Concordia University Prof Who Murdered Four Colleagues in 1992 Dies in Prison
“After immigrating from the Soviet Union in 1979, Fabrikant was hired as a research assistant at Concordia”
This is interesting. I don’t recall hearing about the incident when it happened.
The Montreal Gazette reports:
Concordia University killer Valery Fabrikant dies in prison
Valery Fabrikant, the former Concordia University professor who murdered four of his colleagues, has died in prison.
Fabrikant died Saturday at 86 at the Archambault Institution, around 50 kilometres north of Montreal, Correctional Service Canada said in a statement. He appears to have died of natural causes.
He was 33 years into a life sentence that he had been serving since June 1993.
On Aug. 24, 1992, Fabrikant shot Concordia University professors Michael Hogben, Matthew Douglass, Jaan Saber and Phoivos Ziogas. He also shot secretary Elizabeth Horwood, who survived.
Speaking after a Superior Court jury found Fabrikant guilty of murdering his four colleagues and attempting to kill Horwood, Judge Fraser Martin called Fabrikant a “vicious murderer.”
“Your actions that day defy comprehension. You are a warped, twisted and deeply troubled man,” Martin said at the time.
After immigrating from the Soviet Union in 1979, Fabrikant was hired as a research assistant at Concordia, where he later became a professor of mechanical engineering.
He published a significant number of research papers while at Concordia, but made a series of allegations against contributors to his articles.
The dispute escalated into a lawsuit against two professors, M.N.S. Swamy and Thiagas Sriram Sankar, who Fabrikant claimed had forced him to add their names to his research despite making no scientific contribution.
Fabrikant also quarrelled with the university for not granting him a tenured position.
He testified that the lawsuit was the source of his anger when he shot and killed his colleagues.
Fabrikant’s conduct prior to the shootings had already caught the attention of the university, which had planned to discipline him for psychological harassment.
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Comments
Before going on his killing spree, Fabrikant aired his grievances on Usenet (the social media of that era). He came across as cranky but not murderous. I remember how shocked I felt when I heard what he had done. It is good to know that they locked him up and threw away the key.
Montreal Concordia =/= American Sma,ll Lutheran Concordia.
It would be nice to see “Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec” instead of simply “Concordia University.” There are several “Concordia University”s in America, most of them associated with or founded by the Lutheran Church. Concordia in Montreal was founded as Catholic.