Minassian contradicts his own accounts
Killer tells doctors differing reasons why he attacked Yonge Street
When was Alek Minassian telling the truth?
In interviews with police and several experts retained by both Crown and defence, the man who killed 10 people and injured 16 in a horrifying and violent rampage with a rented van, gave confusing and sometimes ontradictory accounts of his motivation, court heard this week.
Hours after his arrest on April 23, 2018, Minassian told police he became “radicalized” by vile online incel forums after being rejected by women in 2012 and at a Halloween party in 2013. He said he communicated with two men who went on to commit mass murders inspired by their hatred of women.
He said he wanted to start an “incel uprising” and that, though he didn’t kill as many people as he wanted, he “accomplished
his mission.”
Just over three months later, in August, he told forensic psychiatrist Dr. John Bradford that most of what he said in the police interview was a “complete fabrication,” according to interview notes shown in court Thursday.
The Halloween rejection never happened and he never spoke to mass shooters Elliot Rodger and Chris Harper-Mercer. He was not an incel nor was he radicalized by the incel movement. He did not want to start an incel rebellion.
His real motivation was extreme anxiety and his fear of failing at the job he had been due to start a week after the attack — but he preferred people to think he was an incel, he told Bradford.
Minassian did say in that interview that “it would be energizing” to be identified as an incel killer and be on a list with others including Rodger, Bradford wrote.
The next month, in mid-September, Minassian told another psychiatrist, Dr. Rebecca Chauhan,
that as he was running people down in the van, he wished “for more female victims.” He said he felt “happy” about what he did and that it was “worth it.”
In other interviews with Bradford at unspecified dates, Minassian continued to maintain he was an incel and that he was influenced by both the incel movement and Rodger, as well as a desire for infamy and notoriety.
Minassian, 28, has pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of first-degga a
He has admitted that he intended to kill all of his victims on April 23, 2018, and that his actions were planned and deliberate, making his state of mind the focus of his trial.
Minassian is arguing that he is not criminally responsible because his autism spectrum disorder rendered him unable to know his actions were morally wrong, a defence that, if successful, would mean an indefinite stay in a hospital instead of prison.
Autism advocates and experts have stressed that autism is not associated with violence or criminal behaviour.
On Thursday, Crown prosecutor John Rinaldi questioned Chauhan about her report in which she opined that Minassian was “indoctrinated” by Rodger’s manifesto which he told her he was reading daily in the months preceding the attt ack.
She testified that in her view, he was “hyper-focused” on these ideas of killing the most people and hatred towards women without any external challenge.
But Rinaldi pointed out that
Minassian told Chauhan and other doctors that he developed an interest in mass murders after the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, and that in his last two years of high school fantasized bout committing a school shooting when he felt lonely or depressed.
He said he was interested at the time in the “number of kills” and wanted to kill two people who’d bullied him and random people, but would avoid people he liked.
This began eleven years before the van attack and was many years before Minassian told Chauhan he first read Rodger’s manifesto in 2016, Rinaldi said.
Chauhan agreed, but said there appeared to be a change in the intensity of his focus on Rodger starting in December 2017.
The trial continues Monday with the court expected to hear from Dr. John Bradford, a forensic psychiatrist retained by the defence to give an opinion on Minassian’s criminal responsibility.