Valery Iosifovich Fabrikant is a former associate professor of mechanical engineering at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
20 Facts About Valery Fabrikant
1.
2.
Valery Fabrikant's case stimulated much research and debate about gun control, and how universities should manage difficult employees.
3.
Valery Fabrikant was sentenced to life in prison and was denied parole or temporary leave in 2015 and again in 2022.
4.
Valery Fabrikant was hired at Concordia University in 1980, where he worked first as a research assistant under limited grant money.
5.
Valery Fabrikant taught students and conducted independent research, despite students, staff and faculty having reported behavioural problems ranging from "undesirable to intolerable".
6.
Valery Fabrikant attempted to collect information to blackmail officials into promoting him, threatened officials and colleagues and blamed others for all of his problems.
7.
Valery Fabrikant blamed his peers for his being denied tenure and for seeking to have his employment terminated.
8.
In 1992, in the midst of an email campaign against numerous university officials, Valery Fabrikant went to court to try to have the names of several colleagues removed from research papers he had written in the 1980s.
9.
On 24 August 1992, Fabrikant took concealed weapons and ammunition with him to the Engineering Department of the university, where he went on a shooting spree on the ninth floor of the Henry F Hall Building.
10.
Valery Fabrikant killed Department Chair Phoivos Ziogas and professors Matthew Douglass, Michael Hogben and Jaan Saber.
11.
Valery Fabrikant represented himself at his five-month-long trial, after firing ten lawyers in the process.
12.
Valery Fabrikant's claim was that the murders were done in "self-defence" because members of the faculty were "trying to give [him] a heart attack".
13.
In my opinion, Valery Fabrikant is not fit to stand trial.
14.
Valery Fabrikant is serving his sentence at Archambault Institution in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec.
15.
Valery Fabrikant is a Usenet user known for posting in newsgroups, particularly can.
16.
Valery Fabrikant has claimed to be the innocent victim of a conspiracy.
17.
Valery Fabrikant filed numerous legal proceedings with the court system until 2000, when the Quebec Superior Court declared him a vexatious litigant.
18.
In part because Valery Fabrikant carried out his assault on a university campus, and societies have witnessed rising workplace violence, the case has been extensively studied.
19.
Later analysis concluded that "Valery Fabrikant often displayed classic behavioural warning signs indicating potential violence".
20.
Valery Fabrikant has kept doing scientific research and has published over 60 scientific papers from prison, triggering discussions on the ethicality of allowing him to do so.