Lyndon McLeod’s family say they were estranged for years. The man who authorities believe killed five people in a shooting spree across the Denver metro Monday wrote about killing two of the victims in a series of novels he self-published in the four years leading up to the attacks. Lyndon McLeod, 47, wrote about similar murders, personal grudges and a desire for revenge in the three rambling, misogynistic and racist novels, which focused on rage, violence, economic inequality. In the second novel, McLeod describes an attack on a tattoo parlor in the 200 block of W. 6th Avenue. The character named “Lyndon MacLeod” bursts into the tattoo shop and kills several people, including the owner of the shop. In reality, police said, McLeod went to that block on Monday, fired shots and set a van on fire, but did not kill anyone. McLeod co-owned a tattoo parlor in that block in 2013 called All Heart Enterprise, said James Clarke, who worked at the shop. At least two people McLeod targeted during his rampage worked with him at the business, which failed because McLeod was controlling, fought with all the employees and acted like a bully, Clarke said. (…) McLeod’s writings indicate he spent years thinking deeply about the crimes he went on to commit, said Max Wachtel, a forensic psychologist based in Aurora. “What it sounds like is he had had these fantasies for a long time and was acting them out maybe through his writing,” Wachtel said. Sometimes, writing out fantasies can be an appropriate way to relieve the pressure of a fantasy without actually acting on it, he said. “It could have been his way to get these sick fantasies out of his mind, and then he acted on them anyway, or it might have been a thinly veiled plan,” Wachtel said. The most common motive for mass shootings is revenge, Wachtel said, and violent writings like McLeod’s should raise red flags when they name real people and places. “In my professional experience, if one of the people who had been named in one of these books knew about it and took it to a judge as proof that this person was dangerous and needed a protective order, a judge would most likely take this seriously and issue that protection order,” he said.
via denverpost: Denver gunman’s novels named real-life victims, described similar attacks
siehe auch: ; Social media show Denver shooter is a ‘white supremacist and misogynist obsessed with masculinity’. After keeping his identity secret for over 24 hours, the shooter in a deadly mass shooting in Denver, Colorado, on Monday was not only identified but said to have been previously criminally investigated both this and last year for undisclosed suspicions. But that’s not all: In addition to being on law enforcement’s radar, 47-year-old Lyndon James McLeod had also been described on social media as both a white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer. Multiple posts back up these claims in which McLeod also signaled clear hatred toward women. The killings are speculated to be connected to his extremist views. According to the official Twitter account for Colorado Springs Anti-Fascists, a group that is “exposing fascists and disrupting their organizing in so-called Colorado,” McLeod “was a white nationalist.” The group provided screenshots of tweets from McLeod’s account to back up its claim. “The Denver mass shooter was a white supremacist and a misogynist obsessed with masculinity, oppressing women, defending the white race, and shooting communists,” Colorado Springs Anti-Fascists said in a tweet. The organization also noted that McLeod often partook in right-wing extremist spaces under the pen name Roman McClay; ‘The Weak Better Buckle Up’: Denver Gunman Left Online Trail of Hate. A Daily Beast analysis of social media posts seems to paint McLeod as an author dedicated to alt-right philosophies—including violence. Lyndon McLeod, who police say killed five people during a deadly rampage in the Denver area, was an author dedicated to alt-right philosophies, including masculine supremacy, contrarian COVID-19 beliefs, and targeted violence against the “weak”—including those he killed. McLeod appears to have operated a plethora of Twitter and Instagram accounts under the alias Roman McClay, which he used for his three-book series Sanction. The book series, with its first book described in an Amazon review as “eloquent reflections on dominance hierarchies, psychology, technology, nature, violence, anatomy and physiology, sexual morality, drug use, politics, and a whole mess of stuff,” follows a character named Lyndon McLeod, a persona named after its author who “commits 46 murders” in the book and one he seemed to allow to seep into his real life. The Denver Post reported Wednesday that McLeod named two of his five victims—Alicia Cardenas and Michael Swinyard—in his books and even described similar attacks
