Killer's Web rants full of venom

Tirades echo the rumors he spread while at YWAM

By Alan Gathright, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Barry Gutierrez / The Rocky

A woman joins mourners Wednesday as they sing songs during a memorial service for Youth With A Mission students Tiffany Johnson and Philip Crouse at Faith Bible Chapel in Arvada.

In searing Web rants, Matthew Murray vowed revenge against Christianity and the missionary school he claimed "rejected" him as he slid into a deepening depression and state of self-destruction.

"Christian America . . . this is YOUR Columbine," Murray warned in a posting at 9:33 a.m. Sunday - after killing two young people at the Youth With A Mission school in Arvada and hours before he would kill two others and himself at a Colorado Springs megachurch.

"I've heard all the sermons on salvation and s--- . . . I've looked everywhere for spiritual truth," he wrote under the persona "DyingChild_65" at a Google forum called alt.suicide.holiday.

"All I found in christianity was hate, abuse (sexual, physical, psychological, and emotional), hypocrisy, and lies."

One Web viewer was so alarmed by Murray's writings that the person contacted the FBI after the Arvada shootings Sunday morning.

Federal agents and Arvada police began a frantic search for Murray but were unable to stop him before his rampage continued at New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Murray killed himself after a church security guard shot him several times.

Murray also complained about being abused during 12 years of strict, Bible-based home-schooling.

"I remember the beatings and the fighting and yelling and insane rules and all the Bill Gothard bull---- and then trancing out," he wrote Dec. 1 under the monicker "nghtmrchld26" on a Web forum for former Pentecostal Christians. Bill Gothard is the founder of the Institute in Basic Life Principles in Illinois, which promotes a Christian home-education program.

"I remember how it was like every day was Mission Impossible trying to keep the rules or not get caught and just . . . survive every single (expletive) day," Murray wrote.

It's hard to determine which of Murray's writings are fact or fiction.

He also claimed: "I've been through alcohol and drug addiction, and recently a divorce, my parents kicked me out at age 15, I can't go to college because I don't have money and I have kids to support."

Yet, there's no indication that the 24-year-old Murray, who lived with his parents in Arapahoe County, was ever married or had children.

His Web tirades frequently complain that the Youth With A Mission training center in Arvada unfairly "rejected" him for being introverted and too questioning during his 2002 missionary training.

"YWAM, and christianity, it's all about the Beautiful People," the 24-year-old Murray wrote May 8 as nghtmrchld26.

Homosexuality rumors

He washed out of YWAM's six-month program after alarming classmates and instructors by talking to his inner "voices," spreading rumors about group homosexuality in the men's shower room and singing dark rock songs as a Christmas celebration.

During his ill-fated missionary training, Murray wrote, "I witnessed all kinds of insanity. Men would be making out with other men in the hallways, listening to all kinds of "metal music" (non-christian), smoke pot with each other while off base, there were rumors of sexual activity, both hetero and homosexual."

The Web posting echoes the rumors that Murray spread at the YWAM program in 2002, said Richard Werner, who bunked next to the troubled teen for four months. Such rumor-mongering irked other classmates and caused them to complain to school officials.

"Yeah, this was one of the things that he used to gossip about," Werner said. "This was like the things that people really started to get angry (about)."

The ex-roommate said Murray would not shower with the others in the communal men's bathroom, saying: "Because I know what you guys are doing . . . You all go to your (communal) bathroom and then you start dancing with each other, touching each other."

While he is sympathetic to Murray's tragic end - and the pain the gunman's family has suffered - Werner said he believes his classmate created many conflicts about the center in his head.

Werner said school leaders settled problems and administered discipline fairly and openly, treating all students the same.

Contrary to the Web rants about the missionary school, Werner said: "YWAM was always a very honest, serious institute, where those kinds of things are obviously not allowed."

After the shootings, YWAM issued a statement saying Murray left the Discipleship Training School because "program directors felt that issues with his health made it inappropriate for him" to complete the course.

Yet, in the May posting, nghtmrchld26 writes: "Why was I told that I couldn't be a missionary because I wasn't "social enough"? I was told that I was "an introvert."

He criticized "the authoritarianism and hypocrisy" of "YWAM leaders (who) would always believe that they had some special 'connection to God.' "

"The fact is, in YWAM, and christianity, it's all about the Beautiful People," he wrote. "No, it's not just 'one group of bad christians' but rather . . . almost every group of christians except for a few open minded non-evangelical churches."

Claims of 'cutting'

Nghtmrchld26 claimed to have engaged in "cutting," carving self-inflicted cuts and nicks in his skin - a disorder that tends to afflict young people.

He wrote:

"Come and sing with me

This beautiful song of sadness and misery

Cutting ourselves

Crying awash in crimson

". . . As all the pain fades away

Taking your last breath

As the blood and pain drains

Leaving everyone....to die in their misery and hypocrisy

We're going home to a beautiful place far away from here."

In an August posting titled, "Drowning in despair," nghtmrchld26 launches into a poem about "Crying all alone," writing:

"As I see everyone going on with their meaningless vain fake lives

All the posers and wannabes

All the abusers . . ."

Murray says he found consolation in "Cutting myself/High off the pain and darkness . . ."

"Seeing so many fakers hating me

So many of my friends who have abandoned me

So many spiritual pretenders who failed to help me.

I'm your nightmares come true

You think you can punish me but you fail to see

That I've lived through a thousand nightmares

And all your worst Christian fears are coming true"

• December 15, 2007

  5:47 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Maija writes:

  Alt.suicide.holiday is not a website or a "Google forum". It is a Usenet newsgroup, founded years before the world wide web even existed. As a journalist it ticks me off when reporters can't even do the basic research - it seems to be the sensationalistic headlines that matter, not the facts.