WARNING: Readers of the following article should be advised that portions of Elliott Rodger’s document can be disturbing.
By Alan Duke
(CNN) — Elliott Rodger left behind a 107,000-word “story” of what the shooting suspect called his “twisted world.” While he e-mailed it to his parents and a therapist the day he allegedly went on a terror rampage, investigators and journalists soon found it.
The central theme of “My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger” is his intractable virginity, which he blamed on “the cruelness of women.”
Here are five revelations from this disturbing document:
1. ‘A bitter form of envy’
Elliott Rodger grew up on the edges of Hollywood but was not quite a part of it.
His father, Peter Rodger, aspired to make films, but he mostly directed commercials. His mother “dated George Lucas for a short time” and was a friend of Steven Spielberg, he wrote. His stepmother, Soumaya Akaaboune, acted in a few movies to her credit and was a regular on the French version of “Real Housewives” produced in Los Angeles.
These connections got him into a few “Star Wars” premieres and the premiere on March 12, 2012, for the first installment of “The Hunger Games,” for which his father worked as a second-unit director.
Rodger wrote that the movie was “entertaining” and the premiere “was an extraordinary experience,” but he said he “felt very bitter that I wasn’t able to bring a girl with me as a date. The majority of men at the event had a date with them, and I felt so pathetic for not having a date. If only a girl at my collage had been attracted to me; I would have gladly brought her to the premiere as my date.”
He attended a private Katy Perry concert the night before, thanks to wealthy friends who gave the tickets to the Rodger family. Elliot wrote about how seeing how rich families enjoy life made him resent that his “damnable mother” had not “married into wealth instead of being selfish.”
“I couldn’t help but feel a bitter form of envy at all of the rich kids at the concert. They grew up in lavish mansions, indulged in excessive opulence, and will never have to worry about anything in their pleasurable, hedonistic lives. I would take great pleasure in watching all of those rich families burn alive. Looking at all of them really drilled in my mind the importance of wealth.
“Wealth is one of the most important defining factors of self-worth and superiority. I hated and envied all of those kids for being born into wealth, while I had to struggle to find a way to claim wealth for myself. I had to be ruthless, and do whatever it takes to attain such wealth. After all, it was my only hope of ever being worthy of getting a girlfriend and living the life of gratification that I desire.”
Rodger lamented being “a kissless virgin.”
2. ‘Love Potion #9’ advice
Dale Launer, who wrote and directed several movies about relationships, tried to teach Rodger how to get a girlfriend, according to Rodger’s writing. Launer, a friend of Rodger’s father, wrote “Blind Date,” “Love Potion #9” and “Ruthless People.”
“He wanted to help me overcome my troubles because he is a so-called expert with women. He even showed me pictures of all of the gorgeous women he has dated in his life, and there were a lot of them. This man truly lived.
“A few men who are successful with women have offered me help and advice about this in the past, but nothing ever came of it. I suppose they want to help because it would be a boost to their already big egos, and also because they feel sorry for me. People should feel sorry for me. My life is so pathetic, and I hate the world for forcing me to suffer it. I feel sorry for myself.
In truth, there is nothing men like Dale can really do to help me attract girls and lose my virginity. They can’t mind-control girls to be attracted to me. My brief friendship with Dale would, however, spark a few more interesting e-mail conversations where I confide to him about how cruel I think women are by nature. He would only be amused by this. Of course he would be amused. Women were never cruel to him. They gave him sex and love all his life.”
CNN e-mailed Launer’s rep for comment Sunday evening but has not heard back yet.
3. Winning a lottery: ‘The only way out’
Rodger became convinced that winning the Megamillions lottery was his destiny. He began obsessively playing it and even drove to Arizona from California four times to buy Powerball tickets. “I saw winning the lottery as the only way out,” he wrote.
“I knew I was always destined for great things. This must be it! I was destined to be the winner of the highest lottery jackpot in existence. I knew right then and there that this jackpot was meant for me. Who else deserved such a victory? I had been through so much rejection, suffering, and injustice in my life, and this was to be my salvation. With my whole body filled with feverish hope, I spent $700 dollars on lottery tickets for this drawing. As I spent this money, I imagined all the amazing sex I would have with a beautiful model girlfriend I would have once I become a man of wealth.”
After repeatedly not winning the lottery, Rodger saw that his plan for his “Day of Retribution” against the world “was more real than ever before.”
“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 of what day that would be.”
4. Rodger’s three guns
Rodger began practicing shooting at a gun range in Oxnard, California, after failing to win the $120 million Megamillions lottery in September 2012, according to his writing.
“I had the knowledge, in the back of my mind, that the Day of Retribution was very possible now. Going to the shooting range while I waited for my laptop gave me the perfect opportunity to gain some initial training in shooting guns, which will be the main weapons I use as vengeance against my enemies when the Day of Retribution ultimately comes to pass.
“I walked into the range, rented a handgun from the ugly old redneck cashier, and started to practice shooting at paper targets. As I fired my first few rounds, I felt so sick to the stomach. I questioned my whole life, and I looked at the gun in front of me and asked myself ‘What am I doing here? How could things have led to this?’ I couldn’t believe my life was actually turning out this way. There I was, practicing shooting with real guns because I had a plan to carry out a massacre.”
His first “act of preparation” for the massacre was the purchase of his first gun, he wrote.
“I had already done some research on handguns, and I decided to purchase the Glock 34 semiautomatic pistol, an efficient and highly accurate weapon. I signed all of the papers and was told that my pickup day was in mid-December. That fell in nicely, because that was when I was planning on staying in Santa Barbara till. After I picked up the handgun, I brought it back to my room and felt a new sense of power. I was now armed.”
He bought his second handgun in the spring of 2013, when he “began to seriously think about planning the Day of Retribution,” he wrote.
He bought a third gun a year later. “I needed to buy a third handgun, just in case one of them jams. I needed two working handguns at the same time, as that was how I planned to commit suicide; with two simultaneous shots to the head. I also needed to buy magazine clips and ammunition, as well as knives and carrying cases for my equipment.”
5. Vengeance against men
Rodger wrote that the “first phase” of his massacre plan would be to stab his two male roommates to death.
“These were the biggest nerds I had ever seen, and they were both very ugly with annoying voices,” he wrote. “If they were pleasant to live with, I would regret having to kill them, but due to their behavior I now had no regrets about such a prospect. In fact, I’d even enjoy stabbing them both to death while they slept.”
“After that, I will start luring people into my apartment, knock them out with a hammer, and slit their throats. I will torture some of the good looking people before I kill them, assuming that the good looking ones had the best sex lives. All of that pleasure they had in life, I will punish by bringing them pain and suffering. I have lived a life of pain and suffering, and it was time to bring that pain to people who actually deserve it.”
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office identified the three men found dead in Rodger’s apartment as Cheng Yuan Hong, 20; George Chen, 19; and Weihan Wang, 20. Hong and Chen were his roommates, while Wang was visiting the apartment, the Sheriff’s Office said. The three students died from “multiple stab wounds” before the shooting rampage, the Sheriff’s Office said.
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