Cleveland School Massacre - Perpetrator

Perpetrator

The perpetrator of the shooting, Patrick Edward Purdy (November 10, 1964 – January 17, 1989), was an unemployed former welder and drifter. Purdy was born in Tacoma, Washington to Patrick Benjamin Purdy and Kathleen Toscano. His father was a soldier in the United States Army and was stationed at Fort Lewis at the time of his son's birth. When Patrick was two years old, his mother filed for divorce against her husband after he had threatened to kill her with a firearm. Kathleen later moved with her son to South Lake Tahoe and later to Stockton, California. He attended Cleveland Elementary School from kindergarten through second grade.

Patrick's mother remarried in September 1969, though was again divorced four years later. Albert Gulart, Sr., Purdy's stepfather, said Patrick was an overly quiet child who cried often. In fall 1973, Kathleen separated from Gulart and moved with her children from Stockton to the Sacramento area. In December of that year, the Sacramento Child Protective Services were twice called to her residence, alleging Kathleen was physically abusing her children. When Purdy was thirteen, he was permanently banned from his mother's house after striking her in the face. He began living on the streets of San Francisco for a while, before being placed in foster care by authorities. He was later placed in the custody of his father, who was living in Lodi, California at the time. While attending Lodi High School, he became an alcoholic and a drug addict, and attended high school sporadically.

On September 13, 1981, Purdy's father was killed after being struck by a car. His family filed a wrongful-death suit in San Joaquin Superior Court against the driver of the car, asking for $600,000 in damages, although the suit was later dismissed. Purdy also accused his mother of taking money his father had left him, using the money to buy a car and taking a vacation to New York City, an incident that deepened the animosities between them.
After his father's death, Purdy was briefly rendered homeless, before being placed in the custody of a foster mother in Los Angeles.

Purdy had a long criminal history, which began during early adolescence. First police records of Purdy date back to 1977, when Sacramento police confiscated BB guns from then 12-year-old Purdy. In June 1980, Purdy was first arrested at age 15 for a court-order violation. He was arrested in the same month for underage drinking. He was later arrested for prostitution in August 1980, possession of marijuana and drug dealing in 1982, and in 1983 for possession of an illegal weapon and receipt of stolen property. On October 11, 1984, he was arrested for being an accomplice in an armed robbery at a service station, for which he spent 32 days in the Yolo County Jail. In 1986 his mother called police after he vandalized her car for refusing to give him money for narcotics.

In April 1987, he and his half-brother Albert were arrested for firing a semi-automatic pistol at trees in the Eldorado National Forest. At the time, he was carrying a book about the white supremacist group Aryan Nations, and told the County Sheriff that it was his "duty to help the suppressed and overthrow the suppressor." Later in prison he attempted suicide twice, once by hanging himself with a rope made out of strips of his shirt, and a second time by cutting his wrists with his fingernails. A subsequent psychiatric assessment found him to suffer from very mild mental retardation, and to be a danger to himself and others.

In the fall of 1987, he began attending welding classes at San Joaquin Delta College and complained about the high percentage of Southeast Asian students there. In October 1987, he left California and drifted between Oregon, Nevada, Texas, Florida, Connecticut, South Carolina, and Tennessee searching for jobs. In early 1988 he worked at Numeri Tech, a small machine shop located in Stockton, and from July to October as a boilermaker in Portland, Oregon, living in Sandy with his aunt. He also purchased the Chinese-made Type 56 used in the shooting at Sandy Trading Post, in Sandy on August 3. He eventually returned to California where he rented a room at the El Rancho Motel in Stockton on December 26. After the shooting the room was found decorated with numerous toy soldiers. He also purchased the 9mm Taurus pistol at Hunter Loan and Jewelry Co. in Stockton on December 28.

Police stated that Purdy had problems with alcohol and drug addiction. He was said to have been a misanthrope, and his hatred was especially directed against Asian immigrants, believing that they took jobs from native-born Americans.

According to his friends, who described him as friendly and never violent towards anyone, Purdy was suicidal at times and frustrated about the fact that he failed to "make it on his own". Steve Sloan, a night-shift supervisor at Numeri Tech, stated that "He was a real ball of frustration, and was angry about everything." Another one of Purdy's former co-workers stated, "He was always miserable. I've never seen a guy that didn't want to smile as much as he didn't." In a notebook found in a hotel where he lived in early 1988, Purdy wrote about himself through a self-loathing perspective: "I'm so dumb, I'm dumber than a sixth-grader. My mother and father were dumb."