Evidence paints portrait of a mass murderer’s life
Mosque shooter was paranoid, idolized people Behind massacres
For more than a year, two questions lingered over the January 2017 Quebec mosque attack: who is killer Alexandre Bissonnette and why did he do it? During his sentencing hearing over the last two weeks, those questions began to be answered.
This portrait is based on evidence the prosecution presented to Justice François Huot, who will decide Bissonnette’s sentence — one that could be the harshest ever imposed since Canada eliminated the death penalty: life in prison without the possibility of parole for 150 years. On Monday, Bissonnette’s lawyers will begin presenting their evidence in the sentencing hearing.
Bissonnette pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder. He killed Ibrahima Barry, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Khaled Belkacemi, Abdelkrim Hassane, Azzeddine Soufiane and Aboubaker Thabti. Five others were injured by gunfire. Another 35 people, including four children, were in the mosque.
Here is some of what we have learned about Bissonnette and his motivation.
DIFFERENT FACES
Many faces of Bissonnette have emerged.
Nine days before the shooting, he seemed to be a happy-go-lucky millennial, boasting about his carbonara pasta sauce on his blog.
He was just another customer buying a drink at a Couche-Tard dépanneur at 7:37 p.m. on Jan. 29, 2017.
Seventeen minutes later, he walked up to a mosque 500 metres away and started his carnage.
Security camera footage showed him to be a cold-blooded killer, in some cases executing men with point-blank gunshots to the head.
Fourteen minutes after the rampage was over, he cried repeatedly in a call to 911, alternately suicidal and afraid police would kill him.
He also wondered aloud whether he had just killed anybody.
During a three-hour police interrogation the next morning, Bissonnette appeared delusional, suggesting he had targeted the mosque because he was worried refugees would come to Quebec and kill his family.
He said he had been anxious and depressed for more than a decade; he had recently been taking a new antidepressant medication because a previous one wasn’t working.
Eight months after the attack, Bissonnette seemed like a different person when he told a social worker that what he had previously told two doctors was not true.
In fact, he said he did not hear voices and he did remember what happened in the attack.
Bissonnette told the social worker he “wanted glory ” and regretted “not having killed more people.”
Over the past two weeks, in the prisoner’s dock, the 28-year-old — dressed in baggy clothes, his hair dishevelled — looked like a meek, pale, sullen teenager.
He rarely showed emotion.
FAMILY/SOCIAL LIFE
Bissonnette has a twin brother with whom he shared an apartment six kilometres from their parents’ home.
But Bissonnette often slept at his parents’ house on weekends.
He and his father Raymond sometimes went to a shooting range together.
A police analysis of his computer found he and his father exchanged emails about the younger Bissonnette’s medication and about issues related to Muslims.
His father at one point sent a long message about “the conversion to Islam of several people who work for the CIA.”
A close friend said the killer was “often worried about what his parents thought of him.”
When a witness suggested the father had “contributed to the education of a monster,” Justice Huot intervened, describing Bissonnette’s parents as “collateral victims” of the attack. Bissonnette’s father told police the killer spent leisure time with his brother and five longtime friends.
Asked if Bissonnette had a girlfriend, the father said no, adding his son had trouble meeting people and had low self-esteem.
ALCOHOL
In a blog post three months before the shooting, Bissonnette said he had “recently stopped drinking ” because “alcohol is bad for the health . ... I am very happy about it!”
But his father said Bissonnette had a drinking problem that led to difficulties at work.
And the killer told police he had been drinking sake, a rice wine, all day on the day of the shooting.
That evening, he bought an alcoholic Smirnoff drink minutes before the attack.
WORK/SCHOOL
Bissonnette was a political science student at Université Laval in Quebec City.
His father told police he was one course away from graduating with a bachelor’s degree, though the shooter himself told police he had dropped out.
At the time of the shooting, Bissonnette worked at Héma-Québec, which manages the province’s blood supply.
However, he told police he was on a three-week sick leave after getting “blasted” by his boss for asking for time off for a university exam.
He had an “altercation” with a co-worker at Héma-Québec in May 2016.
MUSLIMS/IDEOLOGY
A friend told police Bissonnette’s ideology was “rather extreme right,” that he had disparaged Muslims when they had walked by the mosque, and that he was against immigration because immigrants “changed neighbourhoods” and “increased unemployment.”
Asked if his son had allegiances to La Meute, a Quebec far-right anti-immigrant group, or to left- wing or right-wing ideologies, Bissonnette’s father answered: “No, he’s someone who likes order.”
Asked if his son was racist, Bissonnette’s father said: “No, he has had black friends.”
The contents of Bissonnette’s computer indicate the killer had a considerable interest in immigrants and Muslims and was a fan of Donald Trump, obsessively reading about the U.S. president and a travel ban he imposed on seven Muslim-majority countries two days before the shooting.
He searched for Trump-related material 819 times over the month before the attack.
Bissonnette told police he snapped on Jan. 29, 2017, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau implied in a tweet that Canada was going to accept refugees turned away by the U.S.
In a report on the contents of Bissonnette’s computer, police said they found no content created by the killer that “could link him to the white supremacist or the neo-Nazi ideology.”
However, his consumption of right-wing and far-right material influenced his “opinion on immigration and the presence of Muslims in Quebec.”
FEMINISTS
Bissonnette repeatedly searched for information about two feminist groups at Université Laval in Quebec City, including the Facebook events page belonging to one of them.
Several times he checked one of the feminist pages within minutes of seeking information about a Muslim students’ group at the university.
He also had an interest in Marc Lépine, who killed 14 women at École Polytechnique in 1989, at one point searching for “Polytechnique all shooting scenes” on YouTube.
Bissonnette’s search history showed he had looked at a story on a right-wing site about how “feminism hurts men and women” and had watched YouTube videos of conservative men arguing with feminists.
ONLINE ACTIVITY
In the weeks before the attack, Bissonnette was constantly checking the Twitter feeds of right-wing American commentators, as well as conspiracy theorists, and altright and white supremacist/neoNazi leaders.
One example of his reading material on the day of the shooting: an article on a fringe conspiracy site suggesting “radical Muslims” were the “dark, powerful, hidden force” behind an anti-Trump women’s march on Washington and were plotting to get American women to wear hijabs.
Searches and sites cited in the analysis of his computer were almost exclusively in English and focused on American sources.
However, he consulted two online articles about Muslims on French-language Quebec websites: a story about a St-Léonard mosque in a zoning controversy, and a report about a 15-year-old Muslim girl who wanted to wear a veil that covered her face at school.
No evidence was presented about Bissonnette’s radio, TV or print-media consumption.
In the aftermath of the shooting, some condemned Quebec City’s shock radio hosts for their harsh coverage of Muslims and immigrants.
But Justice Huot last week said from the evidence he has seen so far “the media are neither closely nor remotely linked to the causes of this terrible tragedy.”
MASS MURDERERS
Bissonnette told a social worker that mass murderers were “idols” he had admired since adolescence.
Police said his computer’s contents showed he had a “marked interest” in mass murders and their perpetrators.
Bissonnette’s browser history for the month before the shooting showed the words “shoot,” “shooter” and “shooting ” appeared more than 500 times.
He had a particular fascination with school shootings and white supremacist Dylann Roof, who murdered nine black parishioners in a South Carolina church in 2015.
Eighteen days before Bissonnette stormed the mosque, Roof was sentenced to death.
GUNS/ATTACK PLANNING
A friend said Bissonnette went to a shooting range weekly to fire his handgun.
In the month before the attack, the killer spent hours online, reading and watching videos about firearms.
Minutes before the shooting, he watched two YouTube videos about the 9 mm Glock handgun he used that night. He fired 48 rounds over two minutes, reloading four times.
He left with two rounds in the gun.
Bissonnette also pulled the trigger on a semi-automatic rifle at the mosque, but it jammed.
He was carrying 58 rounds for the rifle. Police seized five other firearms at his parents’ home: a handgun and four rifles. Bissonnette frequently searched for online information about the mosque and had photos of the building’s exterior and prayer room on his computer.
Last week, several Muslim community members testified that they had been told by other worshippers that Bissonnette had previously entered the mosque and talked to people inside.
Bissonnette’s lawyer noted the prosecution has presented no evidence indicating the killer had visited before the night of the attack.