Nicholas Brent Corwin (1980–1988) was an eight-year-old boy who was shot and killed by Laurie Dann, inside an elementary school in Winnetka, Illinois, United States, on May 20, 1988.

[7][8][9] Laurie was described as shy and had trouble socializing; in childhood she displayed signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder but they seemingly disappeared when she started adolescence.

The Wassermans vacationed in Hawaii over the 1973 holiday season during which time Laurie met Barry Gallup, a year older than her and also from the Chicago area.

During a summer trip to Aspen, Colorado, she met another boy her age named Wade Keats, also from the Chicago area, and they continued seeing each other afterwards but broke it off in two months.

[7][8] She graduated from Winnetka's New Trier High School in 1975, and despite poor grades was able to attend Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

[8] When her academic record improved, Dann transferred to the University of Arizona with the goal of becoming a teacher, although she was rather non-serious about it and reportedly told an acquaintance that she really just wanted to find a husband.

[7][8] Laurie began working as a cocktail waitress at Green Acres, an exclusively Jewish country club, and it was here that she met Russell Dann, a 25 year old insurance salesman for his parents' insurance firm, and told him a series of exaggerated claims about herself, including that she was a graduate student at Northwestern University and working towards a career in hospital administration.

However, the marriage quickly soured as Russell's family noted signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and strange behavior from his wife,[7] including leaving trash around the house.

Since Laurie did not have a criminal record, she was able to legally obtain a firearm but police were concerned and unsuccessfully tried to persuade Dann and her family that she should give it up.

During June, Dann was in the process of divorce negotiations with Russell in which her father Norm demanded a $100,000 lump settlement with $20,000 monthly alimony payments for ten years.

[7] In August 1986, Dann contacted her ex-boyfriend Steve Witt, who was by then a resident at a New York hospital and now married to a different woman, and claimed to have had his child.

Police decided not to press charges based on a medical report which suggested that the injury might have been self-inflicted, as well as Russell's abrasive attitude towards investigators and a failed polygraph test.

Once again, her strange behavior was noted, including riding up and down in elevators for hours, wearing rubber gloves to touch metal and leaving meat to rot in sofa cushions.

[8] Despite the intervention, Dann's strange behavior continued, including riding elevators for long periods, changing television channels repetitively and an obsession with "good" and "bad" numbers.

Assistant US Attorney Janet Johnson considered charging Dann with making threatening interstate phone calls.

However, Steve Witt, fearful of publicity,[7] and concerned about Dann getting bail and then attempting to fulfill her death threats, decided to wait until other charges were filed in Illinois.

[8][10][11] That same month, a janitor found Dann lying in the fetal position inside a garbage bag in a trash room.

[7][8][11] During the days before May 20, 1988, Dann prepared rice cereal snacks and juice boxes poisoned with the diluted arsenic she had stolen in Wisconsin.

[7][8] Other snacks were delivered to Alpha Tau Omega, Psi Upsilon and Kappa Sigma fraternity houses and Leverone Hall at Northwestern University.

In addition, the arsenic was highly diluted so nobody became seriously ill.[7] At about 9am, Dann arrived at the home of the Rushe family, former babysitting clients in Winnetka, to pick up their two youngest children.

Dann drove to a Jewish daycare center attended by her ex-sister-in-law's daughter and tried to enter the building with a plastic can of gasoline but was stopped by staff.

Dann next drove the children back to their home and offered them some arsenic-poisoned milk, but the boys spat it out because they found the taste strange.

She shot five children, killing Nick Corwin and wounding four others (Mark Tiborec, Peterman Rowe, Lindsay Fisher, and Catherine Miller) before fleeing in her car.

Abandoning the wrecked car, Dann removed her bloodstained shorts and tied a blue garbage bag around her waist.

[8] Killed: Injured: Corwin's murder inside an elementary school was among the first to feature prominently in the 24-hour news cycle, mostly revolving around Dann's mental state.

Others noted that the shooting marked an "end of innocence"[17] for the prosperous community along Chicago's North Shore, which had not seen a murder in thirty years.

Some favored the involuntary commitment of a person who is determined to be mentally ill and incapable of making informed decisions about treatment; civil libertarians like Benjamin Wolf opposed the idea, saying, "It would be a shame if we cut back on the civil liberties of literally millions of mentally ill people because of the occasional bizarre incident."

[11] Investigations were hampered by their refusal to be interviewed by police[11] or to provide access to Dann's psychiatric records, which were eventually obtained by court order.

The other described a depressed young man who had attempted to commit suicide in the same way that Dann did; he survived and discovered that his brain injury had cured him of his OCD.

[26] In his book The Myth of Male Power, author Warren Farrell suggested that Dann's actions were an example of women's violence against men.