Dave Grossman

LTC Dave Grossman (U.S. Army, Retired) is making his second appearance at the Annual Conference on Coordinated School and College Safety and Security in response to a number of requests to the Missouri School Boards' Association for "a repeat performance." A feature of presentations by LTC Grossman is the extent of persons in the audience who have elected to hear his words for a second, third, or fourth time!

LTC Grossman is an internationally recognized scholar, author, soldier, and speaker and is one of the world's foremost experts in the field of human aggression and the roots of violence and violent crime. LTC Grossman is a former Airborne Ranger infantry officer, and a prior-service sergeant and paratrooper with a total of over twenty-three years experience in leading U.S. soldiers worldwide. He retired from the Army in February 1998 and has devoted himself full-time to teaching, writing, speaking, and research.

A member of the faculty at West Point, LTC Grossman has combined his experiences to become the founder of a new field of scientific endeavor which has been termed "killology." In this new field, LTC Grossman has made revolutionary new contributions to the understanding of killing in war, the psychological costs of war, the root causes of violent crime, and the process of healing the victims of violence. LTC Grossman's professional contributions include having been an expert witness and consultant in state and federal courts and serving on the prosecution team in United States versus Timothy McVeigh. LTC Grossman helped train mental health professionals after school shootings in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and he was also involved in counseling or court cases in the aftermath of school shootings in Paducah, Kentucky, Springfield, Oregon, and Littleton, Colorado.

LTC Grossman is the author of On Killing, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The book has been translated into Japanese, Korean, and German and is on the U.S. Marine Corps' recommended reading list. On Killing is required reading at the FBI Academy and numerous other academies and colleges. LTC Grossman co-authored Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence which has been translated into Norwegian and German. LTC Grossman's most recent book with Loren Christensen is On Combat, the highly acclaimed sequel to On Killing.

LTC Grossman has presented papers before the national conventions of the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Further, LTC Grossman has presented to over forty different colleges and universities around the world. Clearly, LTC Grossman's influence is international.

John Giduck

John Giduck is making his initial appearance at the Annual Conference on Coordinated School and College Safety and Security.

In addition to other published materials and articles on terrorism, Russian organized crime, and close quarters tactics, Mr. Giduck authored the book, Terror at Beslan. Mr. Giduck has devoted significant professional time to instructing others about what can be learned from the school seize that took place in Beslan, Russia in September 2004. In this effort, Mr. Giduck has spoken to numerous state and federal law enforcement officers and SWAT teams throughout the United States. Presently, Mr. Giduck devotes his professional time to the Archangel Group, a non-profit agency providing anti-terrorism consulting and training to law enforcement and the military. This training includes Mr. Giduck serving as a U.S. Army Special Forces hand-to-hand combat and firearms instructor.

Mr. Giduck has earned the highest level of expert certification in homeland security through the American College of Forensic Examiners International. Mr. Giduck is a former member of the Executive Advisory Board of the American College of Homeland Security and is a current member of the Executive Advisory Board of Police Marksman magazine. Mr. Giduck holds an undergraduate degree from Pennsylvania State University and a law degree from the University of Denver. Mr. Giduck also holds a Master's Degree in Russian Studies from the University of Colorado and has completed studies in Russian culture and language at St. Petersburg State University in Russia. He has traveled extensively throughout Russia and the former Soviet Union for more than fifteen years, including having completed training with several of Russia's special forces units.

Mr. Giduck is an inductee into several martial arts halls of fame and is a former U.S. national weightlifting champion.

Dr. Mary Ellen O'Toole

Mary Ellen O'Toole, FBI Supervisory Special Agent, is making her initial appearance at the Annual Conference on Coordinated School and College Safety and Security.

Dr. O'Toole is a member of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime Behavioral Analysis Unit of the Critical Incident Response Group located at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. The Behavioral Analysis Unit, established in the mid l970s and formerly known as the FBI's Behavioral Science and Profiling Unit, is designed to study violent crimes and the people who commit these crimes.

As one of the most senior members of the Behavioral Analysis Unit, Dr. O'Toole specializes in the careful and detailed analyses of criminals and their crime scene behavior. Dr. O'Toole has provided assistance on a wide range of violent crimes including school shootings and threats against schools, serial and single homicides, sexual assaults, criminal paraphilic behavior, extortions, kidnappings, product tampering, robberies, assaults, arsons and bombings, equivocal deaths, and crimes involving the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Dr. O'Toole works closely with law enforcement agencies throughout the world providing behavioral assessments of unknown offenders, investigative suggestions, interview strategies and suggestions for case prosecution.

Dr. O'Toole is the FBI's primary researcher and author of The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective published in 2000. She was co-author of Premeditated Mass Shootings in Schools: Threat Assessment that appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescence.