Apr 18 2007
First Killings Not Over Love
As I posted earlier it is clear that Cho Seung-Hui had no ‘relationship’ with Emily Hilscher, the first person murdered on Monday, and therefore his attack on her in the early morning cannot be automatically laid down to a lover’s quarrel, or even a stalking event – yet:
Heather Haugh, 18, who had been off campus for the weekend, walked up to the dorm shortly before 7.30. She was planning to meet her roommate, Emily Hilscher, so they could walk to chemistry class together.
Police pulled her aside at the door. They told Ms Haugh that her roommate had been shot. They asked about Ms Hilscher’s romances. Ms Haugh told them her roommate had spent the weekend on another college campus with her boyfriend, Karl Thornhill.
…
There is no evidence that he even knew Ms Hilscher.
I know I am repeating this, but it was a premeditated set of actions Cho took that day. He was coldly methodical. Why did he kill Emily and her neighbor Ryan “Stack” Clark in the morning and not just continue to rampage in West AJ which had nearly 900 residents in it? Did he mean to divert police so he could go to Norris unabated? But that would run the risk of a lockdown and him not being able to find targets. None of this makes sense. He had a ‘deed to be done’ and announced on a website he was going to do some killing. He had training manuals on mass killing and he clearly disliked a lot about Western Culture. This was not a lover’s quarrel as so many assumed it was. And if it was a rampage why start small, stop and then go all out?
Just because she had never spoken to him before doesn’t mean he wasn’t convinced that she was infatuated with him. I have witnessed this behavior before from someone like Cho (extreme loner, very quiet, kept to himself). He was convinced that a particular woman was “in love” with him. When he finally talked to her about it, she had no idea what he was talking about and he became pretty abusive in his language. The fact that she was seeing someone else seemed to really set the guy off.
But I am hearing two different stories, AJ. I am hearing that he was dating her and I am hearing that they weren’t and I don’t know what to believe. At this point I am 100% convinced that it doesn’t matter and any further dwelling on this subject serves no purpose.
AJ: I second Crosspatch here; I unfortunately, have a member of my own family, who has exhibited this type of behaviour (the Stalking, NOT the Violent part!)
The relative, is absolutely CONVINCED, that he has “relationships” with various women, at various times, and follows them everywhere!
In some instances, he has NEVER even spoken to them; it’s completely in his mind.
In other instances, he may have had a routine “Hi, how are you…” conversation, that to Him, at least, connotes that they are in “love” with him!
This relative has gotten help several times, and we are all aware of it, and we constantly talk to him, and try to ground him in reality, but it doesn’t usually work!
Bottomline; just because she had a boyfriend, and did NOT regard him as a boyfriend, doesn’t mean anything, he was the one who was infatuated, not her!
Trust me, the nutbags out there, don’t need alot of provocation, sometimes!
That said, it’s your Blog, and it’s good you are speculating, and pushing the envelope; you’re a savvy guy, and right a lot of the time; you’re pushing the evelope on this, I understand what you are doing, and that’s fine.
But even for me, a proponent of Sudden-Jihad-Syndrome, and hater of all Jihadis and all things Salafiyya; I need a little more “evidence”, before I jump onto the bandwagon!
Again, I’ll push the sexual abuse angle; but you keep pushing, that’s how some of this stuff comes out sometimes.
I understand the mentality and have seen it also. But the flow of acts still doesn’t make sense. He was in a building with 900 sleeping people. He could have started his massacre right there. He did not. It was PLANNED. There is not doubt about this. So why not take out everyone around Emily? I am not on any bandwagon – just collecting and sharing information.
AJ: I don’t think anyone is disputing that this was “planned”; as he bought the one gun 13 days before, and waited out the 30 day waiting period, it was clearly premeditated.
As far as the sequence of events not making “sense”; that’s to You, and I, right now!
I fear you’re trying to make “sense”, out of something that might not have a lot of “sense” in it!
That said, don’t misread the “bandwagon” comment, and as I said, I know what you are doing, and that’s fine, I appreciate it.
Again, I’m SJS/Jihadi central, as far as that’s concerned, and as soon as I get a “sniff” that it’s related, I’m all over it.
Just right now, not sure I see anything personally; and I think people like Crosspatch, and Terrye, and R05, are onto all good points.
And again, as I mentioned on the other post; can’t fall in love with your own theory (Not You, specifcally; “you” generically); it could be/probably is a combination of all those things:
anti-American/Anti-Western/Anti-Christian/Literary/Cooper/Moby Dick/Sexual abuse/and possibly SJS/Jihadi angle, somehow.
I like that link that someone put up, about the Muslim schools out in the wilderness of Centreville, VA (when I was stationed at Quantico, I used to drive thru there all the time, to go up to PA to visit my parents!)
Aj:
Of course it does not make sense, the man was insane.
Years ago I met a man who was sure that Jane Pauley was in love with him and was sending secret messages in the news. And he managed to hold a job. Loony. Look at the BTK killer in Wichita. Look at the Greeen River Killer. McVeigh. on and on.
It is perfectly normal for rational individuals to search for a reason “why” something happened. We live in a world where 2 + 2 = 4. We have seen the “4” part in the slaughter at VaTech and are searching for the factors. But this was not a rational person. In this person’s case maybe 1+7 = 4. In his mind it all made perfect sense. We are attempting to make sense of it. I am trying to point out the possiblity that maybe we can’t and also that maybe we shouldn’t even try.
I believe our desire to find out “why” is based on a desire to prevent it from happening again. But we can’t. Some other individual will go off for no apparent reason and kill people no matter what we discover from this case. Last week a man set fire to his cousin’s house and burned up the entire family over an argument. Last year a man left a party at a Seattle home and returned with a shotgun killing people at random. And no matter what we discover from this case, it is going to happen again.
If you want to discover the real “why” I have a hunch you would have to go back to the 1990’s in an elementary school in Centreville, VA and find that Korean new kid who was probably the target of every bully in the school. I wouldn’t be surprised if the kids teased him constantly, made cracks that his lunch smelled funny, and having absolutely no friends, began to withdraw into his own head.
Trying to figure out “why” in this case, though it is a natural curiosity, probably won’t save any lives in the future and certainly won’t bring back any that have been lost. There aren’t any do-overs in this case and the person responsible is dead. There is much we are never going to know.
How we can best serve our kids in the future, I believe, is to concentrate instead on how to identify people likely to do this before they do it, how to prevent people from getting into that condition in the first place, and how people should respond if a situation like that ever happens again so that loss of life can be minimized. Those would be constructive conversations. Attempting to link a very obviously sick young man to Islamist terrorists, in my opinion, isn’t so constructive. Heck, he could have decided to wear a ninja suit or a Sioux war bonnet. It really doesn’t matter and our focusing so much effort in a direction of attempting to find a neat set of factors that led to this event really doesn’t matter either because I have a feeling that the preceived “slights” that led this person to “go off” would not be understood by most people and would make absolutely no sense.
The roots of this are probably from the mind of a very sad and scared 8 year old boy.
Change of subject. Washington Times says Bush is going to allow 25,000 Iraqi refugees to immigrate to US. Here’s hoping he isn’t going to bring in 25,000 more Muslims, whether radical or “moderate.” We already have too many of them here spreading their malignant beliefs. How many of you are aware that Bill Clinton allowed 200,000 Muslim refugees from Somolia to relocate to Atlanta GA alone. Goodness knows how many relocated to other places like DEEtroit which is now Detroitistan complete with public prayer calls and it’s own Muslim Rep. in Congress. The fact that Atlanta was the destination of 200,000 Muslim refugees from Somolia came out when a Muslim mother reported to the Atlanta police that her husband, whom she said was a part of a group of 200 Muslim men who were roaming the streets of Atlanta circumcising uncircumcised Muslim girls, had circumcised his own daughter with a pair of scissors. This story did not get widespread coverage in the media.
There should be an absolute ban on any more Muslims immigrating to the US. There are more than enough persecuted Christians and other non Muslims who are in dire need of a safe haven from Muslim persecution for us to even consider importing people who’s religion demands cruel, inhuman, antisocial, behavior of it’s adherants.
Getting back on topic:
Having read this article on Fox it is quite obvious that we are dealing with a very ill young man, not a jihadi.
Mom:
I don’t agree with that. Most of the Muslims here in the US are American citizens, we do not tell people what religion they can practice. Banning people coming to the United States based broadly on their religion is unconstitutional. If they have ties to terrorism or are considered a threat that is different, but to just say Muslims in general are banned it wrong.
BTW, Khalilizad, our ambassador to Iraq and the man who will be replacing Bolton at the UN is a Muslim and so are the majority of the Iraqi people who we are trying to help. Banning them and treating them all like criminals is not right.