Today, students are milling around the Hall Building’s first floor granite table, few aware that what they represent are the lives of four Concordia professors—Matthew Douglass, Michael Gorden Hogben, Aaron Jaan Saber and Phoivois Ziogas.
At 2:30 p.m. on Aug. 24, Fabrikant was out to settle some unfinished business. He walked into his office where he was to meet with Michael Hogben and shot him three times with his .38-calibre pistol. Hogben’s colleague, Jaan Saber, called from across the hall, worried. Fabrikant crossed the hallway and shot him twice.
As Fabrikant continued his path through the hallways, he shot Elizabeth Horwood in the thigh, but she survived. Searching for his ultimate targets—the professors who he held a grudge against—he ended up in the office of Phoivos Ziogas, who was with Otto Schwelb. Ziogas was shot twice but did not die immediately. Professor Matthew Douglass then tried to reason with Fabrikant. He was shot four times.
Another professor and a security guard, Daniel Martin, were taken hostage. Fabrikant called 911 at 2:35 p.m. to inform them that he had committed several murders and wanted to explain his motives. An hour later, as he tried to adjust the phone, he let go of his gun, giving the professor and security guard the chance to overtake him.
None of the professors murdered had been initial targets for Fabrikant—rather, they had been victims of his terrible rage against the university. Fabrikant was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole until 2014.
Conspiracy theories
A bureaucratic battle between Fabrikant and the school was brewing for years, but no one was able to stop the 1992 disaster. Since his arrest and trial, the reasoning behind the shooting has emerged.
Fabrikant firmly believed he was pushed to commit his actions and that his life was in danger—he claims his colleagues were out to kill him with a heart attack.
“Clearly, these people did so much harm to me, that killing them was more important, than the threat of dying in jail,” writes Fabrikant on his website.
According Sam Osman, who was the chair of the mechanical engineering department at the time, Fabrikant was at one time considered “one of the top ten international researchers in his area.” How did a brilliant mind turn to violence to resolve a conflict?
A history of violence
Valery Fabrikant was born in the USSR in 1940 and immigrated to Canada in 1979 under the pretense that he was a dissident. He had actually been fired. He met with the chair of Concordia’s mechanical engineering department, Tom Sankar, for a job. He had a PhD and had published several research papers, so Sankar hired him as a research assistant.
It was not long after that Fabrikant’s extreme personality would come through. In 1981, he applied for a position at the University of Calgary. He was not selected,
“[The] only way to get what you want in North America is to buy a gun and shoot a lot of people,”
—Valery Fabrikant
—Valery Fabrikant
so Fabrikant harassed the U of Calgary professor. In 1982, a student complained that she had been sexually harassed by Fabrikant, but no formal complaint was ever lodged, to maintain the student’s privacy.
At the same time, Fabrikant continued his research at a phenomenal pace; he produced over 25 original research papers in three years, on which Tom Sankar was listed as co-author. The university was impressed by his work and kept him on board.
In 1983, Fabrikant harassed the professor of a French class he was taking. The bullying became so intense that the professor threatened to quit and Fabrikant was told to stop attending class. Defiantly, Fabrikant returned to class, read his notice of expulsion out loud and sat down. He was then ordered to stay away.
After this incident, Sankar’s request to have Fabrikant upgraded from a research assistant to a professor was denied.
In 1985, Fabrikant was appointed to Concordia’s Computer-Aided Vehicle Engineering Centre (CONCAVE). From this point on, Fabrikant no longer put anyone as co-author on his research papers. In 1987, Tom Sankar stepped down as chair and Sam Osman took over. Sheshadri Sankar, Tom’s brother, was head of the CONCAVE project.
A year later, Sheshadri Sankar advised Fabrikant that his contract with CONCAVE would end in one year. A furious Fabrikant accused the department of shortening his contract because he was no longer attributing co-authorship to the chair of the department. He began taping conversations with other faculty members to prove his conspiracy theories regarding the university’s procedures. He threatened legal action.
In a conversation with Fabrikant, Tom Sankar claims to have told him, “Did I ask you to put my name on any of your papers? You did it voluntarily.” Strangely enough, Sankar gave Fabrikant a two-year contract despite the accusations.
According to Catherine Mackenzie, the executive assistant to the rector in 1989, Fabrikant threatened that the “only way to get what you want in North America is to buy a gun and shoot a lot of people.” The university was now concerned about his behaviour, but no one was willing to confront him with a formal warning.
The beginning of the end
In 1990, Fabrikant was to receive a tenure-track position for his academic successes but was later rejected. In 1991, Fabrikant was given the largest bonus of the department for his accomplishments. The engineering department fought to have him fired, as no one wanted to work with him, but the rector refused because there was no paper trail of his violent behaviour. They renewed his contract until June 1992.
In June 1992, Fabrikant swayed the dean to give him one more year of work, considering his academic achievements, although the engineering department tried nonetheless to have him fired or to retire him for his continuous threats.
That year, he accused Sheshadri and Tom Sankar of misappropriation of authorship and misuse of research money and brought them to court. In an e-mail campaign attempting to warn others of the university’s alleged wrongdoing, Fabrikant wrote, “I am no longer afraid of anything or anybody. We all have to die one day. Whenever I die, I shall die an honest person... I cannot fight all the crooks in the world, but I shall not rest until the bogus scientists in this university are exposed.”
In another e-mail, Fabrikant referred to the judge in his lawsuit as “Chief Injustice.” He was to appear in court on Aug. 25, 1992 for contempt of court.
But just before his contempt of court hearing, Fabrikant acted on years of threats and walked into the Hall Building on Aug. 24 in search of the people he had been fighting, to shoot them. He was arrested that same day.
The Muppet Show trial
Fabrikant’s trial was almost a farce; he fired 10 lawyers until he decided to defend himself. He ridiculed the judge and bullied witnesses in an attempt to prove that the court should be deliberating not whether or not he was a murderer, but why he was pushed to the brink of killing four people. “I was the victim, not a perpetrator, I acted in self-defense” was his motto.
Fabrikant spent hours questioning witnesses to show the police had planted evidence and that the court was in bed with the university. He even argued about having a sandwich instead of a warm lunch one day, accusing the Judge of trying to starve him. His strategy was defiance and disruption.
Fabrikant was cited six times for contempt of court, calling the procedures a “monkey trial,” calling the judge a “biased crook” and welcoming the jury “to the Muppet Show.”
Psychiatrists determined he was not insane, something Fabrikant agreed with. “I was never insane, I knew perfectly well what I was doing and I knew why I was shooting each individual. There was not a single innocent person harmed. I did not hear voices and did not imagine devils.”
After five months, the judge had had enough. He stopped all procedures, and seven hours later, the jury convicted him of first-degree murder.
From his jail cell, Fabrikant had his son, Isaac, post messages on chat groups and on his website. He still claims innocence and continuously tries to convince people he is the victim of a massive conspiracy between the university, the police and the court.
“I was abused for 12 years, and when my life was threatened, the abusers succeeded in provoking me,” he writes. “I lived so far 62 years, during which I never displayed any violent behavior, I never had even a speeding ticket. There were three minutes in my life when I killed four people. Should I be judged by these three minutes or [the] remaining 62 years?”
Next week, in “Part two: was Fabrikant right?” The Link will look into the conspiracy theories Fabrikant claims pushed him to the brink, as well as what the university has done to prevent more bureaucratic entanglements to reach a point of crisis.