Why Violence & Revenge Fantasies Feel Good - James Kimmel Jr. - #989

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Is it fair to say that you decided to study revenge instead of commit a mass murder?

**James Kimmel Jr.** (0:07)
It's a great way of putting that question. I would say, no, I made that decision long before I decided to study revenge. However, my life might look like that happened. So it's a fair question.

**Chris Williamson** (0:22)
Can you tell us that story?

**James Kimmel Jr.** (0:23)
Yeah, sure. So I had been bullied when I was a kid, and moved to the country actually from a suburban area at age 12, descended into this rural space where there were a lot of farm kids living around me, and I wanted to be part of that group. So I reached out to them. But I was definitely an outsider, although I lived on a farm. It was my great grandfather's farm. It wasn't a big working farm like those guys lived on. They lived on big dairy farms with hundreds of head of Holstein cattle. We had a small herd of black Angus cattle, and that's beef cattle, and some pigs and chickens and things like that. So they didn't want to have any part of me kind of coming into their world. And I wasn't willing to accept that. I really wanted to be part of their community. When I was young, I actually wanted to be a farmer. I thought it was such a great lifestyle, and I really loved what farmers did. So when I wouldn't be deterred, they moved from shunning to bullying, and that started with words and humiliation and harassment, getting on and off the school bus and going through hallways. And then as we got older, up into middle teen years and even 15, 16, 17 years old, it started becoming physical, to the point that one night when my family were home, late at night, we were awakened to the sound of a gunshot. And when we ran to the window to check and see what was going on, I saw a pickup truck operated by one of the guys that had been harassing me, taking off down the road. So we looked around the house, didn't see any damage thankfully, and went back to sleep. The next morning, one of my jobs was to take care of those animals I just described, including a sweet, beautiful little hunting dog, a beagle named Paula. And when I went to her pen to feed and water her that morning, I found her lying dead with a bullet hole in her head and a pool of blood.
So it was pretty rough.

**Chris Williamson** (2:47)
I imagine that's the sort of thing that can inspire some pretty strong feelings of vengeance.

**James Kimmel Jr.** (2:52)
Yeah, it did. But at first, those weren't manifesting. So there was shock, pain, mourning, anger, all those types of things, and certainly a desire to want to get back at these guys at this point. My family were very upset. We contacted the police. They came, took a report, but said there was really nothing they could do at that stage. They would be available if things escalated from there. But they weren't going to act at that point in time. So another couple or three weeks passed. I found myself alone at night in my house. My folks were out somewhere, as was my brother. And I heard a vehicle come to a stop in front of our house. And I got up to look outside. We lived on a one lane country road, so it was pretty rare to have a car just like come down the road. You could always hear it, but they would just keep on moving. This time it was clear that it stopped. And when I looked outside, I saw that same pickup truck. And it started, well, I should say it this way. So there was a pickup truck and a flash and an explosion. And then the pickup truck tore off down the road, leaving behind our mailed, our mangled mailbox. So it had blown our post box right off its stand. And then that's when what was left of my self-control kind of detonated as well. And I'd been shooting guns since I was about eight years old, having visited that farm throughout my youth. And we had lots of guns in the house. My dad had a loaded revolver that he kept for personal safety and a nightstand by his bed. And I ran and I grabbed that gun, tore off through the house, jumped in my mother's car. And I went off through the dead of the night chasing after these guys, just shouting and rage and screaming as I was going down the road. And I eventually caught them, cornered them actually by a barn. So the scene is their pickup truck kind of pressed up against a barn wall. And my car behind them with my bright beams on, so I'm seeing three or four heads in the back of that pickup truck. And they slowly get out and they turn around and they're squinting through my high beams, trying to figure out who had just chased them down their one lane farm road.