Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

130 CRIMES OF ENVY
dormitories housing students who were enrolled in a special programme
for exceptionally brilliant students. It is a programme that may lead to a
Ph.D. in six years instead of the usual ten or more years of undergraduate
and graduate work. Only 45 of Cornell's more than 13 ,000 students are
enrolled in that special programme. Four of the eight students who died
in the April 5 fire were members of the special Ph.D. group. Most of the
students who were threatened by the fire on May 23 were also enrolled in
the special programme, as were seven of the nine students who were
driven out by the fire of May 31. Neither the District Attorney nor the
County Coroner believed that it was all due to coincidence. The fires
could have been started only by human agency. The Coroner did not use
the word 'envy' but spoke of 'human malice,' a term often enough used
in place of 'envy,' as we have seen in Chapter 2. By November 24, 1967,
the Department of Police, City of Ithaca, New York, informed me that no
arrests had been made, and the Coroner's hypothesis had been neither
eliminated nor substantiated.
In 1953 a middle-aged spinster in Munich took her friend's baby out
for a walk in its pram. Suddenly she pushed baby and pram into the Isar
River. The investigation, in which the psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer
took part as expert witness, disclosed that the culprit was suddenly
overcome with envy of her friend's happiness which the child
symbolized. 2
In May 1959 American daily papers carried an account from Swannanoa,
in North Carolina, under the headline: 'Co-ed Chopped in Envy
may be Disfigured.' According to the account given on May 21 by
United Press International, this is what happened: An attractive twentyyear-old
student, Rose Watterson, was attacked and mortally wounded
while asleep in her room in Warren Wilson College; the hatchet struck
her four times between her left eye and her throat. The culprit was her
former room-mate, Patricia Dennis. The newspapers carried pictures of
the two girls. Before the attack, Rose was undoubtedly pretty, though not
exceptionally so, Patricia distinctly less attractive, a bit on the chubby
side and, even in the photograph taken before the deed, her expression
almost hostile. At the first hearing she stated her motive to have been
jealousy and envy of her prettier room-mate ..
2 Information in a letter from Dr. Heinz Hlifner, July 17, 1953, according to which
Professor Kretschmer was to bring his expert opinion to bear on the Munich child
murder in a publication.