Jame's life and day

The case of James Ruppert demonstrates in dramatic fashion that things

aren't always what they seem to be. The 41-year-old resident of
Hamilton, Ohio hardly seemed likely to commit mass murder: He had no
police record and, except for thick glasses and small stature, was
undistinguished in appearance.

Even after he had brutally murdered eleven relatives, neighbors still

recalled the five-foot six-inch, 135-pound Ruppert as being a quiet and
responsible member of this industrial community of some 63,000 people.
Defense attorney Hugh Holbrock later said of James Ruppert, "He's one
of the kindest human beings I have ever met. He would do anything to
help people."'

The scene of the mass slaying was the house which Ruppert and his
mother shared: a small two-story, two-tone wood-frame structure
situated on a quiet, tree-lined residential street in Hamilton. The
occasion was Easter Sunday, 1975 - the day after James's 41st birthday.
Ruppert's ailing 65-year-old mother, Charity, had invited the entire clan
to the house: her two sons, James and Leonard, and Leonard's family
including his wife Alma and their eight children ranging in age from 4 to
17.

The day began happily enough. Shortly after arriving, the members of
Leonard Ruppert's family gathered together on the front lawn, where
they had an Easter egg hunt. Then, they all went into the house for the
yearly family reunion and dinner. Everyone mingled in the living room
and kitchen - everyone, that is, except Uncle James, who was on the
second floor of the house making his final preparations.

Charity Ruppert was fixing sandwiches at the kitchen range, while

Leonard and his wife Alma sat together at the kitchen table. Their
youngest child was in the bathroom; one of their daughters stood
waiting her turn by the bathroom door, as the other six children played
in the living room.

Moments later, James Ruppert, gun enthusiast and crack marksman,

walked calmly down the stairs carrying three revolvers - a.357 magnum
and twin .22 caliber handguns - and an 18-shot rifle which he
immediately propped against the refrigerator door.

With his back to the kitchen sink, Ruppert fired first at his brother
Leonard, who fell backward onto the floor; he then shot his sister-in-law
Alma and his mother, who lunged toward him in a last futile effort to
save her family and her life.

Before anyone had a chance to think - let alone, escape - Ruppert had
fired 31 shots, stopping only to reload. The first round was disabling; the
second and third rounds finished off his victims. Ten of them were shot in
the head at close range; one was shot in the chest. Nobody screamed;
nobody ran. All of them were dead when Ruppert called the police some
three hours later. "There's been a shooting here," he told the police over
the phone.

Minutes later, the police found James Ruppert standing inside the front
door of the house. They also found five bloodsplattered bodies in the
living room and six in the kitchen. None of the victims had been tied or
restrained in any way, yet the only sign of a struggle was an overturned
wastepaper basket.

The police had a suspect but no motive. James Ruppert was taken into
custody and charged with eleven counts of aggravated murder. He
refused to talk to the police about the killings and pleaded not guilty by
reason of insanity.

The Ruppert murders and trial provoked what one local observer called
"a three-ring circus." For weeks following the tragic event, James Ruppert
was the topic of conversation in town. Street sales of Hamilton's only
daily newspaper doubled; hundreds of neighbors congregated outside
the Ruppert home, sometimes long past midnight. For six hours after the
funeral, 400 cars carrying enthusiastic curiosity-seekers - some in
taxicabs - cruised past Arlington Memorial Gardens, where Ruppert's
eleven victims were buried.
During the trial, curious spectators began arriving early in the morning -
some by six AM - to wait outside the stone-faced, three-story courthouse
for one of the sixty seats in its warm, stuffy third-floor courtroom. They
ran for the stairs or elevator, hoping to beat the crowds to the courtroom
door. Those who couldn't get seats stood around the walls of the
courtroom or waited outside on benches in the corridors.

For the duration of the proceedings, spectators in the hallway peered

through the glass in the door, straining to get a glimpse of the defendant
who sat impassively throughout most of the trial. As reporter Dick Perry
later recalled, "It was a free show!"'

One year following Easter Sunday, 1975, the Ruppert home was
unlocked to auction off its household possessions -the furniture,
appliances, clothing, and odds and ends. Dozens of people came
searching for bargains and bloodstains.

They wound their way through the tiny backyard into the living room and
kitchen and up the stairs into Ruppert's second-floor bedroom. As
eyewitness Nancy Baker reported in the local paper, "Babies asleep in
strollers ... housewives in curlers ... men smoking big cigars - all added
to the carnival atmosphere."'

It wasn't all fun and games, of course. Indeed, the Ruppert slayings
provoked widespread anxiety throughout the Hamilton area.
Townspeople had plenty of questions, but very few answers. Until the
trial, the local newspapers did little more than report surface information
- mostly about the who, what, and where, but little about the why. As
though to fill the need for news, rumors were spread everywhere -
rumors which attempted to explain why the killings occurred and what
effect they might have on the community:

"Alma had wanted to commit suicide and take one of her children with
her. She started the whole thing by harrassing Jimmie."

"Ruppert went beserk when he learned his mother had made Hamburger
Helper for Easter dinner." (Though said in jest, the police actually found
a skillet on the stove in which Charity Ruppert had been preparing
Sloppy Joe's for her grandchildren.)

"If Prosecutor John Holcomb loses the Ruppert case, he'll quit."

"The Ruppert house is haunted."

"Kids snuck into the Ruppert house on Minor Avenue and said
everything, was covered with blood."

"The new occupants of what was formerly the Ruppert house were
newcomers to Hamilton who weren't told that the mass murder had
taken place there."

"Though confined in a mental hospital since the trial, James Ruppert has
an extensive wardrobe, loves to eat ice cream, and continues to receive
the Wall Street journal on a daily basis."

Psychiatrists report that grieving over the loss of a close relative or

friend frequently begins with denial: survivors reject the reality of a
death until such time that they are psychologically ready to deal with it.
Denial seems to be especially common in cases of murder where a large
number of victims are involved.

The enormity of the crime provokes widespread disbelief: "How could

only one person have killed all those people?" "Why didn't at least some
of them escape?" "How could they have gone to the slaughter like
lambs?" The answer, of course, is that even the victims themselves
couldn't believe what was about to happen.

Christians went to the lions like lambs; Jews went to the "Showers" like
lambs; and the Ruppert family members were just as incredulous. The
body of one of the Ruppert children was found lying only a foot or so
from the back door which she apparently had managed to open slightly
before being gunned down by her uncle. None of the other victims even
came close.

We like to think of the family as a crucible of love and affection. Hence,

murder by the hands of a family member (especially a son killing his
mother) can be too much for the mind to fathom. What is more, the
family is typically a closed unit in which conflicts and disagreements are
kept from the prying eyes and ears of outsiders. Consequently, people
who considered themselves to be familiar with the perpetrator and his
victims responded in utter shock.

Ruppert's friends and relatives couldn't believe it: James's uncle, Rufus
Skinner, insisted that "Jimmie and his brother Leonard were two close
soldiers" who "did everything for their mother ... ever since their father
died in 1947." Arthur Bauer said of his close friend, James: "He's not
violent at all. I can't believe he did it ... how could anything like that
happen?"

A retired court stenographer, Mrs. Lucille Tabler is an intelligent, active

woman who lived in the Hamilton area for seventy years and knew the
Rupperts as their family friend and neighbor. The gray-haired Mrs. Tabler
denied what she couldn't understand. Upon hearing about the mass
killings, she told reporters that she was thoroughly stunned: "I just don't
believe it. Why would he want to do something like that? ... I wish I could
talk to Jimmy."'

Even after being informed of Ruppert's undisputed confession, his

presence at the scene of the crime, his fingerprints on the weapons, the
victims' blood on his clothing, and his internally consistent recollections
of the circumstances of the crime, Mrs. Tabler steadfastly refused to
acknowledge that James Ruppert was a killer.

Seven years later, she faithfully reconfirmed her confidence in the man
she knew from childhood, visiting him in jail and defending his name
among the locals. To this day, she asks: "Why was the whole world
against the Ruppert family?"

A community can deny only so long after the occurrence of an

extraordinary murder. As more and more information about the killings
comes to public light, denial quickly turns into anger and community
members begin to look for someone or something to blame.

For several months following the slayings, people in Hamilton were

profoundly outraged. After all, there were eleven bloody bodies, eight
dead children, an entire family whose members had been completely
wiped out in one fell swoop. A close friend may not have exaggerated
when she told us, "Everybody wanted to go out and shoot Jimmie - I was
always arguing for him."

Angry feelings toward James Ruppert sometimes became generalized in

a free-floating sort of hostility which could have taken a dangerous turn.
Members of the Donald Ruppert family were lucky to have escaped with
their lives. The only Ruppert remaining in the Hamilton telephone
directory, Donald isn't so much as a distant cousin of James Ruppert.

Though not related to the killer, Donald Ruppert's family was constantly
harassed by townspeople for at least six months following the mass
slayings. He finally decided to change his name for a period of time in
order to avoid the dirty looks and obscene phone calls. According to
Donald Ruppert, even those people who had known him well weren't
really sure that he wasn't implicated in the crime: "At work they thought
I did it .... Some wanted to know when I was going to get the money .... I
hate it every time I see something about the trial in the newspaper.""

At his June 1975 trial, James Ruppert entered a plea of insanity. Defense
Attorney H. J. Bressler argued that the very act Ruppert had committed
was itself "insane" - that Ruppert had been insane for ten years and that
he was incapable of controlling his actions. Several expert witnesses
agreed.

Dr. Howard Sokolov described Ruppert as suffering from "a paranoid

psychotic state," one symptom of which was "departure from reality in
terms of thinking and behavior." Ruppert, he suggested, was inclined to
be excessively suspicious, jealous, and angry.

Defense psychiatrists also testified that Ruppert was absolutely

obsessed with the belief that family members, the police, and the FBI
were involved in a long-standing conspiracy to persecute him. Dr. Philip
Meehanick saw an even wider deficiency in Ruppert's personality: "His
ability to evaluate is impaired, his view of others is warped, he sees
virtually no one in a kindly light."

Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Lester Grinspoon testified that Ruppert's deadly

reaction may have been uncontrollable: "His ego was just completely
overwhelmed by this rage, this suppressed rage which had been
accumulating over some ten years or more, actually since childhood,
that there was no way in which he could avoid doing that act. In fact, if
there had been more people in the house, they might have been killed
also."

Thus, the defense attempted to show that James Ruppert had gone
totally beserk - that he was a victim of self-delusion who had acted from
sheer impulse; the perpetrator of a brutal yet purposeless crime.

But appearances can be deceiving; and the prosecution called twenty-

nine witnesses and presented two hundred exhibits to develop an
entirely different line of reasoning, namely, that James Ruppert was as
much a victim of self-delusion as Attila the Hun. Rather, he had carefully
plotted and schemed to kill his entire family in order to collect more than
$300,000 - money tied up in life insurance, real estate, savings
accounts, and other investments owned by his mother and his brother,
Leonard.

Prosecuting attorney John Holcomb convincingly argued that Ruppert's

arrest and indictment were actually part of his master plan "to enter a
plea of not guilty by reason of temporary insanity ... to be sent to Lima, a
state mental hospital where he would eventually be declared sane and
then walk out with $300,000 in his pocket."

It was indeed reasonable to posit an economic motive. Under Ohio law,

Ruppert could not have inherited his victims' estate if he had been found
guilty of murder. If, however, he had been declared innocent by reason
of insanity, he could have gotten everything.

The family estate was a sizable amount by almost any standard. A

prosecution witness and member of the real estate and probate
committees of the American Bar Association testified that James
Ruppert, as sole heir, stood to inherit the entire proceeds of his brother's
life insurance, his mother's estate, and half of the property of his
brother's children.

Leonard's home was valued at $40,000; property belonging to Leonard's

family was assessed at $19,500; and his mother's home was worth
$14,000. Leonard's life insurance coverage at General Electric was
$62,000. His personal coverage was another $100,000. And Leonard
invested in savings bonds, stocks, and mutual funds. His family also held
savings accounts amounting to almost $30,000.

James Ruppert could have used the money, having been out of work for
some time, having little money of his own, and being seriously in debt to
his mother and brother. What is more, he had invested and lost
thousands of dollars in the stock market and was about to be evicted
from his rent-free room in his mother's house.

The defense sought to show that Ruppert had acted spontaneously out
of impulse rather than deliberately by plan or scheme. But psychiatric
testimony for the prosecution consistently emphasized the plausibility of
the profit motive. Two psychiatrists and a psychologist testified that
Ruppert was aware of what he was doing, knew right from wrong at the
time of the slayings, and had the ability to resist his aggressive
impulses.
Dr. Charles Feuss, Jr. told the court he did not believe the slayings were
carried out in a robot-like manner; yet there simply was no explanation
for the killing of the sister-in-law and the children, since they had never
been implicated by Ruppert in the alleged conspiracy against him. Butler
County Coroner Dr. Garret Boone called the Ruppert slayings "pretty
much of a deliberate execution."

In his retrial in 1982, a three-judge panel found Ruppert guilty in the

deaths of his first two victims - his mother and his brother - but not
guilty by reason of insanity in the other nine slayings, This decision
suggests that Ruppert intentionally killed his two immediate family
members for some reason like revenge or money, and the others he
killed almost as though he were an automaton, just because they were
there.

What are the factors which led James Ruppert to kill his entire family?
One of the most important may have been frustration, that condition
which results from failure to meet an objective, fulfill a goal, or satisfy a
need. The person is said to be frustrated who works with all his might to
obtain a raise or promotion only to be blocked by an unappreciative
boss; an aspiring tennis star is regarded as frustrated who spends a
childhood in rigorous training but suffers a debilitating illness or accident
that ends her career.

James Ruppert looked normal, but a close look at his biography reveals
that he actually led a life of frustration. When James was a young boy,
the Rupperts lived in a long barn-like structure which lacked indoor
plumbing and running water. His father raised chickens and squabs in
the rear of the house. At the same time in his life, James began to suffer
from a case of asthma - an allergy to dust and feathers - which left him
sickly and limited many of his physical activities for the rest of his
childhood.

He simply couldn't perform like other children his age. He walked

hunched over from illness, so sickly that he was not permitted to take
gym at school or to play sports with the neighborhood kids. Even without
asthma, his frail appearance and short stature could have severely
limited his success in competitive sports.

James Ruppert was regarded a "sissy" by the other kids in the

neighborhood. He remembered being a shy, introverted child who, from
his earliest years in school, was routinely teased by other children and
had few, if any, friends.

Until his junior year in high school, James remained pretty much a loner,
avoiding extracurricular activities, rarely attending ballgames or going to
dances, and never dating girls. The events of childhood had a lasting
effect: Try as he did, James Ruppert was impotent; he was never able to
have sexual relations with a woman, except as they occurred in his rich
fantasy life.

Ruppert's memory of his father was that of a frustrated, unsuccessful

man who displayed a violent temper and little affection for his younger
son. Ruppert also thought that his father had had no confidence in him,
recalling his father's warnings that he would not be capable of holding a
job or supporting himself as an adult.

It didn't help that Ruppert's five-foot eleven-inch 36-year-old father died

of complications from tuberculosis when James was only 12 years old,
forcing him to assume adult responsibilities from an early age. Ruppert
told psychiatrists that, after his father's death, his mother would beat
and taunt him and would encourage his brother Leonard to do the same.

From James's viewpoint, his mother had made very clear to him that his
presence was a mistake; that she had wanted a girl, not another boy in
the family. At the age of 16, things at home got so bad that Ruppert ran
away and later attempted suicide by hanging himself with a sheet.
Though he failed in this attempt, the thought of suicide was something
that stayed with Ruppert for decades to come.

Ruppert's mother showered love on her older son, who became a

constant reminder to James of his own inadequacies. Leonard was the
male head of the household after their father's death, whereas James
always felt like an outcast in his own family; Leonard played sports while
James sat on the sidelines; James was very conscious of being five
inches shorter than his brother; James's math and science teachers
always compared him with his older brother whose grades in the same
classes had been superior; Leonard graduated from night school with a
degree in electrical engineering, whereas James flunked out of college
after two years; Leonard became a successful engineer with General
Electric, whereas brother James went from job to job; Leonard was
happily married with eight children, whereas James never married, was
jilted by his only fiancée, and continued to live with his mother.
Moreover, James had dated the woman whom his brother would later
marry and had even introduced them to one another.

By his own standards, James was as much a failure as his brother

Leonard was a success. To make matters worse, Leonard was, at least in
his younger brother's mind, a vicious sadist and torturer - in a word, he
was the enemy. Going back to early childhood, James still remembered
his brother locking him in closets, tying him with rope, beating him with
a hose, and sitting on his head until he screamed out loud. The image
only worsened over time; and, by James's 30th birthday, he was just
beginning to see Leonard as the executioner - as a major figure in what
he believed to be an emerging conspiracy against him.

The paranoia really escalated in 1965, when the Hamilton Police

Department determined that James had made an obscene phone call to
an employee of the local public library where James spent much free
time. Although admitting making the call, James was convinced that his
mother and brother were attempting to discredit him by informing
everyone of his transgression and reporting to the FBI that he was a
communist and homosexual.

He also believed that the FBI was tapping his telephone not only at
home, but also in the restaurants and bars he happened to visit. Over
the years, he felt, the intrusion of the FBI into his personal life continued
to grow. Other groups were also implicated by Ruppert in the plot to
sabotage his career, his social contacts, and his car. By 1975, he told
psychiatrists of being followed by the State Highway Patrol, the local
Sheriff's Department, private detectives, and the Hamilton Police.

Ruppert did have a frustrating life, but so do lots of people, and they
don't commit mass murder. By itself, frustration simply isn't enough to
explain Ruppert's criminal behavior: He must also have had access to an
effective weapon of mass destruction - a means of eliminating eleven
people at once. That's why Ruppert's long-standing love affair with
handguns is important to consider.

Obviously, Ruppert was not unique in his use of handguns - many other
brutal murders have been committed in the same way. Handguns are
effective weapons, though the dull-silver barrel, brown grips, and tiny
bullets give the appearance of a child's cap pistol. Yet handguns
effectively distance the killer from his victim; they are easy to obtain,
easy to conceal, and easy to shoot. Their high-velocity bullets penetrate
quickly, assuring instantaneous results. And, as we have seen, the very
presence of a handgun may act psychologically to arouse aggression.

Guns played an important role in Ruppert's life. They represented a

"manly" activity that had been denied him as a sickly child with asthma,
while other boys expressed their masculinity through competitive sports.
Police Chief McNally described James Ruppert as a "gun freak." He
collected guns and passed his leisure time alone on the banks of the
Great Miami River, "walking" tin cans along the ground with his pistols.

As recently as two days before the Easter Sunday massacre, witnesses

recalled seeing Ruppert by the river, where he repeatedly fired his .357
magnum revolver at tin cans. Moreover, a gun store employee claimed
that a month or two before the Easter killings, Ruppert had asked him
where he could obtain a gun silencer.

The implication was clear enough: Ruppert may have been planning for
some time to eliminate the members of his family. The exact time of
death was yet to be decided, depending on the right events to raise his
level of emotion and provide the opportunity.

Though Ruppert had endured a frustrating childhood and had access to

guns, his crime depended on the operation of certain triggering events.
In general, the triggering events may occur over a period of weeks or
even months before a murder, or they may occur immediately prior to it.
In a number of family mass murders, the killer had given up trying to
find a job and was deeply depressed about it. In other cases, a husband
killed all the members of his family upon learning that his wife intended
to obtain a divorce or shortly after the separation actually occurred.

Psychiatrist Shervert Frazier argues that family killers are frequently

seen as "gentle" and "passive" individuals. They carefully sublimate their
hostility toward family members so long as they receive some kind of
reward in return, be it psychological or economic. But when such
rewards are withdrawn - for example, when they are kicked out of the
house or deprived of money - an explosion of anger is likely to occur.

Family killers are frequently "loners" who depend almost exclusively on

the family to satisfy their emotional needs. The threat of separation by
family members is a particularly painful and threatening event.

In Ruppert's case, the triggering mechanism consisted of certain

precipitating events which, just prior to Easter Sunday, served to
magnify the intensity of his negative feelings and to separate him
further psychologically from others in his family. The testimony of Wanda
Bishop, a 28-year-old mother of five who was separated from her
husband and frequently met James Ruppert at her place of employment,
the 19th Hole Cocktail Lounge, shed some light on these feelings.

Mrs. Bishop told the court about their meeting at the 19th Hole bar on
the evening before the shootings. Ruppert talked about his financial
troubles, his unemployment, and his family. He had a "problem" which
had to be taken care of immediately: his mother had told him that "if he
could drink seven days a week, he could help pay the rent. Otherwise,
he would have to leave home."

Mrs. Bishop testified that Ruppert left the bar at eleven PM, only to
return later. When she asked whether he had taken care of his problem,
he answered, "No, not yet." He stayed at the bar until two-thirty, when it
closed.
Notwithstanding his hostile feelings, Ruppert nevertheless depended
heavily on his family for both emotional and economic support, and their
yearly reunion was special to him. But Easter Sunday, 1975 was to be
different: Ruppert was on the verge of eviction, and his mother had been
ill, so his brother's family came late in the day.

Ruppert had a severe case of the "holiday blues." He spent the afternoon
asleep in the upstairs bedroom of his mother's house. At four PM he
awoke and went downstairs where he chatted with his brother about
politics and the stock market, and watched his nieces and nephews as
they gathered Easter eggs. The opportunity was at hand.

After spending a few minutes with the family, Ruppert said he was going
target shooting. He went back upstairs, collected three pistols and a
rifle, and came back down to the first floor where his family was
gathered together. As he walked through the kitchen-still in a state of
apparent calm - his brother asked him "with a mocking smile," - "How's
your Volkswagen, Jimmie?"

According to psychiatrists at the trial, Ruppert believed his brother had

been trying for several months to sabotage his Volkswagen. He was
convinced that Leonard had gotten into the crankcase, had purposely
destroyed the carburetor and the distributor, had sabotaged the
windshield wipers, had loosened the bumper, and had blown holes in the
muffler. Thus, Leonard's apparently innocuous question precipitated an
entire surge of "thoughts, memories, fantasies" about what his brother
had done to him since childhood.

From Ruppert's point of view, Leonard was mocking him about the car;
and Ruppert "reflexively" drew his gun. James would see to it that
Leonard never again hurt him; he would finally get the better of the
brother against whom he had never quite measured up; he would
deprive Leonard of life and of the lives of those whom he loved; and he
would make sure that he had enough money to live the life he felt was
rightfully his.
A three-judge panel decided in favor of the prosecution. James Ruppert
was found guilty of murder and sentenced to the Ohio State Penitentiary.
On a legal technicality, however, he was later transferred to a mental
hospital and granted a new trial.

Finally, on July 23, 1982, the now-bearded 47-year-old Ruppert was

sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison after being found guilty
of murder in the death of his mother and brother, but not guilty by
reason of insanity in the death of his nine other victims. The inheritance
was forfeited.