Murder on social media: Killer wanted the world to watch
The Twitter and Facebook accounts were created just last week.
Videos labeled as tests were added.
Then, as the nation learned that two journalists had been shot to death during a live TV broadcast Wednesday, the self-identified gunman used those accounts to post chilling videos showing him approach the scene, raise his gun and fire.
Vester Lee Flanagan II is identified as the gunman in the shooting deaths of WDBJ7-TV reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward. Parker was interviewing Vicki Gardner, a local official, at Smith Mountain Lake, Va., when all three of them were shot at 6:45 a.m. ET on live TV. Parker and Ward died. Gardner had emergency surgery and was in stable condition Wednesday.
Flanagan's tweets began at 11:09 a.m. When he worked for WDBJ7, he went by Bryce Williams on air. Both the Twitter handle and Facebook page were created under that name.
Flanagan, who was tweeting while fleeing the scene, said that Parker made racist comments and that he filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report. He also tweeted that Ward went to human resources about him "after working with me one time!!!"
Then came the videos.
At 11:14 a.m. Flanagan tweeted two short videos and posted a 56-second video to Facebook. The videos show the incident from the gunman's perspective. Chilling and raw, the shooter approaches Parker, Ward and Gardner, and lifts the gun into view. He stands there unnoticed as the live broadcast continues. The shooting occurs about 40 seconds into the video.
“He wasn’t just bent on revenge; he was bent on doing it in a visible, videographic way,” said psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman, a professor and chairman of psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York.
"It’s applying social media to committing a homicide,” Lieberman said. "This bears all the earmarks of our culture — ready availability of guns and social media-facilitated ability to disseminate this instantly.”
J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and co-editor of The International Handbook of Threat Assessment, notes that many mass killers in recent years have been “copy cats,” inspired by previous murders. But these killers also often want to make their mark by outdoing their predecessors. “They look for something that hasn’t been done before and then do it,” Meloy said. “They may be looking for a higher body count or a new way of killing.”
The first-ever tweets from the account, which was quickly suspended Wednesday, were posted Aug. 19. Multiple tweets showed pictures Flanagan identified as baby pictures of himself and modeling head shots. He also posted a picture of his bedroom. The same day, he shared pictures of himself at what he called "a worker's comp company" in Roanoke, Va., as well as selfies at what he identified as United Healthcare in Roanoke.
In addition to the video of the shooting, the Facebook account showed videos of Flanagan as a journalist. Multiple versions of what appeared to be Flanagan's reporting highlight reel included him holding a gun in a gun store during a reporting assignment. The videos also showed him covering stories on security systems at liquor stores, dead bodies discovered in a bedroom, bears disturbing a neighborhood and winter weather. Multiple videos are labeled as "test," a few show his cats, and one video appears to show Flanagan modeling on a runway. The earliest posts to the account are from Aug. 18.
Most people who commit a violent crime "have a very distorted view that what they are doing is a good thing," said Raymond DiGiuseppe, Ph.D., a psychology professor at St. John’s University. These criminals "want to get the message out to as many people as possible. Social media allows you to get the message out to people you've never met."
Contributing: Liz Szabo, USA TODAY