Using my cyber-sleuth skills, I spent the next few minutes tracking down his online personas, reading his blogs, finding out about his hobbies and interests.
I started getting freaked out when I realized that we had more than just an online game in common.
Monty Python, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Fight Club, They Might Be Giants, Weird Al, 80's music, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Onion, Slashdot, Lovecraft...
And it's not just interests either. He talks in his blogs about how he's shy and somewhat socially inept... Dealing with depression and it's effects... Stuck in a crappy job...
Holy crap - this guy could be me! (or at least someone I would probably hang out with if he lived in Duluth)
Though I'm not a religious person, the phrase "there but for the grace of God goes I" came into my mind. I have so much in common with this person, but yet nothing in common when it comes to the details surrounding his crime. What is it that makes us so similar, yet separates us so far? What drives a person to commit such an act? Is it hiding in all of us? In me?
It's so much easier to view horrible crimes from a distance - to picture the killer as someone so deranged and bizarre that they're almost non-human. But to look into the eyes of the killer, and see familiarity? Creepy.