… this one at at Purdue, where a teaching assistant sought out and shot a fellow teaching assistant to death, are unknown. Both worked for an engineering school professor. The killer apparently walked calmly to the classroom where he knew the victim would be, shot him multiple times, and then walked around a bit, waiting to be arrested.
Let us speculate.
The dead man was dating a woman the killer wanted to date.
The dead man was impressing the professor more than the killer was, and this enraged the killer.
The victim had ridiculed or put down the shooter in some way.
The victim and the shooter had had an earlier altercation, and this was payback.
The killer is a psychopath. (Very unlikely. They either kill themselves after they finish killing, or, like Amy Bishop, they drop the gun in a trash bin and proceed to go out to dinner with their husband. Bishop considered herself far too clever ever to be caught.)
*********************
UPDATE: Hints begin to emerge:
[B]oth a Purdue professor who worked with him and a Purdue student say he could be rude and disliked being told he was wrong…
Purdue Professor Thomas Talavage describes Cousins as intense and aggressive about his projects. He says Cousins “didn’t like to be told he was wrong.”
UD is reminded of another university workplace murder: Annie Le’s killing at Yale. Some of the people who knew her murderer, who worked with Le, “described him as a ‘control freak’ who was competitive in sports, compulsive about his work habits and controlling in his romantic relationships.”