Ordo Templi Orientis member kills Christians - 12/12/2007

[Quibus_Licet]

"YOUR Columbine"
Gunman wrote of rejection as reason for revenge
By Jeremy P. Meyer, David Migoya and Christopher N. Osher
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 12/12/2007 10:08:42 AM MST

A former roommate took this photo of Matthew Murray performing in a
Dec. 14, 2002, Christmas program. (Courtesy of Richard Werner)
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At times he was DyingChild_65, at others nghtmrchld26. But regardless
of Matthew Murray's alleged screen name, he was always angry when
posting to various anti-religious websites.

The 24-year-old Arapahoe County resident -- who carried out attacks
Sunday at two religious organizations about 70 miles apart, killing
four people and injuring several others -- exploded on the Internet
between Sunday's shootings.

"Christian America this is YOUR Columbine," said the poster who
appears to be Murray on the newsgroup alt.suicide.holiday almost four
hours before the shooting at the New Life Church campus in Colorado
Springs.

Police say Murray walked onto the campus hurling smoke bombs and armed
with handguns, rifles and 1,000
Murray's Past

* E-mail us if you knew Matthew Murray, and have stories about him
you can share. Or call 303-954-1201.

rounds of ammunition. He fatally shot sisters Stephanie Works, 18, and
Rachael Works, 16, before getting into a gunbattle with a security
guard and finally killing himself, officials say.

Hours before, Murray opened fire in a dormitory for missionaries in
Arvada, killing Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 24.

Between shootings, Murray apparently logged onto a computer and posted
writings from Columbine shooter Eric Harris under his own name, lyrics
from satanic rock songs and rants about being rejected, abused and
suffocated by Christianity.

Authorities have confirmed some website postings; police are still
examining other postings, including ones by DyingChild_65 on
alt.suicide.holiday. Officials from the organizations named in those
postings confirmed some of the details Murray wrote.

A post from DyingChild_65, made at 9:33 a.m. Sunday, said he had been
a member of the Denver chapter of Youth With a Mission, a member of
the occult group Ad Astra Oasis in Denver and a staff member of the
missionary group King's Kids Denver.

Each of those groups on Tuesday confirmed Murray's involvement.

Murray participated in several camps with King's Kids Denver, which
does Christian outreach. The family that
Killer's Rant

* Read the full, unedited version of Matthew Murray's final web
posting, filled with profanity and hatred of Christians.

runs King's Kids Denver introduced Murray to Youth With a Mission in
Denver, said Paul Filidis, a spokesman for Youth With a Mission in
Colorado Springs.

"They said he was a special case," Filidis said Tuesday, agreeing to
speak after talking with King's Kids Denver director Ronny Morris.

After Youth With a Mission officials refused to send Murray on a
mission, the Morris family offered to talk to YWAM officials but
Murray asked them not to, said Filidis.

Morris' daughter Veronica said, "We loved Matthew, and we cared for
him the best we could."

Angered by rejections

DyingChild_65 did not feel loved. He wrote that he was angered by
being rejected by various groups over the years.

"I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things," one post
said. "Never inviting me to all your fun parties, never inviting me to
hang out."

The killings in Arvada followed a night of Christmas revelry by the
young people training to be missionaries, said Peter Warren, YWAM
director. Murray arrived after the Christmas party, asking to stay at
the dorm. He talked with staffers for 30 minutes before firing.

Later, on the alt.suicide.holiday website, DyingChild_65 wrote that he
had looked everywhere for spiritual truth.

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

DyingChild_65 ends his rant by saying: "Like Cho, Eric Harris, Ricky
Rodriguez and others, I'm going out to make a stand for the weak and
the defenseless this is for all those young people still caught in the
Nightmare of Christianity for all those people who've been abused and
mistreated and taken advantage of by this evil sick religion Christian
America this is YOUR Columbine."

Rodriguez, as a child member in a cult, was forced to perform sex
acts. He later left the cult, killed a former nanny and then killed
himself. In April, Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32
people and himself in the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history.

At least one visitor to the website was alarmed and contacted the FBI
promptly, before the second attack, 9News reported the site's
administrator as saying.

The FBI confirmed to 9News that the bureau got the warning about 10:30
a.m. Sunday. Murray's final posting on the website was at 11:03 a.m.

The FBI told 9News that after it got the warning, it contacted Arvada
police. Agents were examining Murray's posts when the shootings at New
Life Church occurred.

Carl Raschke, a professor of religious studies at the University of
Denver, said he believes Murray was "under huge psychological
turmoil."

"It seemed like he was involved in his own spiritual battle against
the empire of Christianity," adding that one of the screen names,
nghtmrchld26, is taken from a video game in which characters battle
evil demons.

"I would call him a defector from the spiritual warfare that he was
brought up in," Raschke said.

Asked to leave group

Steve Mariner, the president of Denver's occult group Ad Astra Oasis,
says Murray attended group meetings for about a year before being
asked to leave in September.

Ad Astra Oasis is an officially chartered body of the Ordo Templi
Orientis, a ceremonial magic order based on the teachings of English
poet and mystic Aleister Crowley.

"He was a mostly quiet, geeky young man," Mariner said of Murray. "He
was a skinny little kid. He was your typical I-like-college-over-cars
type. He was a voracious reader, as far as I could tell. I never heard
him raise his voice."

Mariner said the group of about 15 people realized over time that
Murray was not fitting in.

"It seemed like he needed some time to back off and evaluate himself,"
he said. "We could summarize it as saying the personalities were not a
good mix."

Mariner said he was shocked when he learned Murray was the shooter.

"You are sitting there having a conversation with someone ," Mariner
said. "We all have our little personality quirks, but you don't
appraise them of being someone who would go off and do something this
atrocious."

That Murray shot several people horrified Richard Werner, a missionary
who bunked with him in Arvada in 2002, but it didn't surprise him.

"It was something you can't ever imagine, but it was so obvious after
it happened," said Werner, 34, who now lives in Brazil. "It's just
because of the way he used to behave."

Uncomfortable memories

Werner shared a dormitory with 18 other people, and Murray slept on a
bottom bunk next to his. Now a cook who ministers in his free time,
Werner said his time with Murray left him with some uncomfortable
memories.

One experience jarred Werner enough to note it in his diary.

"It was Oct. 23 of 2002," Werner said Tuesday in a telephone interview
from Brazil. "He was tossing and turning in the middle of the night,
talking to himself. I asked him if everything was OK, and he said,
'I'm just talking to my voices.' "

The response jarred Werner.

"I said, 'Dude, you've got to be kidding,' " Werner recalled. "And he
said, 'Don't worry, Richard. You're a nice guy and you have nothing to
worry about. The voices like you.' "

Another memorable incident occurred at a missionary Christmas party
where attendees grouped together and some sang songs in the talent-
show atmosphere, Werner said.

"He just went up there to sing, and one of the songs was 'I'm One Step
Closer to the Edge,' which really upset people," Werner said.

The Linkin Park song culminates with the anguished phrase "I'm about
to break!"

When directors at the school decided in December 2002 that Murray
shouldn't join others on a mission trip to Bosnia, Werner said it was
because "people weren't comfortable with his behavior."

"He wasn't kicked out," he said. "The directors had a conversation
with his parents, and it was decided it would be better if he leave."

On another website, a poster named nghtmrchld26, believed by police to
be Murray, said he rebelled against an upbringing that forbade him
from buying rock music, video games and popular DVDs.

He writes that he felt oppressed by the restrictions. The hypocrisy of
religious leaders, he wrote, prompted him to rebel, although he feared
"returning back to what is at least 'familiar,' into a system I at
least know how to behave in.' "

In another posting, Murray wrote of a crushing depression that would
not respond to intensive therapy or medication.

"This is the Nightmare that just goes on and on," he wrote.

Some postings harbor bitterness toward Youth With a Mission. He said
the staff there decided to tell him one week before an outreach
mission that they did not want him to go.

"The fact is, in YWAM, and christianity, it's all about the Beautiful
People," he wrote.

Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpm...@denverpost.com

http://origin.denverpost.com/news/ci_7696043