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understand the madness behind a massacre. The United States Secret Service has studied 83 assassins and would-be assassins, and it has found remarkable similarities among them.
As you see what we've learned about the accused Tucson gunman,
notice how he fits what the Secret Service discovered. The horrific loss of innocent life seemed to come from nowhere. But it appears
Jared Loughner followed a well-worn path on his final descent into madness.
Fein and Bryan Vossekuil wrote a comprehensive study of assassins for the Secret Service in 1999.
In prisons and hospitals they talked to 20 subjects, including Arthur Bremer, who shot presidential candidate George Wallace, Mark Chapman, who murdered John Lennon, and Sirhan Sirhan, who killed Robert Kennedy.
They found that assassins come from all walks of life but travel a common path leaving distinctive clues.
"Rarely were there direct threats communicated to the target or to law enforcement authorities. But very often there was some kind of communication. Be it a communication to a family member or to a friend, that suggested that the attacker or potential attacker was moving out on the path that might lead to an attack," Fein explained.
A man named J.D. stalked two presidents. And in a prison interview with him, Fein and Vossekuil found it wasn't politics - it was madness.
"He believed that aliens were giving him a choice either to kill a bunch of school kids or to assassinate the president," Fein said.
"I decided I was going to dress up like a law enforcement person so I bought a suit, the shoes and bought a trench coat and had a haircut," J.D. explained in a videotaped interview.
J.D. showed them that the mentally ill can be organized enough to plan an attack.
"Just because you've expelled somebody doesn't mean you've gotten them off the path to violence. Indeed, you may have pushed them further down that path to violence," psychotherapist Barry Spodak told Pelley.
Spodak uses training sessions to teach Secret Service agents how to use the assassin research. He says that the Secret Service sometimes spends years managing people who may pose the most dangerous threats to the president.
Agents keep tabs on them, visit often, even make sure they're getting their medications and treatment.
"Is it the school's responsibility to see to it that Loughner has mental health care?" Pelley asked.
"A school could certainly see it that way if they believe that the person may come back with more resentment and more anger and shoot up their campus," Spodak said.
Since Virginia Tech, Spodak has been training college administrators, but, of course, no university and few police forces have the ability to manage a troubled mind the way the Secret Service does.
"I've worked with enough people in college communities to realize they are between a rock and hard place. They don't have the tools or the resources that would be necessary and a lot of them are very fearful about that," Spodak said.
The research on assassins shows that many killers started their final preparations after a life changing event.
Like the assassins studied by the Secret Service, it's likely Loughner wanted a high profile target to make some point that only he understands.
There was one other thing that the Secret Service discovered was common: the assassins found their attacks didn't solve their problems. Nearly everyone had profound regret. They cooperated with the study in the hopes that the violence would never happen again."