Laurie Dann

On May 20, 1988, 30-year-old Laurie Dann carried out a series of attacks in and around Winnetka, Illinois, United States, resulting in the death of 8-year-old Nick Corwin and injuries to six other people. In addition to the attacks in Winnetka, Dann mailed or personally delivered snacks poisoned with arsenic to several of her intended victims, however the doses were too diluted to cause harm.

The attacks began with taking two of her former babysitting client's sons on a supposed trip to a fair, but instead she drove them to Ravinia Elementary School in Highland Park where she set off an incendiary device inside a hallway, but the fire was put out without causing serious damage. Dann then drove the two children to a Jewish daycare where her ex-sister-in-law's daughter attended where she attempted to enter with a jerry can of gasoline, but she was stopped by staff. Dann then returned the two boys to their home, where she first tried to poison them, then set their house on fire, but the two children and their mother escaped.

Dann then drove to Hubbard Woods Elementary School in Winnetka, where she opened fire, killing Corwin and injuring five students. Dann then fled and took refuge inside a man's home after feigning that she was a rape victim who had just shot her attacker, but the police were after her because they were unaware it was in self defense. Eventually, after the police zeroed in on her location, she shot the man and went into a bedroom where she fatally shot herself.

Attacks

Poisonings and arsons During the days before May 20, 1988, Dann prepared rice cereal snacks and juice boxes poisoned with the diluted arsenic she had stolen in Wisconsin. She mailed them to a former acquaintance, ex-babysitting clients, her psychiatrist, her ex-husband and others. In the early morning hours of May 20, she personally delivered snacks and juice "samples" to some of the intended recipients. Other snacks were delivered to Alpha Tau Omega, Psi Upsilon and Kappa Sigma fraternity houses and Leverone Hall at Northwestern University. The drinks were often leaking and the squares unpleasant-tasting, so few were actually consumed. In addition, the arsenic was highly diluted so nobody became seriously ill.

Hubbard Woods Elementary School shooting Dann drove three and a half blocks away to the Hubbard Woods Elementary School, armed with three handguns. It is speculated that she was out to get the Rushes' two older children but they were on a field trip that day. She wandered into a second-grade classroom for a short while, then left. Finding a boy in the hallway, six year old Robert Trossman, Dann pushed him into the boys' washroom and shot him in the chest with her Beretta pistol. Her Smith & Wesson revolver jammed when she tried to fire at two other boys, and she threw the weapon into the trash along with its spare ammunition. The boys fled the washroom and alerted staff. She saw a police car coming so turned around and went the other direction.

Taking Dann's story at face value, the Andrews tried to convince her that she need not fear police because she had acted in self-defense. His name has since been attached to a popular soccer field and playground in Winnetka, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

According to a report in People magazine, 1,500 people attended Corwin's 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.

Perpetrator

Early life Laurie Dann was born Laurie Wasserman on October 18, 1957, and grew up in Glencoe, Illinois, a north suburb of Chicago. She was the daughter of Edith Joy and her husband, accountant Norman Wasserman. The family was Jewish and she had one older brother.

Laurie was described as shy and had trouble socializing; in childhood she displayed signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder but they 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 than she and also from the Chicago area. They continued seeing each other after going home to Illinois but Barry graduated high school the following spring, went to college, and broke off the relationship. The Wassermans moved to a different neighborhood in 1974 and Laurie would attend a different high school for her senior year. During a summer trip to Aspen, Colorado, she met another boy her age named Wade Keats, also from the Chicago area, and they continued seeing each other afterwards but broke it off in two months. Laurie pursued several brief relationships for the rest of her senior year and also got plastic surgery to reduce the size of her nose.

In September 1986, Russell accused Dann of stabbing him in his sleep with an icepick, barely missing his heart, despite not having seen his attacker. Police decided not to press charges based on a medical report which suggested that the injury might have been self-inflicted, as well as Russell's abrasive attitude towards investigators and a failed polygraph test. for the prosperous community along Chicago's North Shore, which had not seen a murder in thirty years.

Parents and members of the community subsequently devoted many years to campaigning for gun control policy. Philip Andrew gave interviews about gun control from his hospital bed, and later became active in local and state gun control organizations as the executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence; he subsequently became a lawyer and then an FBI agent.

Dr. Donald Monroe, superintendent of Winnetka School District 36, noted "his 'safe' school" was "not as isolated and insulated as we thought." At the time of the shooting, Hubbard Woods, like many schools, was an open campus, with many doors, such as those to individual classrooms, kept open. After the shooting, a pattern of single-point entry emerged in more schools. Russell Dann helped coach Bertinelli while she was preparing for the role.

Search for a rationale Some blamed Dann's parents for shielding her in spite of the signs of her deteriorating mental health. or to provide access to Dann's psychiatric records, which were eventually obtained by court order. On the night of the shooting, Dann's parents allowed only a very brief search of her bedroom; afterwards, they cleaned the room and removed potential evidence. Norm Wasserman also insisted Laurie's wrecked Toyota be returned to him as it was registered in his name. The drug's effects were initially considered as contributing factors to Dann's mental decline, but ultimately ruled out.

Two newspaper clippings were found among Dann's possessions. 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 Dann did; he survived and discovered that his brain injury had cured him of his OCD.

In his book The Myth of Male Power, author Warren Farrell suggested that Dann's actions were an example of women's violence against men. He claimed, erroneously, that all of Dann's victims were male, that she had burned down a Young Men's Jewish Council, had burned two boys in a basement, had shot her own son and had justified the murder of Nick Corwin by claiming he was a rapist. Men's rights activists, academics, and the media have repeated Farrell's errors and conclusion. Farrell later issued a partial correction on his web site.

Footnotes