“An Irresistible Urge”
Such tragedies grow even more disturbing as the age of the perpetrators decreases.
One of the first cases that came to the public’s attention was that of 14-year-old Rod Matthews of Canton, Massachusetts, a high school freshman. Matthews lured classmate Shaun Ouillette, also 14, into the woods on a November afternoon in 1986 on the pretext of building a fort. Matthews carried a baseball bat, which he said he needed to return to someone.
Encouraging the larger boy to walk in front of him down the wooded path, Matthews waited for his opportunity and then smashed Ouillette on the head with the bat. He continued to strike his soon helpless victim, bludgeoning him to death.
While Matthews informed police and his parents that he thought Ouillette had run away from home, he brought two friends, Robbie Peterson and Jonathan Cash, on separate occasions to view the body of the boy the police were searching for in vain. Cash eventually reported the murder to police by means of an unsigned letter. The next morning, three weeks after the murder, police found Ouillette’s body and arrested Matthews.
Matthews, a bright youth with an IQ of 132, had been taking the psychiatric drug Ritalin, known generically as methylphenidate. According to federal law, Ritalin is a Schedule II controlled substance, in the same addictive category as amphetamine, methamphetamine and cocaine, powerful drugs bearing what the National Institute on Drug Abuse terms “a high potential for abuse.”
The Hidden Hand of Violence continued...
    
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