A sexually frustrated man who killed three women in a Pennsylvania health club, then himself, blogged his preparations — with the final chilling entry announcing the “big day,” police said on Wednesday.
The killer, who late on Tuesday burst into the LA Fitness Gym in Bridgeville, near Pittsburgh, and sprayed 36 bullets, apparently wrote the blog on a personal web page starting last November.
On the eve of the killings, he wrote: “Took off today, Monday, and tomorrow to practice my routine and make sure it is well polished ... Tomorrow is the big day.”
Police superintendent Charles Moffatt said the killer, George Sodini, prepared meticulously.
After twice visiting the gym earlier in the day, Sodini entered the Latin dance class, turned off the lights and opened fire, Moffatt said in a nationally televised press conference.
“He shot at least 36 times. He had clips of ammunition that held 30 rounds,” Moffatt said, adding that the military-style ammunition had been legal since 2004, when a ban expired.
The blog, which Moffatt said was being treated as genuine and which was quickly pulled off the Internet, reveals a sinister, often banal mind of a man crippled by sexual frustration, anger at women and depression.
Moffatt said the blog clearly showed “the hatred in him.”
In the blog, Sodini wrote as far back as Nov. 5, 2008, that he “planned to do this in the summer” but decided to see the result of the presidential election won by US President Barack Obama.
In December, he again wrote that he had “planned to do this already” and sets Jan. 6 as the new date.
But the next entry described him pulling out at the last minute: “It is 8:45pm: I chickened out! Shit! I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!”
Throughout nine months of rambling entries, Sodini revealed his fixation on rejections from women and extreme sexual frustration.
“Last time I slept all night with a girlfriend, it was 1982. Proof I am a total malfunction. Girls and women don’t even give me a second look ANYWHERE. There is something BLATANTLY wrong with me.”
He was angry at a brother whom he described as a bully and what he described as a distant relationship with his father.
In the last entry on Monday, he showed alarm at meeting a happy neighbor, who he worried would distract him from the murders.
“I need to remain focused and absorbed COMPLETELY.”
His last words on the blog: “Death lives!”
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