Understanding the World of Injustice Collectors

On the morning of August 26, 2015, Vester Lee Flanagan II (known as Bryce Williams) approached two TV journalists during a live broadcast and fatally shot them. Two hours later, while authorities were conducting a manhunt in Virginia, ABC News received a 23-page fax from the killer explaining his reasons for the attack.

It was all someone else's fault.

He believed that Black men and white women despised him. He claimed that he was targeted for being gay and black and had resorted to prostitution to solve his financial issues. While working at the TV station where he would later murder his victims, he was sexually harassed and bullied. He faced racial discrimination. In 2013, after being wrongfully fired, he even stated that he had been forced to kill his pet cats.

Flanagan, who took his own life later that day, was filled with fury. Much of this rage appeared to be aimed at the TV station, and since he killed two of the station's employees, people naturally assumed the murders were an act of revenge against his former employer.

However, that's not the case, as Dave Cullen explains in New Republic. It was a revenge against humanity itself.

Flanagan was an "injustice collector." This term is often linked to traits like paranoia, narcissism, and self-centeredness.

Understanding Injustice Collectors in the Aftermath of Columbine

Dr. Mary Ellen O'Toole, a former FBI profiler, describes an injustice collector as someone who "harbors deep resentment over real or imagined wrongs, and no matter how much time passes, will never forget or forgive those wrongs or the individuals they believe are to blame."

O'Toole coined the term "injustice collector" in her 2000 FBI threat-assessment study, which was conducted after the tragic Columbine High School shooting in 1999.

Injustice collectors are individuals who obsessively track every perceived slight against them, often building up massive collections of grievances that may span years or even decades. Many of these supposed wrongs never actually occurred, and the few that did are usually insignificant.

O'Toole explains via email, "His version of events is often twisted, exaggerated, or completely misunderstood, reaching a point where it becomes absurd or laughable. Most of the people on his list probably have no idea they did anything wrong."

Flanagan complained when a colleague brought watermelon to share at work, claiming that it was a racial insult aimed at him.

Injustice collectors continually expand their lists — often literal lists, according to O'Toole. They tend to keep detailed notes, legal documents, and other records to track their grievances and the individuals they believe are their adversaries.

When Violence Erupts: The Perils of Dangerous Injustice Collectors

Flanagan is just one example of many injustice collectors who resorted to violence, a reaction that was preceded by a pattern of extreme and disproportionate responses to perceived wrongs. As Cullen notes, Eric Harris, who, alongside Dylan Klebold, killed 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999, was also an injustice collector. So was Christopher Dorner, who murdered four L.A. police officers in 2013, Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in Santa Barbara in 2014, and Andrew Kehoe, who took the lives of 45 people in Michigan in 1927 when he detonated an elementary school bomb. 

Not every injustice collector resorts to violence. O'Toole refers to those who do as the "dangerous injustice collectors." Most, however, live their lives consumed with anger and resentment, continually adding to their endless lists of grievances.

"Injustice collectors are fragile individuals with low self-worth," writes psychotherapist Mark Sichel, LCSW, in an email. Sichel is the author of the book "Healing from Family Rifts," which explores injustice collecting within family dynamics.

Injustice collectors may experience depression, anxiety, and a sense of hopelessness, along with isolation and feelings of abandonment. They struggle to maintain relationships, often pushing others away. Co-workers tend to steer clear, and family members worry about being added to their list of wrongdoers.

Sichel describes those living with an injustice collector: "They feel like they’re constantly walking on eggshells, as though they must keep apologizing for things the injustice collector believes they’ve done or said."

For the injustice collector, they are always the victim. Nothing is ever their fault.

Like many harmful behaviors, injustice collecting is a pathological defense mechanism, a destructive way of dealing with an unsettling reality, especially one that threatens their sense of identity. Injustice collectors often believe they are superior and deserve success. Acknowledging personal flaws or failures would shatter that belief. Instead, they choose to see themselves as helpless victims in their own lives.

"Why was I sentenced to live a life filled with misery and worthlessness ...?" asks Elliot Rodger, the Santa Barbara mass murderer, in his manifesto.

Manifestos are common. They’re how dangerous injustice collectors signal that the rest of us are responsible for pushing them over the edge.

Near the conclusion of Rodger's 137-page document, a manuscript he describes as a "story of a war against cruel injustice," he chillingly captures the mindset of a dangerous injustice collector.

"I am the real victim in all of this," Rodger says. "I am the hero. Humanity attacked me first by condemning me to endure so much pain. I didn’t ask for this. ... I didn’t initiate this war. ... But I will end it by retaliating. I will punish everyone."