1997: The Raurimu Massacre

Every corrupt Family System has a Wound Bearer, a Scapegoat. Jon Krakauer wrote an entire book about young men who try to run from it: Into the Wild (1996.) Some go on Walkabout for years or to extraordinary lengths trying to heal by feats of adventure. Others draw inward, become artistic, and perhaps crazy. Steve was the artistic type, a writer. After the murders he authored two books with titles that repeat songs of his generation about madness.

The first was Toys in the Attic (2008) is a title associated with madness which Aerosmith also picked up on (lyrics above) and which has been made into a 1963 film about family dysfunction. Flowers in the Attic (1987 and 2014) is a horror movie about dark family secrets, starvation, abuse, and confinement of children trapped by toxic caregivers. The cover of Stephen’s book shows a child with an attic for a head being dragged along by a stooping mother. Ref. Fishpond

The next book was The Devil’s Haircut: My Life Before and After the Raurimu Massacre (2023.) Another song about madness which I’ve quoted the lyrics from above. In particular, it refers to the haircut the police administered to Steven upon his arrest. He said “An officer gave me a haircut of sorts, where he took a snip of hair off each side of the back and the temple, and the widow’s peak. Looking at the form and the instructions where to take the snips from, it looked like a pentagram, and I decided it must be a devil’s haircut.” Ref. NZ Herald (2023)

Steven was supposed to be the young professional his parents expected him to be so their community could observe it. He had even worked in the Camp America where USA kids go for summer camps. By the time the mental strain became too much he had begun his career as a dental technician. So, the government came to “help.” Anderson was under the care of the Capital & Coast District Health Board’s community mental health team long before the gun rampage. They sent him back to his toxic Family of Origin with a course of psychotropics. The next brush with the government was in the form of the New Zealand Police. Two years prior to the shooting he had been challenged in the street by Police and evidently stood up to them; For this he was arrested and beaten in custody. The Government, supposedly there to help, had primed a human bomb to go off.

I don’t think that the Anderson house in Khandallah met Steven’s attachment needs. I don’t think the parents’ social set or network of contacts or tidy little urban lifestyle nourished his soul. I think when they asked how he was doing it wasn’t because they cared but because they needed something worth points they could brag about to others. It wasn’t safe or approved of for Steve to be his authentic self. He had a very strong sense that the world was against his true self and he wasn’t wrong. But he couldn’t place the blame where it belonged: poisonous pedagogy. So the persecution complex was projected into a world of corrupt media and arcane demonology. He had “formed a conviction about a universal conspiracy that surrounded him, and which extended to a view that he was constantly being bullied, taunted and teased.” Ref. Canvas (2023)

This state, plus the government drugs, plus being around these toxic people (my opinion) set the stage for a tragedy.

Not really wanted, Steven was towed along by his mother to the Waitangi Weekend gathering at the Raurimu holiday home. Not part of the group, an outcast, and embarrassment. His job was to play the role of scapegoat. The broken, the stupid, the sick. To lurk about the house but stay out of the way of those gathered like a little pet or a some luggage. I believe the humiliation turned to rage. The first thing Stephen did was to sling some verbal feces in to disrupt the gathering that existentially rejected him. Anderson family sat down to breakfast with guests. There were 11 people at the table then. Stephen Anderson stood in the dining room door and said, “I had sex with a dog,” and after a pause, “And with a cat.” Ref. Wiki

That was a weak person’s attempt to be visible for a moment and Act Out. It wasn’t exactly an attack on the parents (nor the family pets) but an attempted shot at the suffocating domestic forcefield generated by 11 people. It was a way of saying ‘I’m not OK’ and See Me and This Will Teach You For Not Being Thankful For All The Repression I Do For You. I think Stephen was living a life of miserable desperation without witness. The idea that 11 potential witnesses would be anti-witnesses by passing the breakfast butter and focusing on small talk about weather and sport….enough to make a man psychotic even without the pills.

This cat/dog schadenfreude (Malicious Joy) would have been a short-lived neurological reward. It had not been enough to square the ledger and another act of hate was called for. The old Brethren indoctrination gave the feelings of shame a substance, a narrative to conceptualise. There was a conspiracy going on (there was) and the world was at stake (his) and the people responsible were all here (they were.) The shotgun was in easy reach and the rest is death, arrest, and a lifetime of being pharmaceutically semi-lobotomised. Stephen was ruled insane and, perhaps most tragically from my point of view, lives with his mother to this day.

Oedipus Rex Zelandiae  

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Ref. Mad in America (2024)