Van killer denied being radicalized by incel movement
Anxiety over new job was real motivation, psychiatrist told
TORONTO • Toronto van attack killer Alek Minassian told a forensic psychiatrist he exaggerated his devotion to incel ideology because he didn't want people to know his true motivation: anxiety over starting a new job.
“I don' t mind being labelled as an incel,” Minassian told an examining psychiatrist after the attack, court heard. Minassian would rather be seen as an incel than be labelled extremely anxious about job failure.
“He denies being radicalized by the movement. He maintains his principal motivation is the fear of failing at his job,” which he was due to start a week after the attack, says a doctor's notes about interviews with Minassian.
The comments are in dramatic contrast with a detailed account of radicalization in the subculture of incel — short for “involuntarily celibate” — Minassian made to police after his arrest, and what he told another psychiatrist.
The different account
Minassian has given about his motivation was revealed Thursday in court.
Minassian, 28, is charged with 10 counts of murder and 16 counts of attempted murder for purposely driving a rented van into pedestrians on April 23, 2018, in Toronto. He pleads not guilty to the charges but claims he is not criminally responsible due to his mental state.
Dr. Rebecca Chauhan, a forensic psychiatrist, who interviewed Minassian for an assessment of his developmental status, earlier testified that Minassian seemed “obsessed” with incel ideology.
In September 2018, Minassian told Chauhan that during his deadly ride down busy Yonge St. sidewalks, he was “wishing for more female victims,” she told court.
In court on Thursday, Crown prosecutor John Rinaldi showed her excerpts from notes made by Dr. John Bradford, a well-known forensic psychiatrist, and leader of the mental assessment team hired by Minassian's lawyer.
In August 2018, Bradford interviewed Minassian and told him he had seen the video of his four-hour police interrogation, according to Bradford's notes.
During the police interrogation, conducted just hours after the attack, Minassian told Det. Rob Thomas he killed as part of an incel rebellion and that his interest in incels was sparked by re
jection from women at a Halloween party in 2013.
Minassian told police he was inspired by a manifesto by Elliott Rodger, who is venerated by some incels for killing six people in California in 2014.
Four months later, Bradford told Minassian he wanted to know more about his commitment to the incel movement, his notes say.
“He now reports to me,” Bradford wrote, “that this is all made up.”
Minassian said the story of him being rejected at a Halloween party was a lie, something he cribbed from a passage in Rodger's manifesto and adopted as his own.
“He denies that he is part of incel, although he has been disappointed in the past with
his social interactions,” the notes say.
When Bradford asked him about telling police he was enraged by his rejection by women “he denies this categorically and maintains that he is only disappointed and that he made this up about being enraged.
He describes being obsessed by some of the websites but implies today that he was not a follower.”
He also denied being in contact with Rodger, and another incel killer, before they killed themselves after committing mass murders.
“The message board communication with them, which he described in his (police) statement never occurred. He reports it was totally made up.”
He told Bradford he read incel forums and websites but didn't contribute posts to them.
“He describes that he did not want people to think about extreme anxiety and the fear of failing at a job as a reason he did what he did.
“He therefore now maintains that most of what he told Detective Thomas was fabrication. This includes the possibility of an incident in Edmonton,” the notes say.
(Minassian told police that he announced his impending attack in an online incel forum and received a reply from someone in Edmonton saying he inspired him to join the rebellion.)
Bradford is expected to testify in person on Monday.
In his notes, Bradford says he found it difficult to believe it was all lies because of the detail and complexity of what he told police.
Minassian told Bradford that after renting the van on the morning of the attack, he pulled into a parking lot and stopped to compose the Facebook message announcing the attack was part of the “Incel Rebellion.”
“It would be energizing that the media would be identifying me as such,” Minassian told Bradford. He said he would be added to the list of incel killers.
“It does not bother me to be on the list,” Minassian told Bradford, the notes say.
Rinaldi, in his cross examination of Chauhan, downplayed Minassian's interest or obsession with incels, noting Minassian's interest in mass murder went far beyond that particular ideology.
Court heard Minassian had a long and deep fascination with mass murderers, school shooters and how many people they killed.
In high school, he would routinely search the Internet for information on killers and, when feeling lonely, fantasize about being a mass murderer, court heard.
“He had mass murder on his mind long before Elliott Rodger,” Rinaldi said to Chauhan.
“Both can be true,” Chauhan said.
“I'd need to probe that further, whether he was lying about having read it (Rodger's manifesto) daily, for instance. Was it all a lie or is it just this point is a lie,” she said.
Rinaldi added: “They could all be lies, right? We really don't know when he is telling the truth. It's a problem, is it not?”
“He was very fixated when I was speaking with him about the idea of notoriety,” Chauhan said.
“So whether that's the motivation or there's some other motivation or he thought another person's life was more exciting than his own, I couldn't say, but it would be something that would be explored.”