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Killer posted Web links to Columbine videos

By Sara Burnett, Rocky Mountain News (Contact), Ivan Moreno, Rocky Mountain News (Contact), Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 12, 2007 at 12:30 a.m.

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New Life Church security guard Jeanne Assam, 42, gestures Tuesday down the hallway of the east wing of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where she confronted and shot gunman Matthew Murray on Sunday.

Photo by Evan Semon / The Rocky

New Life Church security guard Jeanne Assam, 42, gestures Tuesday down the hallway of the east wing of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where she confronted and shot gunman Matthew Murray on Sunday.

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In the hours between deadly attacks on Christian centers in Arvada and Colorado Springs, Matthew Murray posted links on the Internet to videos featuring the Columbine killers and a man who carried out a 2005 murder-suicide with religious overtones.

Murray, 24, also appears to have created a Web page on the Web site MySpace.com in which he posed as a woman named Sarah, used the screen name "Chrstnnghtmr" - apparently for "Christian nightmare" - and listed English occultist Aleister Crowley as among his heroes.

Murray killed two people and wounded two at an Arvada center for missionaries, then killed two people and injured three at New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

A volunteer security officer shot Murray several times inside the church, and he then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

Arvada police investigators on Tuesday obtained a warrant to conduct an extensive search of the computer found in a dining room of the Arapahoe County home Murray shared with his parents. But even as that portion of the investigation was beginning, an extensive trail left by Murray on the Internet was already emerging.

Messages spoke of abuse

A law enforcement source on Tuesday confirmed Murray used the screen name "nghtmrchld26" on an Internet message board for people disillusioned with some religions.

Eleven messages posted between Sunday's attacks by "nghtmrchld26" spoke of abuse at the hands of Christians, of leaving this nightmare behind to a better place, and quoted liberally from the hate-filled screeds of Columbine High School killer Eric Harris.

Two of the posts also included links to videos featuring Harris and fellow Columbine killer Dylan Klebold that are posted on the Web site YouTube.com.

One five-minute video features still images of Harris and Klebold as well as actors who played them in a movie about the April 20, 1999, attack on the high school. As the pictures flick through in slide- show fashion, the song Anarchy from the band KMFDM plays.

A poster for KMFDM hung on the wall in Harris' bedroom the day of the Columbine killings.

Another message has a link to a video called Hitmen for Hire - a project Harris and Klebold did for a marketing class. In the video, they pose as hit men who get even with students who bully others.

A third message contains a link to a chilling video made by a young man named Ricky Rodriguez, who talks into the camera as he lovingly loads bullets into a gun. Rodriguez, who was raised in a religious organization called The Family International, alleged that he was repeatedly physically and sexually abused.

After making the video, he arranged a meeting with a prominent member of the group and stabbed her to death in January 2005. He then drove to Blythe, Calif., and killed himself.

Woman opened dorm door

The attacks on Sunday began shortly after midnight, when Murray banged on the door at the Youth With A Mission dormitory in Arvada. According to a search warrant affidavit filed in a Jefferson County court Tuesday, resident Stephanie Holman, 19, heard the knocking and assumed it was another resident who had been locked out.

Holman let Murray in, then went to find another resident after he made her nervous, according to the affidavit.

Murray first said he needed to stay the night because he was in town from Oregon. Later he said he was going to stay a few hours while he waited for a ride.

Someone went to get Tiffany Johnson, the 26-year-old hospitality supervisor. Accompanied by staffer Daniel Griebenow, 23, Johnson told Murray he couldn't stay.

That's when Murray fired at least nine shots, killing Johnson and YWAM staff member Philip Crouse, 24. Griebenow was injured, as was staffer Charlie Blanch, 22.

Murray fled on foot.

He was next spotted around 1 p.m. in the parking lot of New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Armed with an assault rifle and two handguns, Murray fired at least 27 shots, entering the church before he was taken down by an security officer Jeanne Assam.

Killed were sisters Stephanie Works, 18, and Rachel Works, 16. Their father, David, was injured, as were two other parishioners, Judy Purcell, 40, and Larry Bourbonnias, 59.

Between the two attacks, Murray left 11 posts on the Internet message board, the first at least two hours after the Arvada shooting, the last a few hours before the one in Colorado Springs.

That first message, time- stamped 3:34 a.m. on Sunday, began, I made a God out of blood . . . not superiority. The words came from the KMFDM song that appears on the video about Harris and Klebold. A link to that video is included in the post.

It was not clear Tuesday what time the message was actually left - it was possible the time stamp was from the Central Time zone, meaning it might actually have been posted at 2:34 a.m. Denver time.

A later post began, Here's the kind of anger when kids get abused and pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and included a link to the Hitmen for Hire video.

Another post began, This kid went through abuse in christianity just like me and my friends and included a link to the Rodriguez video.

Follow-up messages includes passages in which Murray professed frustration with his religious experiences.

Me, I still believe in a loving God . . . but not the christian god who is full of hate . . . and never did anything at all all these years while I've cried out for answers for spiritual truth . . . your christian God never did one thing about any of the abuse me and my christian friends went through . . . why the f*** should I care about any morals?

Other messages quoted liberally from the diatribes of Harris.

The last, time-stamped at 11:01 a.m., ended simply:

YOU CAN'T KILL ME

CUZ I'M ALREADY

INSIDE YOU

SICK

Those words came from the song (Sic) by the band Slipknot.

Posts on the message board match closely with a MySpace page on which Murray appears to have made himself out to be a 23- year-old woman from Englewood.

The MySpace profile has the name "~*Sarah's*~ Chrstnnghtmr," and the user's latest blog entry, left on Saturday, is titled My Prayer and lists the lyrics of the song Among the Flames, by the metal band Setherial.

Among Murray's postings before the New Life Church shootings was an entry titled Prayer, with the same lyrics.

"Chrstnnghtmr" also describes growing up being abused and tormented by christians, and writes about being home-schooled and being part of Youth With A Mission in Denver. One part of the profile begins:

Of course, LOTS of hypocrisy and NO REAL love to be found at YWAM Denver.

Passages are similar

Other nearly identical passages appear on the MySpace page and the message board.

The quote We sold our souls to Rock and roll Mind Control is listed next to the MySpace user's picture; Murray used a similar quote to sign off a Nov. 16 entry on the message board. In that entry he wrote, I sold my soul to rock and roll mind control.

Other similarities include an entry in MySpace called You raped the soul from the child in me, which is part of a posting by Murray on the message board Aug. 5. The words are similar to lyrics of a song called Crwn Thy Frnicatr by Psyclon Nine, with the word raped substituted for the original ripped.

The MySpace page features the song Mr. Crowley.

The Ozzy Osbourne song, covered by a different artist on the page, is a reference to Aleister Crowley.

One of Murray's postings on the message board, left between the shootings, ends simply:

Mister Crowley.

CBS 4 News reporter Rick Sallinger and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Comments

  • December 12, 2007

    9:44 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    fevrier78 writes:

    I feel truly sad for those peoples who had been victims of the shooting. but i also feel sorry for this young man who felt helpless, abused because his freedom as a human being, teenager had been taken away by his parents' strict belief. If we looked at the whole picture- honestly, the blame is on his parents because they had failed to upbring their son and fullfilled his emotional needs which caused him trapped in botomless pit of anger and depression.

    As parents, this can be a very valuable lesson for us, that no matter we think it's for our children's own good, we have always to put ourselves in their shoe- what if we were treated that way- would us grow up happily ???