Afterword by Dan Murphy

First meetings can leave lasting impressions. It was in October 2004 in an office of a Fortune 100 company where I first met Randy Ferris. I was in town meeting with senior leaders of the company, discussing a position with the organization. Randy was already the Director of Loss Prevention, running a large, well-established, successful team that spanned 47 states. What was supposed to be a simple, quick introduction resulted in a lengthy discussion of the nature of disturbing and harassing behavior. This was the result of a morbid painting that hung on the wall of Randy’s office directly behind his desk. The painting, it turned out, had been sent by an anonymous individual to the company’s CEO and contained a mix of disturbing images and dates of violent tragedies, such as Hitler’s invasion of Poland, the assignation of President Kennedy, and the Columbine High School shootings. Randy recounted how the painting was sent and talked a bit about the other types of odd and at times, threatening, correspondence that was commonly received at the company. It was soon clear that we shared a common interest in the investigation of such activities and of developing a deeper understanding of the psychology of the individuals who engage in threatening and stalking behavior such as this. After about an hour, we parted and I returned home to ponder the job offer that followed his visit.

Soon after I accepted the offer we began partnering on the assessment and management of all threatening and disturbing behavior reported within the company. Randy had recently inaugurated the company’s first Violence Prevention Plan that trained managers and supervisors to report threats and instances of disturbing behavior to the Loss Prevention or Human Resource departments. At first, some of the cases were fairly routine and threat management plans were easily devised and executed, but other cases were more complex and, quite frankly, rather unsettling. We continued our threat management education and continued to update our violence prevention programs with what we learned. During these times we also ran up against the rationalizations, objections, and denials, or RODS, as discussed early in the book, and learned how to overcome them.

Taking our collective decades of relevant experience, and a shared passion for protecting people we created Violence Prevention Strategies LLC in 2013. This idea was born out of the many requests we were receiving to speak at events and requests from companies asking if we could help them build a program for their organizations. Many of those were small to midsize companies with little in the way of infrastructure or capability in this area. Since then, we have helped many organizations create effective, reasonable programs to ensure the proper management of cases involving threatening and disturbing behavior. We also frequently receive calls from client companies who need help managing a specific threat. We provide guidance and support to help them manage the situation to a peaceful resolution.

When the opportunity presented itself to write this book, we knew we would be challenged in selecting which of the many thousands of cases we have handled or studied to illustrate in the book. These cases have ranged from the boring to the bizarre and everything in between. Those we chose to discuss highlight particular points that we hope have helped to bring to life the concepts and best practices detailed in this book. It is our sincere hope that those who read this book will learn something they did not know or had not thought about with regards to dealing with those who threaten or display disturbing or harassing behavior. We hope it will spark discussions in workplaces and help bring about the development of effective, reasonable, defendable programs designed to protect people by preventing violence. We both have dedicated our professional lives to that end.