True Crime Campfire - Supreme Jackass: The Crimes of Elliot Rodger, Part 1

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

On May 23rd, 2014, the city of Isla Vista California was shocked by a vicious murder spree—six people dead, more than a dozen others injured. The killer was a 22 year old man named Elliot Rodger, whose on-paper resume would never have hinted at anything like this. Born into a well-to-do family with Hollywood connections, blessed with good looks and intelligence and parents who adored him—allowed into exclusive events like movie premieres and fancy industry parties, given every opportunity you could possibly hope for. Dude could have been sailing through life. But for whatever reason, he’d been plagued since childhood with a hyperactive sense of entitlement, a raging narcissism that sent him into a rage at any perceived slight. As he got older, his rage began to focus on one singular obsession: Beautiful women, and the fact that he couldn’t seem to get them to like him. Never mind the fact that he spoke to them like a Roman emperor barking orders at a servant, in his mind hot women should be flocking to him, offering him their bodies as tribute to his magnificence. He was, after all, a “Supreme Gentleman.” And when they showed interest in other guys instead, it was war. Now, plenty of us have experienced sexual rejection. Most of us, in fact. But for Elliot, it became the sole focus of his life, fueling a rage that would consume him, and take innocent people with him. Join us for Part 1 of this frustrating story.Sources:https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-44053828 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/02/us/elliot-rodger-killings-in-california-followed-years-of-withdrawal.html https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/maniac-writes-manifesto-prior-deadly-rampage-article-1.1805474 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/sheriff-calif-shooter-rodger-flew-under-the-radar-when-deputies-visited-him-in-april/2014/05/25/88123026-e3b4-11e3-8dcc-d6b7fede081a_story.html https://www.kron4.com/news/elliot-rodger-rehearsed-killing-roommates-before-ucsb-rampage/ https://www.cnn.com/2014/05/26/justice/california-elliot-rodger-timeline https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1173808-elliot-rodger-manifesto https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-27593514 https://people.com/crime/5-years-later-remembering-the-6-student-victims-of-the-isla-vista-killings/ https://www.kxan.com/stop-mass-shootings/data-mass-shooter-profiles-weapons-and-warning-signs/ Mass Shootings by Schildkraut and Elsass https://www.theviolenceproject.org GUNS AND CONTROL BY GUY SMITH The Violence Project by Peterson and DensleyABC's "20/20," episode "The Secret Life of Elliot Rodger"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. On May 23rd, 2014, the city of Isla Vista, California was shocked by a vicious murder spree. six people dead, more than a dozen others injured. The killer was a 22-year-old man named Elliot Roger, whose on-paper resume would never have hinted at anything like this.

Born into a well-to-do family with Hollywood connections, blessed with good looks and intelligence and parents who adored him, allowed into exclusive events like movie premieres and fancy industry parties, given every opportunity you could possibly hope for. Dude should have been sailing through life. But for whatever reason, he'd been plagued since, childhood with a hyperactive sense of entitlement, a raging narcissism that sent him into a rage at any perceived slight. As he got older, his rage began to focus on one singular obsession,

beautiful women, and the fact that he couldn't seem to get them to like him. Never mind the fact that he spoke to them like a Roman emperor barking orders at a servant, in his mind, hot women should be flocking to him, offering him their bodies as tribute to his magnificence. He was, after all, the supreme gentleman. when they showed interest in other guys instead, it was war. Now, plenty of us have experienced sexual rejection, most of us, in fact, but for Elliot, it became the sole focus of his life, fueling a rage that would eventually consume him and take innocent people with him. This is Supreme Jackass, the crimes of Elliot Roger.

So, campers, for this one, we're in Isla Vista, California. May 23, 2014 was the Friday before Memorial Day, and Peter Roger was having a nice dinner with some friends when his phone suddenly pinged. He had just enough time to notice that the notification was an email from his 22-year-old son, Elliot, something with an attachment titled My Twisted World before the phone rang. It was Li Chen, his e-chan. X and Elliot's mother, and she was in a panic. Look at Elliot's YouTube, she said, a desperate edge in her voice. She'd read a few lines of My Twisted World, and with a sinking feeling in her

stomach, immediately Googled her son's name to see if he was in the news. He wasn't, but what popped up on her Google search was a video called Elliot Rogers Retribution. And as she watched it, that impending feeling of doom got stronger by the second. Here's the transcript of Elliot's video. Elliot Roger here. Well, this is my last video. It all has to come to this. Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day I will have my revenge against humanity, against all of you. For the last eight years of my life, since I hit puberty, I have been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires, all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection and sex and love to other men, never to me. I'm 22 years old. I'm 22 years old.

and still a virgin, never even kissed a girl. And through college, two and a half years, more than that, actually, I'm still a virgin. It has been very torturous. College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure. In those years, I've had to rot in loneliness. It's not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. It's an injustice, a crime, because I don't know what you don't see in me. I'm the perfect guy, and yet you throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman. I will punish all of you for it. On the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority house at UCSB, and I will

slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blonde slut I see inside there. All those girls I've desired so much, they have all rejected me and looked down on me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance toward them, while they throw themselves at these obnoxious brutes. I take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you. You will finally see that I am, in truth, the superior one, the true alpha male. Yes, after I have annihilated every single girl in the sorority house, I'll take to the streets of Ila Vista and slay every single person I see there. All those popular kids who live such lives of hedonistic pleasure, while I've had to rot in loneliness all these years. They all look down upon me. Every time I tried to join them, they've all treated me like a

mouse. Well, now I will be a god compared to you. You will all be animals. You are animals, and I will slaughter you like animals. I'll be a god exacting my retribution on all those who deserve it, and you do deserve it, just for the crime of living a better life than me. The popular kids, you have never accepted me, and now you will all pay for it. Girls, all I ever wanted was to love you, be loved by you. I wanted a girlfriend. I wanted sex, love, affection, adoration. You think I'm unworthy of you. That's a crime I can never get over. If I can't have you girls, I will destroy you. You denied me a happy life, and in turn, I will deny all of you life. It's only fair. I hate all of you. It keeps going. Katie, can you take over because I can't do this shit

anymore. Yeah, I got you. Humanity is a disgusting, wretched, depraved species. If I had it in my power, I would stop at nothing to reduce every single one of you to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood, and rightfully so. You deserve to be annihilated, and I will give that to you. You never showed me any mercy, so I will show you none. And then he laughs. He keeps laughing for some reason. you forced me to suffer all my life now i will make you all suffer i waited a long time for this i'll give you exactly what you deserve all of you all you girls who rejected me looked down upon me you know treated me like scum while you gave yourselves to other men and all you men for living a better life than me all of you sexually active men i hate you i hate all of you I can't wait to give you exactly what you deserve. Annihilation.

If you're thinking, wow, Elliot speaks like an anime villain. You're right. Like Skeletor? Or Dr. Evil? I don't know. Real tough to see why the girls weren't crawling all over this one, right? Uh-huh. Yeah. So as soon as they saw this bizarre video, both Elliot's parents were struck by what Peter later called a really dark force of horrible energy. Peter and his wife, Somaya, jumped in their car, and Lee jumped in hers, and they all drove hell-bent for leather from L.A. to Ila Vesta, where Elliot lived. They all knew that something bad, something unthinkable, was about to happen.

Maybe if they could get to Elliot in time, they could stop it. In the midst of his panic, Peter remembered that just a few weeks before, Lee Chin had called the cops on her son about his online rants. But Elliot had smoothed it over, told the officers that the videos were just harmless venting, and they believed him. If the police had done a check to see if Elliot Roger owned any firearms, things might have turned out very differently. Because the fact was, Elliot had already bought three semi-automatic weapons by this point, and he'd been practicing with them at a local firing range.

But they didn't check, just took his word for it, that he was only venting in those videos and left. I mean, who among us hasn't filmed, edited, and posted vitriolic, misogynistic nonsense on YouTube for kicks, you know? As he and his wife barreled towards Ila Vista, Peter Roger called his son over and over again, but got no answer. He didn't know what he was planning to do when he found Elliot, he said later. I just wanted to go and find him and talk to him, do something, you know, hold him, talk reason. But it was too late for that. As they neared Ila Vista, Peter's phone pinged with me. news stories about an active shooter on the campus of UC Santa Barbara involving a black

BMW. Peter's stomach dropped into his shoes. He called the sheriff's office, but they didn't tell him much over the phone, just directed him to a Home Depot parking lot the police set up as a meetup spot for survivors and their families. And it was there, finally, that the sheriff approached Peter and Somaya. He didn't mince words. He looked Peter in the eye and said, we found a deceased person and we found a license in his pocket that fits your son's description. Peter's blood froze. He said later that he assumed Elliot was one of the shooter's victims. The truth would turn out to be much, much worse.

Elliot Roger was born in 1991, and his father would later tell Barbara Walters that when Elliot was little, he used to laugh so hard they were almost afraid he'd choke. He was a happy little guy, friendly and outgoing. They were living in London when he was born. Peter was a filmmaker who worked on commercials. Later, he'd serve as assistant director of the Hunger Games movie.

Elliot's mom, Li Chen, was a Malaysian-born nurse who worked on movie sets. She worked on Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade. Kind of a Hollywood family. Elliot was their first child together. A little girl, Georgia, would follow four years later. But despite how fun-loving he was as a toddler, as Elliot got older, his parents started to have real concerns about his mental health. When he was seven, Peter and Li Chen divorced, and a year later, Peter remarried to actress Sumaya Akobune.

And as the years went by, Elliot seemed to have more and more trouble getting along with people. He didn't quite fit in with other kids, so Peter moved him from school to school, trying to help him find his niche. But it never seemed to work. Elliot had a short fuse and veered back and forth between insecurity and grandiosity. He was short for his age, and that became a huge deal, huge enslave. security for him. But he also seemed to feel like he deserved to have no less than the best of everything and to be no less than the best. If that didn't materialize, he'd be deeply offended. Like, for a while, he got really into skateboarding, wanted to be a pro skateboarder, but when he tried it and wasn't

an immediate natural, he got angry. Peter and Lee Chen tried to encourage him to practice, but Elliot wasn't having it. When he saw younger kids doing tricks that he couldn't do, he just got pouty and angry. In Elliot's mind, he deserved to be the next Tony Hawk. He shouldn't have to practice like the rest of the plebs. In the manifesto he'd write years later, Elliot looked back at this time of his life with a sort of sneering tone of voice. He said, my little nine-year-old self-realized that there were hierarchies, that some people were better than others. Jealousy and envy. Those are two feelings that would dominate my entire life and bring me immense pain. Jesus.

This little dweeb acts like other people's successes are personal slights to him. Like, y'all will see this as we continue to tell this story, but keep it in mind because every single person he's jealous of has given him precisely zero thought. Like, he just can't handle the thought that everything is not about him. Yeah, and I mean, we've all experienced that once or twice where we've just been irritated that we weren't immediately good at something we wanted to do. But, you know, most of us realize that this is just how it works. You have to practice.

Yeah. You don't just get to immediately, like even Tony Hawk wasn't immediately good at it, for God's sakes, I'm sure. Right. In 1999, Elliot's mother Lee Chen filed an affidavit to the family court, saying that because Elliot was, quote, high-functioning autistic, which I think is a term they don't use anymore, she needed more money for child support. Peter's attorney contested it, saying they needed a second opinion on that diagnosis. It could be depression or anxiety instead. So, for the first time in his life, Elliot started therapy. And we should be clear, although there's been talk about Elliot maybe having OCD or being on the autism spectrum,

he was never formally diagnosed with either of those things. But he was developing some pretty major problems relating to other people. And yet, over the years, Elliot became an expert at hiding his feelings. After the shooting, Peter would say, he's such a good liar that I didn't even know he knew how to lie. If he were sitting here right now, you'd think, What a polite boy, but yet he had this thing going on inside of him. Makes you wonder how much he told his therapist about what was really rattling around in his head. What was mostly going on in there was a churning, malignant jealousy of any and everybody he perceived as better off than he was.

It probably didn't help that he grew up on the outer edges of Hollywood society. His parents knew celebrities and wealthy industry people, and Elliot got a close-up view of how pampered and fond on the A and B-listers were. Yeah, and he was the type to keep a running score sheet in his mind for everybody he knew to keep track of every little tiny perceived slight or insult. And you can tell from the manifesto, he remembers every single one. He mentions people by first and last name. I mean, I literally only remember my best friend's names from middle school or high school, but Elliot kept track. Yeah, it seems like a very on-brand trait for a manifesto guy.

You know, it's not usually going to be your real laid-back devil-may-care kind of folks writing these manifestos. These are the motherfuckers who remember who cut the lunch line ahead of them on Taco Salad Day in the seventh grade. Exactly. You never want to be a manifesto guy. No, it's not a good look. No.

And the thing that really seemed to frustrate the shit out of Elliot was that even his dad's money in Hollywood cred could not seem to get him anywhere with the other kids at school. Like, in middle school, his mom took him to see the premiere of Star Wars, Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith. Elliot was stoked about it. He said, to be able to see it before everyone else made me feel special. I really liked the character Anakin Skywalker, and I was amazed to see his epic transformation into Darth Vader on the high-quality big screen. Finally, having something to brag about, I told everybody at school the next day that I went to the premiere because my mother is friends with George Lucas. The problem was that most eighth graders thought of Star Wars as being a nerdy interest, and they really didn't care.

I was left frustrated and disappointed by their reaction. Oh, honey. Anybody surprised that he admired Darth Vader? No? Just checking. Also, I'm Elliot's age, and I specifically remember nerding out about Star Wars in my math class. So, I don't know, Elliot. Maybe the other kids just didn't like you bragging about a movie they couldn't see yet.

My mother's friends with George Lucas Yeah, it could be that Or maybe they had seen it And just realized what a flaming pile of shit it was Sorry, I know you like the prequels I'm just saying Jar Jar was a crime against humanity And I cannot forget and I cannot forget

Okay, okay I could see what's going on here You are clearly trying to get me canceled I never said Jar Jar Jar was a good character But keep in mind I was eight when the first one dropped So like a perfect age to not see the failure of George Lucas's terrible, terrible, awful, awful writing skills. So let's get that clear. No one, send me mean tweets.

It's not just Jar Jar. It's the pod racing. It's the heart pounding hours long Senate debate. It's all of it, okay? It's not just Jarjar. I hate sand. Anyway, we could, we could go on and on. We can do a whole Patreon thing about this shit one of these days.

We're just going to break it down. Yeah. But speaking of Elliot admiring Darth Vader, he also admired Prince Zucco, who, if you don't know, was the secondary villain in the first couple seasons of the show Avatar, The Last Earbender. Like, Zugo eventually switches sides and fights against the real evil with the power of friendship or whatever. It's one of my favorite, like, shows. And of course, of course, Elliot admires pre-redeemed Prince Zucco, the worst version of Prince Zucco. Star Wars wasn't Elliot's only nerdy interest, though. At 13, he discovered World of Warcraft, the online role-playing game you can play with

bajillions of other people from all around the world. The game is set in a high fantasy world, knights and dragons and magic and all that kind of stuff, and it stoked Elliot's belief in a world full of heroes and villains. We've talked before about how fantasy games are harmless and fun for most of us. I mean, Whitney and I are both gamer nerds from way back. I played D&D last weekend. But for some people, if they're already headed down a path of narcissism and viewing the world in black and white terms, this kind of game could actually make things worse. Yeah, like with Rod Farrell.

I remember, you know, Prince of Dorkness and his vampire role play. Like, dude was obviously already predisposed to think of himself as superior to the rest of the world. And he already had a pretty tenuous grasp on reality. Plus, he was marinating himself in drugs. drawing himself into those vampire games, probably wasn't the best thing he could have done to keep both feet firmly on the ground. Right. If a dude

is already unstable, already thinking of himself as the main character in the movie and everybody else's NPCs, then obsessing over World of Warcraft might not be the best antidote for that mindset. Yeah, the video games aren't causing the problem, obviously, just maybe making an existing problem

a little bit worse. And I mean, at minimum, teaching him to talk like a Tolkien villain with a stick up his ass. Puny mortals, I shall make you all pay. We should give our listeners a test after this episode. Who said it? Elliot Roger or Saraman? Gandalf's evil ex-boyfriend from the Lord of the Rings.

It'd be tougher than you think, I think. I guarantee you, I couldn't do it. I mean, you really can't tell sometimes. It's honestly, we've, yeah, it's difficult. As the time approached for Elliot to start high school, he was excited at first. That is until his dad drove him there on the first day of his freshman year and he saw, quote, the huge high school students and burst into tears. He was too scared to get out of the car, he told Peter, and lo and behold, it was at

Crespy Carmelite High School, an all-boys Catholic school, where Elliot became the target of bullies, though his dad said he never mentioned it to him. Other kids threw food at him in the lunchroom and teased him. They found out that I didn't like being called a skateball. and it was true, Elliot wrote. Because I failed to become good at skateboarding, I developed a hatred for the sport. And whenever someone called me a skateboarder, it reminded me of my failure and I got very angry. The whole school started calling me it just to anger me, along with other insulting names.

You think they called them Smelliot? Yeah, of course. Had to, right? Had to. Smellyit was, like, right there. It's right there. They teased me because I was scared of girls, calling me names like the F word you call gay people if you suck. I don't want to say it.

People also like to steal my belongings and run away in an attempt to get me to chase after them. And I did chase after them in a furious rage, but I was so little and weak that they thought it was comical. I hated everyone at that school so much. Furious rage, they thought it was comical. Elliot Roger or a comic book villain? We don't know. Now, look, we got to talk about the bullying thing, because people always want to bring this up as a reason why people become mass shooters. and I just think it's absolute horse duke.

I got the shit bullied out of me in like elementary and middle school. I assure you, okay, before I got to high school, it was gnarly. When I got to high school, I just hooked up with the theater nerds and started thinking it was kind of funny when the other kids tried to make fun of me. Like, oh, okay, I'm weird, whatever. But before that, it sucked. I'm not going to lie, you know? In middle school, a group of girls decided I was a devil worshipper because I liked those Anne Rice vampire books. And every time I'd come down the hall, they'd all drop to their knees and start praying.

and I got called all kinds of fun names. I mean, I'm sure somebody must have lob the odd tater tot at me in the lunchroom. And honestly, all it did was make me funny. Right. So don't you dare give this little turdlet any latitude whatsoever because a few assholes in high school called him skater. If that's the worst thing that happens to you in the live action, Lord of the Flies RPG that is high school, you're sitting pretty.

Yeah. I mean, just come on already. It's not the bullying. But always keen to help Little Smelliot succeed, Peter and Lee Chen moved him to a different high school, Taft Charter High. But it didn't help matters. Taft had five times as many students as Crespy. It was a public school. It had girls in it, and it had a bad reputation.

I had never been so scared in my entire life. How could they do this to me after knowing what I went through at Cresby? Taft High School would eat me alive and spit me out. I felt so betrayed by my parents. Now this was a charter school Okay, the reputation was fine Rich people are a trip, man Reminds me that shitty kid I used to nanny for

I know I've told you all about this kid Who'd only eat the country club cherry pie You know, all his favorite foods were country club foods God, that kid was the worst That kid was super Elliot Rodgerie I wonder what he's doing now, I really do He's probably a danger to himself and others According to Elliot, the bullying started

almost immediately at the new school. He was shoved into lockers and humiliated in front of girls. Some boys randomly pushed me against the lockers as they walked past me in the hall. One boy who was tall and had blonde hair called me a loser right in front of his girlfriends. Yes, he had girls with him. Pretty girls. And they didn't seem to mind that he was such an evil bastard. In fact, I bet they liked him for it.

This is how girls are, and I was starting to realize it. This was what truly opened my eyes. to how brutal the world is. The most meanest and depraved of men come out on top, and women flock to these men. Their evil acts are rewarded by women, while the good, decent men are laughed at.

It is sick, twisted, and wrong in every way. I hated the girls even more than the bullies because of this. The sheer cruelty of the world around me was so intense that I will never recover from the mental scars. Any experience I ever had before never traumatized

me as much as this. well that is until s e x entered the picture yeah it's around this time in his manifesto that elliot starts talking about masturbation and i think Whitney and i both deserve some kind of award or medal for reading it yeah we need hazard pay for this shit so much hazard pay i will give you a little snippet just a snippet because you don't goody campers you don't deserve to read hear the rest of it because it's the worst. I have to get through this straight-faced. Okay. I looked down at my penis to see that my semen had poured out all over it, like a volcanic eruption of white, sticky fluid. What was happening to me? I thought to myself with nervous excitement. I wish y'all could see my face right now. Seriously, he is the fucking worst. His classmates started bragging about their own sexual exploits. Some of them even told me they had sex with their girlfriends, Elliot wrote.

This was the most devastating and traumatizing thing I've ever heard in my life. Boys having sex at my age of 14? I couldn't fathom it. How was it that they were able to have such intimate and pleasurable experiences with girls while I could only fantasize about it? Because they're lying, dipshit. It's like he's an alien or something. Like, they're lying. And even if they're not, you're 14.

Calm your tits. Give it a minute. For God's sakes, you just got done playing with your G.I. Joes. You got time. Amid the fresh hell of learning that some of the kids who bullied him had gotten to touch boobs, Elliot got transferred to a different high school yet again. This time, a little hundred student private school called Independence High. The principal would later remember Elliot as a smart kid, but socially awkward and withdrawn. She told the New York Times, Sometimes at lunch, kids would encourage him to join their tables, she said. Sometimes he would, but even when he did, he would just kind of be present. He had this push and pull, the principal said, between his desire to engage socially and his fear of rejection.

Once, Elliot had a panic attack that had him frozen in a hallway so that a teacher had to go out to the parking lot and get his mom. He started escaping more and more into World of Warcraft, playing the game instead of doing the schoolwork. When his dad and new stepmom had a baby, all Elliot felt was resentment, especially when they asked him to trade rooms with his baby brother. At Father's House, I was forced to change my bedroom. I was quite annoyed at this. That room was the room that made me so enthusiastic about moving to that house. Father and Sumaya thought moving me was the best solution.

The new baby would get a room close to them, and I would have the much bigger downstairs room. Father, at Father's house. Papa. Papa. Although he resented his little brother, when Elliot was 15, he saved the little boy's life. It was at a 4th of July pool party at the home of some family friends. Elliot wrote about it later in his manifesto. My brother, Jazz, had full exposure to the swimming pool.

He'd already learned how to walk, but he couldn't swim. At one instance, as I was eating lunch, I saw Jazz quickly run off from the adults, completely unattended. I then watched as he curiously examined the water and then descended into the steps of the shallow end of the pool. before long he lost his footing on the steps and his whole body sank into the water nobody noticed elliot wrote he was going to drown i thought with panic i ran as fast as i could plunging into the water with my clothes still on and pulled him out i asked him how he was doing and he coughed up some water and told me he felt fine the only person who saw this happen was a little girl who was swimming in the shallow end i saved his life and my brother remembers it to this very day every single second of my brother's life Everything that happens to him in the future will exist because I pulled him out of the water that day. Okay, wow. Yeah, I think this is one of the most chilling things he's ever written. Like, his brother owes him for saving his life.

His little brother almost died and he made it all about himself. I'm not saying I'm a hero, but I'm a hero. There's a little bit of annoyance in the tone of that whole thing, isn't there? It's like he's pissed off that nobody saw it except this one. little girl. In Elliot's mind, if there was any justice in the world, everybody would have seen it, and they'd have called the local news, and everybody would have picked him up on their shoulders and carried him around, cheering, and people would be throwing rose pedals, and at the end of his ticker tape parade, a bunch of hot naked girls would have thrown themselves

out and begged him to touch their boobies or something. That would have been justice. And like most teenage boys, Elliot was becoming more and more obsessed with sex. He desperately wanted a girlfriend. And look, Elliot had the drip. I'm not going to a lie, okay? He had money. He had designer this and designer that. He had the nice house. He had nice hair. He had everything. Except a personality that wasn't the psychic equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. And when women didn't just magically appear at his front door ready to rumble, it seemed to him like nothing less than a hate crime. In his manifesto, he wrote, Finding out about sex is one of the things that truly destroyed my entire life. Sex. The very

word fills me with hate. I would always covet it. I would always fantasize. I would always fantasize. about it, but I would never get it. Peter said his son did confide in him about his nervousness around girls. He told Elliot that, of course, you'll find a girlfriend. He assumed his anxiety was just regular old jitters, but it was more than that. In a video he filmed after high school, Elliot said, I mean, look at me, I'm gorgeous. He was, as much as I hate to say it, he really was handsome. It's straight up the worst, but he's not ugly.

Yeah, I mean, he is a handsome guy. But you girls don't see it. I don't understand why you're so repulsed by me. Because you are preposterous and awful, Elliot, you talk like that snot-nosed little blonde prince dude in Game of Thrones. This is not that hard to figure out. But of course, Elliot didn't think that way. And by age 18, his confusion about girls gave way to anger. He started to resent women for not wanting him, for ignoring him, as he put it,

despite him having the symmetrical face and the nice clothes and all the other, fixings you were supposed to have. Losing his virginity became an obsession. Get a grit, man. Imagine being this obsessed with sex. I mean, it's good. It's fine. But for God's sake. Yeah, it's not worth all this Rasmataz for sure. Elliot's dad, Peter, tried to reason with him about it. He said, look, dude, of course you're going to find a girlfriend eventually. Just try and relax a little. And you got to make an effort. Women are just going to throw themselves at you. Elliot did not appreciate this, but Peter, bless his heart, soldiered on. It's like, even if it doesn't happen for a while, it's fine.

There's no shame in losing your virginity when you're a little older, and some people never lose it. Some people go into the church and choose to be celibate. As you can imagine, this went over like a lead balloon with Smelliot. His dad just didn't understand. He'd always been able to get all the girls he wanted, which was true, I guess. Apparently Peter had a little David Hasselhoff thing going on. Yeah, Peter's Riz is apparently out of control. because, like, both of his wives are fucking smoke shows.

It's crazy. Oh, beautiful, you know. To his parents, Elliot presented as a lonely boy who just needed a little more confidence. But in his videos and later in his manifesto, a darker picture starts to emerge. It seems like no matter what was going on in Elliot's life, he managed to see the glass half empty, just an angry, angry little parakeet. And was this about the time he started calling himself the same? Supreme Gentleman.

Yeah. And I mean, how could he not? As you're about to see, our boy is an absolute paragon of gentlemanly behavior. I know. God. One time, he was getting coffee at a Starbucks when a couple started kissing in front of him. Ugh. Elliot got his coffee, waited for the couple to leave, followed them to their car, and fucking threw his coffee at them.

Gentlemanly behavior. Gentlemanly behavior. Why wouldn't girls be throwing themselves at him? God, yeah. Loosen your bra straps, ladies. It's time. The boy yelled at me, he wrote later, and I quickly ran away in fear. I had never struck back at my enemies before.

And I felt a small sense of spiteful gratification for doing so. And this is where I have to say I did laugh out loud when I read, I quickly ran away in fear. Because isn't that just like a microcosm of this little. Welp's entire personality, like, well, he's so, he's so proud of himself. And he's like, but I did run away in fear after. Like, dude. He's, it's such a strange combination of like self-deprecate, like constant self-deprecation and self-loathing. And then this grandiose narcissism. Yeah. It's a really just very like blown up example of what narcissism is because at the core of it, it is all about self-loathing. It's just most of them aren't.

that obvious about it. No, yeah. It's really interesting if it didn't make me want to tear my eyes out. Yeah. Anyway, the Starbucks thing was the first time he realized he was capable of killing someone, Elliot said later. I wanted to kill them slowly to strip the skins off their flesh. They deserve it. The males deserve it for taking the females away from me. And the females deserve it for choosing those males instead of me. Oh boy. Okay, quick tip, campers. When a guy refers to women as females, shut it down. Okay? We're not specimens in a dissection tray, fellas. I don't know what it is. I've just, I've never seen that not turn out to be a flaming red flag. Females. It's just, ugh. No, run screaming. I'm telling you. Like 99 times out of

100, that's a flaming red flag. Yeah, I know this is going to be a news flash to some of y'all, but women are actually people, you know, with like thoughts and feelings and stuff, just like you. And like, when they say females, it's like, it's always like some weird generalization about how females always do this or that. And it's like, how many women do you know? Because like one woman did that. And you're like now suddenly like all females just want money. And it's like, I'm sure some women do. Or worse than that, they're just on those, those friggin in-sail internet forums. And they actually don't interact with women ever at all. And they're just taking other dipshit dudes word for it. Anyway, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get there. Hold on. We'll get there. Hold your horses. We're getting ahead of ourselves. It's hard not to. I'm heated right now. I'm sweating. I'm so angry. Yeah. Elliot's, Elliot's a... He's a hot button. But Elliot was proud of himself about the coffee throwing so much that it became kind of a signature for him.

Later that same month, he saw another couple kissing at a food court and got so furious that once again, he followed this poor couple in his car and threw a cup of ice tea at them. He recalled, the hatred boiled inside me with a burning vitriol. Again, who said it? Elliot or an evil wizard from a fantasy novel. It's impossible to tell sometimes. Oh, my God. He was obsessed with blonde girls and convinced himself that they were cruel to him on purpose.

One time, he was driving past a bus stop and saw a couple of pretty, blonde girls there waiting for the bus. He smiled at them, but they ignored him. So, like, any calm, reasonable individual would do, he flipped a Ui and tossed a Starbucks latte all over them. God almighty. Of course, he wrote about the whole thing later. I felt a feeling of spiteful satisfaction as I sought to stay in their jeans.

Oh, paging Dr. Freud. Also, you felt a feeling? Maybe spend a little less time admiring yourself in the mirror and more time tightening up your writing. Smelliot. C-minus. How dare those girls snubby in such a fashion? How dare they insult me so? I rage to myself repeatedly. Yeah, bad writing. They deserved the punishment I gave them. It was such a pity that my latte wasn't hot enough to burn them. Those girls deserve to be dumped in boiling water for the crime of not giving me the attention and adoration I so rightfully deserve. The crime here was that they

didn't smile back at him. Well, and of course. For this, they deserve to be boiled to death. Yeah, and of course he thinks he deserves, you know, maxim models, you know. Feeding him grapes, like a sedan chair. Yeah. Like, that genuinely is what he thinks. God forbid an ugly woman be attracted to him, you know?

Yeah. So, yeah, he needs to work a little bit on his pickup lines, I think. Boiling oil really shouldn't come into it. No. And in yet another example of the supreme jackass resorting to beverage-based violence. He once saw a flock of beautiful blonde girls, which is just a weird way to put it, at a park playing kickball with some dudes that he described as fraternity jocks. For some reason, this ate his lunch so badly that he went to the store, bought a water gun, and a bottle of orange

juice, loaded up the water gun with the orange juice, and went back to the park. I screamed at them with rage as I sprayed them with my super-soaker, he wrote later on. I wished I could spray boiling oil at the foul beasts. They deserve to die horrible, painful deaths just for the crime of enjoying a better life than me. Wow, cool story, bro. So what do we think, y'all? Did this actually happen? Or was

this just Quentin Tarantino Jr.'s little revenge fantasy? My money's on the ladder. I mean, it's such a weird thing to do. And also, I think orange juice might clog up a super-soaker. Well, it depends on whether there's pulp. Yeah, that's true. Has to be no pulp.

Also, like what? he live in a telenovela? Like, what is it with all the fucking drinks? Yeah, it's like you saw Susan Lucci do it on an episode of All My Children when he was a kid and just thought it was like the perfect rich bitch revenge attack, but honey, it doesn't really work unless you're like an exquisitely

dressed lady in a martini bar. Just some weird, screamy dude with a super-soaker full of OJ just doesn't quite have the same panache. And it's like, he didn't mention anything about actually trying to hit on these girls before he hosed him down with citrus. It's like he thinks of all pretty blonde women

is the same person and just assumes that because he's gotten shot down a few times, every hot woman on earth is out to get him. It's bizarre. Y'all think he calls a girl's foul beast when he tries to hit on him too? Hey, foul beast, would you like to go to a movie? Wow, I can't imagine why women are just climbing all over themselves trying to get you to take him to the movies, dude. It's called Negging, Whitney, look it up. All the pickup artists with names like Mystery or Matador, real names by the way, swear by it. It's like you don't know how how to pick up chicks.

I'm pretty sure even nagging is supposed to be a little more subtle than you deserve to die in boiling oil, you foul beast. You foul beast, God. It's like that episode of what we do in the shadows where Colin Robinson's trying to nag and he just goes, hey, dip shit. No, not subtle enough. Okay. I don't love that.

Now, for a lot of us, college is a sort of personal renaissance. It's our first taste of freedom from our parents. and the first time we get to practice, pitch and woo is a sort of kind of almost grown-up. Plenty people have their first serious relationships in college. Most of us date around at least a little bit. But at UC Santa Barbara, which he chose, specifically because of all the hot blonde women's students, of course. Elliot became more withdrawn than ever. He spent most of his time online, sometimes playing World Warcraft,

but other times trawling forums populated by guys like him, young men who felt entitled to attention and sex from hot women and resentful that they weren't getting it. Elliot was discovering the in-cell community, which was just what his personality needed. Now, if you're not familiar with the term in-cell, then you are a lucky duckling. Enjoy your last five seconds of innocence

because we're going to crack a stinky little egg and knowledge all over you. Encel is a mix-up of the words involuntary celibate, meaning I'm not getting any but it's not by choice it's because of these evil hot women who refuse to have sex with me these are almost always young men teenagers or 20s a lot of them have experienced rejection or just general disinterest from the opposite sex as if we all haven't for God's sakes and they are bitter as shit about it

to the in cells all women are gold-digging licentious scheming creatures so far removed from men that they can never understand them or anticipate their thoughts and feelings. And they've created a whole vocabulary to talk about this stuff. They call beautiful or popular women Stacey's. And the Stacey's are the Incells white whale, both desired and load at the same time. Now, according to the Incells, the Stacey's always flocked to the Chads. The Chads are the opposite of the Incells.

They're attractive, fit, charismatic, rich, and they get lots of women. The next part is kind of complicated. The Incells hate the Chads. they also believe them to be genetically superior. Great. Good. Because we all know what happy fun times tend to come out of discussions over who's genetically superior to who.

Right? That shit never ends in tears or like genocide. Yep. But a big part of the Incell's belief system is that they will never have a fair shot with the ladies because their DNA is inferior. And all women care about, remember, is how hot and rich you are. Of course. Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. So nothing to do with your toxic personalities or the fact that you despise women, right? And it's just all about the DNA. That seems legit.

And then there's this whole pill thing, which is a treat. So in cells call themselves red pillars, which is a reference to the movie The Matrix, where you can take the red pill and see the real truth about what's going on in the world. In the matrix, the truth was that humans were living in a simulated world created by sentient machines. in cell world. The truth is that women have all the real power in society and that we are the enemy. And yet they're desperate to fuck us. It's just bonkers. It's straight up so weird if you think about it for more than five minutes. It's so weird. So incels have taken the red pill, but there's another subset, the black pillars who are the scary ones. These guys think they're the only ones who understand the real, real truth that the sexual game they're so desperate to play is rigged and unwinnable for guys like them. These guys are the scary ones because they're hopeless, nihilistic, which means they can

get to a point where they feel like there's nothing to lose. Now that you have the basics, I do have to share my favorite piece of in-sell vocabulary, which is cock carousel. That's my favorite, too. It's so good. This is the theory that women will fuck as many chads as they can while they're still sexually valuable, aka. young. And then they hit their 30s when they're ready to settle down and start having

babies and buy and live, laugh, love signs for the living room. You know, they rode the cock carousel and now they're a little less hot. The Stacey's are ready to settle for a beta male. Oh my God. Because the Chads no longer want them because they're not young and hot anymore. So the lucky ones get to scoop up the Chad's leftovers if they're pathetic enough to take them after a decade of being rejected for frat guys. The beta males are the real victims because any woman that has had sex with more than one guy or happens to be older than 30 is damaged goods. Of course. Ah yes, the 30s when we ladies become ancient washed up husks of our former fuckable selves. Y'all see why we say most of these dudes are in their teens and 20s,

right? Yeah, I hate to break it to y'all, but we do not have hard and fast expiration days. It gets worse, by the way. They're also obsessed with the idea that vaginas, get looser the more men you have sex with. But if you stick to just one guy, you're fine. It'll stay tight as a drum. Your cooch'll mold to his dick. Science. Now, I realize that the Western sex education system has failed a lot of us. So here's the thing. The coochie is a muscle, okay? That thing will snap back even after you push a 10-pound baby through it. That little dick of yours ain't going to do nothing. I assure you. What I tell you. egg and knowledge. So, it was this fine group of young fellas, the intelligentsia, as I like to call

them, that Elliot was spending more and more time with on the interwebs, and as you can imagine, it wasn't doing him any favors. It never does us any favors to cozy down in an echo chamber where everybody thinks the exact same way we do, or the same way we do, but way more extreme, especially if your beliefs are as angry and out of whack as Elliot's. You're either going to forget how to think critically, or you're going to get more and more militant about your beliefs, and eventually you're going to totally lose touch with the fact that most of the world would find this shit absolutely cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Elliot was already an angry little puppy, and spending time on the in-cell forums made it worse.

Gave himself a whole lexicon for this poisonous, misogynist sludge that had been sloshing around inside him for years. It helped him sharpen his anger to a fine point. One time Elliot sent links to his in-cell websites to his dad, Peter, who was totally disgusted and shocked. Those sites are evil, Elliot, Peter told him. But to Elliot, everything in them was the capital T truth. Frustrated that his son was still so hung up on the sex thing, Peter suggested he just go out to Vegas where it's legal and hire a sex worker. Get his V-card punch, get it over with, move on with your life.

But Elliot just found this insulting. His dad didn't understand. He didn't want to pay for sex. he wanted to be desired. He deserved it. In one of the videos he posted online, he said, I don't understand you girls. It's like your sexual attraction is flawed, perverted. You're attracted to the wrong kind of guy. You should be attracted to guys like me. Beautiful, magnificent guys. Yeah, I can't imagine what's turning him off, man.

Oh, he said he's magnificent? Wow, sign me up. I'll just overlook the Chinese parade's worth of red flags to present myself immediately at his feet. Yeah, and of course, as we all know, this kind of rampant mutant narcissism is always going to be the result of a self-loathing so deep you'd run out of oxygen before you even came close to get in there. And Elliot was, of course, no exception. Part of his insecurity circled around the fact that he was half Asian. He ranted quite a bit about that, how he wished he was 100% white, how girls would be more attracted to him if he were. It's really sad stuff. Elliot did see a therapist or two over the years, a potential ray of hope and all this crap,

but when one of the therapists recommended he start taking medication, he refused and stopped going. See, the thing about therapy is, it's work. People expect it to just be a magic wand. Like, they're just going to go there, talk a little bit about what's bugging him, and the therapist will toss around some fairy dust or something and just fix everything. And that is not how it works. You have to look at the gnarliest, ugliest parts of yourself, and then you have to actually do the work to change.

them with the therapist guidance. Elliott had just enough self-insight to know he needed help, but he was too narcissistic to actually accept it. As you can see from pretty much every word out of his mouth, it was much easier for him to just decide that he wasn't getting any attention from women because women were horrible, shallow bitches. Couldn't have anything to do with him, surely. That idea was just way too psychologically threatening.

And the thing is, honestly, he disproves the in-cells theory right there because really, on paper, he is a Chad. His family had money. He had a nice car. He was handsome. You know, I mean, there was no reason why he couldn't get women. It's 100% because of his horrendous, poisonous personality. And the way he interacted with them. Don't forget, he was short. And everyone knows. Okay. I guess that invalidates the whole. The Chad thing. Women don't see men under 5'4 or whatever. He's like, he was like 5'7, I think. He wasn't that short. No, he wasn't even that Sure, it's absurd. So in the absence of any real attempts to get help, Elliot was spiraling.

In February of 2012, he dropped out of school, saying he just couldn't stand seeing all the beautiful women anymore. Beautiful women he couldn't have. Around that same time, he developed an obsession with getting rich quick, thinking that might be what he needed to get the sex capades going. He started playing the lottery. Why not? I mean, it's a sure thing, right? later he wrote indeed it was the only way i could attain any sort of wealth at my age i had no talents so it was impossible for me to become a professional actor musician or athlete and those were usually the ways that young people acquired such money i could invent something or start a

business just like mark Zuckerberg did with facebook but the chances of me achieving such a thing were the same chances i had of winning the lottery anyway got again it is just wild how simultaneously like self-aware and grandiose he was like He acknowledges that he didn't have any special talents or abilities, which probably wasn't true, by the way, but that's what he thought anyways. But at the same time, he believes he's entitled to live like a golden god. It's like Dennis Reynolds on steroids. Well, yeah. And remember, like, if he tried something, he said this a couple times in his manifesto. If he tried something and wasn't good at it, he immediately quit. Like, there was no... Just like with the skateboarding, right?

Yeah. He had no, like, concept of, like, hard work or, like, work ethic. It was just like, if I, if it's not given to me. The absolute epitome of entitlement. Yeah. I deserve it because I exist and because I'm awesome. He goes on to say, If I could somehow become a multimillionaire at a young age, then my lifestyle would instantly become better than most people my age. I would be able to get revenge on my enemies just by living above them and lording over them.

That was a form of happy, peaceful revenge and it became my only hope. Yeah, that sounds real happy. Yeah, living your entire life, like trying to, stick it to other people. Turns out is not like super fun. But I mean, there it is again. Revenge. Revenge was taking up more and more space in Elliot's head as 2012 rolled along. In fact, he developed a name for what he wanted to do. He called it the Day of Retribution. When the Mega Millions drawing came around in September and he didn't win, surprise, surprise, something seemed to give in Elliot's mind. He said he threw a wild tantrum, screaming and crying for hours on end.

Without the prospect of becoming wealthy at a young age, I had nothing to live for now. I was going to be a virgin outcast forever. I realized that I had to start planning and preparing for the day of retribution, even though I hadn't yet had any idea what that day would be. But Elliot was no longer interested in peaceful, Lord my wealth over all you bitches type revenge. It was time for plan B. He went to a shooting range, to gain some initial training and shooting guns, which would be the main weapons I use for vengeance against my enemies. And in December of 2012, he bought his first gun. A few months later, he bought another one, and wrote in his journal about putting

five grand into savings to, quote, purchase all the supplies I'll need. On the in-sell forums, he connected with other angry young men who helped him fuel his rage. One of those was a Canadian man named Alex Manassian, who would later drive a rental van into a crowd of people in Toronto, killing 10 and injuring 16 more, all in the name of his in-cell beliefs. Ugh. This was the sea Elliot was swimming in in early 2013, unbeknownst to the people who cared about him, to the roommates he lived with, and to the young women of Ila Vista, who didn't even know he existed, and were just trying to go about their lives. The day of retribution was coming, and it would be bloodier and more horrifying. than anybody could have imagined. So, we're going to leave it there for part one, campers.

This is a big story, as you can imagine, and we just couldn't do it justice in one part. But, you know we'll have part two for you next week. For now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Jacqueline, Tina, Viola, Michelle, Kathy, Audrey, and Lori. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back.

And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes more, plus an extra episode a month. And once you hit the $5 and up categories, you get even more cool stuff. A free sticker at $5, a rad enamel pin while supplies last at 10, virtual events with Whitney and me, and we're always looking for new stuff to do for you. So if you can, come join us at patreon.com slash true crime campfire. And for great TCC merch, visit the True Crime Can't Fire store at Spreadshirt.com.