at school.

Experts agree that these killers are made as much as they are born, and telling indicators were present in Williams' life and behavior before Monday's shooting at Santana High School.

"He is your boy. He fits the pattern," said James P. McGee, chief psychologist for the Baltimore Police Department and author of a study on the background of classroom avengers.

The pattern Williams fits, based on a study of 15 school shootings since the early 1990s, includes the following characteristics, among many others:

 A white male between 11 and 18 years old, of average intelligence from a middle-class background.

 A broken home.

 No symptoms of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia or manic depression.

 Small in stature and picked on by public-school classmates.

 No history of serious conduct problems.

 Access to firearms, and a penchant for wearing military garb.

 Threats of violence before the shooting.

McGee points out that the rampage shootings at schools make up a very small minority of youth homicides, which usually happen in big cities, not suburbs.

This week McGee entered the facts of Williams' case into MOSAIC, a computer-assisted risk assessment program used by the CIA and the FBI and other police agencies.

The results showed that, had authorities known of Williams' background and threats beforehand, they would have considered him a serious risk.

"He came back with a high rating when compared to other cases," McGee said.

Interviews and other evidence suggest the foundation for Williams' alleged act may be found in his earlier childhood in Maryland and Twentynine Palms, where he lived for a short time before moving to Santee. These factors might have intensified after he came to Santee.

"You put these kids in an environment that is toxic for them, and they don't know how to fight back," McGee said.

There's no doubt in the mind of Poolesville, Md., school counselor James Cappuccilli that Williams would have come across as naive and immature and had been largely rejected and subjected to scorn and ridicule by his more sophisticated classmates.

"I would think they would just eat him up and spit him out," said Cappuccilli, a former neighbor of Williams. "He would not have fit in. He's a country boy landing in the middle of a culture where the kids are much more streetwise."

Williams, who lived in Maryland from 1993 until December 1999, was the kind of kid whose sense of street smarts was knowing the best spot along the river to fish, Cappuccilli said.

"I don't think he was equipped to handle the pressure. It had to be an incredible transition for Andy to make from Knoxville (Md.) . . . I can't imagine what it must have been like for him."

Williams made it clear in his own words last summer that he would rather be back in Maryland, a familiar place where he felt comfortable.

In a brief and often out-of-focus video Williams made with a friend visiting from Maryland, Williams said in a soft voice: "My school is horrible. I hate it there."

On the tape, aired this week on the television show Inside Edition, the boy expressed his wish to be with his friends back East. "I'll see you guys in the summertime," Williams said as he pointed the camera at his face and kissed the lens.

Williams' parents were divorced and he had little contact with his mother for much of his life. Broken homes are a common factor among boys who have vented their rage in schoolyard shootings.

According to McGee's study, "divorce, separation and/or frequent episodes of intense friction between parents and parents and child is the norm" found in the young shooters.

His parents divorced when Williams was 5, and he rarely saw his mother and never mentioned her to his friends, even as his father was waging a court battle with her over child support payments for Andy.

The topic of his mother touched a nerve in him, his Maryland friends said.

And neighbors of Williams' mother in North Augusta, S.C., said they didn't even know she had a younger son.

Although his curiosity about the military does not appear to have been intense, Williams nevertheless displayed an interest in the topic, yet another factor common in boys whose anger boils over into school violence.

Williams often wore camouflage military garb in his former Maryland neighborhood, though his friends said they attached no significance to his choice in clothing. But they do remember that he'd dress in camouflage whenever they went out shooting their BB rifles or to play laser tag.

Williams also spent time building models of military aircraft and was interested in becoming a Navy pilot, according to friend Kevin Wilson, 18, a senior at Brunswick High School in Maryland.

Although Williams' father was a gun collector, the boy didn't seem to have an undue interest in guns, Wilson said.

Descriptions of Williams from those who knew him in Twentynine Palms, where he lived from December of 1999 to last June, bear that out.

Twentynine Palms resident Terry Burdett, whose son Brian was friends with Williams, said the pistol range behind her property never seemed to interest the boy.

"They were into hiking, catching lizards and bike riding," Burdett said. "Not guns or violent video games."

Nonetheless, the classroom avenger study shows that harbingers of Williams' alleged violence in Santee also may have existed in Twentynine Palms.

Burdett described her son as a very shy and backward kid who didn't have many friends. She said Williams took Brian under his wing.

"Brian was happy because he had a friend," Burdett said.

Williams' choosing to befriend a shy outsider is consistent with behaviors of the other killers who were outcasts.

What might be more significant is that Brian Burdett was run over and killed by a school bus on Feb. 8. A friend of the Williams family said Andy knew about the accident. However, he has not contacted the Burdett family since Brian's death.

The study said a traumatic event, real or imagined, in the weeks prior to the shooting rampage is common to all the killers.

Beyond specific aspects of Williams' life, experts agree that each rampage shooting makes the next more likely.

"If you see someone else engage in deviant behavior, you are more likely to do it yourself," said David Phillips, a University of San Diego sociology professor who specializes in copycat killers.

"In Andy's case he had victims who were quite similar to the Columbine setting. To some extent he had a natural advertisement. He feels angry and put upon and sees examples of how to handle it.

"There is bullying all over the world," he said. "In Japan they respond to it with suicide; in America it is homicide."