I will slaughter every spoiled blonde slut I see... I’m 22 and still
man. Rodger himself died after crashing his car minutes after the drive-by killings. It is not clear whether he turned his gun on himself or was shot by police.
Born in London to an English father and Malaysian mother, Rodger moved to the United States at the age of five. Speaking from her Kent home, his grandmother, Lois Rodger, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘He was a very disturbed boy.’
His father Peter Rodger said in a statement that his son had been receiving treatment from ‘multiple therapists’. His lawyer said Elliot had been diagnosed as a high-functioning patient with Asperger’s syndrome, a condition on the autistic spectrum, and had faced bullying and had trouble making friends.
The day before his rampage, the killer recorded a seven-minute YouTube video entitled Elliot Rodger’s Retribution, in which he blamed women for his ‘loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires’,
Staring vacantly into the camera he lamented being a virgin and repeatedly complained that life ‘wasn’t fair’. Then he delivered his chilling warning: ‘If I can’t have you, girls, I will destroy you. You deserve to be annihilated and I will give that to you. I will slaughter
Police previously quizzed ‘polite and kind’ Rodger
every single blonde slut I see.
‘I’ll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you. You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one.’
Rodgers’ video was the last in a sequence of self-pitying messages posted on YouTube describing his sexual frustration. ‘I’m sexually attracted to girls… girls are not sexually attracted to me,’ he said. ‘That’s a problem I intend to rectify.’
Emitting a screeching laugh, he adds theatrically: ‘I, in all my magnificence and power, will not let this fly. It is an injustice that needs to be dealt with.’
His parents were concerned by the videos and had reported them to police. Officers questioned Rodger but found him ‘polite and kind’.
But one family friend said: ‘He was on the spectrum for autism but was angry and rejected any treatment. He was a wild card. He was having violent rows with his father and stepmother.’
Rodger’s shooting spree in the bustling student enclave of Isla Vista, lasted ten minutes from 9.27pm local time in Pardall Road when he pulled up outside the Isla Vista Deli Mart. Although he was targeting women, his first victim was a man, cut down by Rodger’s semi-automatic handgun. Witnesses saw him slumped on the pavement outside the store with a gaping chest wound. A witness who gave her name as Kayley said: ‘He leaned out and started firing. There were bullets flying everywhere. He was just shooting, shooting, shooting. The girls were screaming. I saw girls fall to the ground. People were running in all directions.’ Then, cruising the streets ‘at little more than walking pace’, Rodger moved on. He drove into the Embarcadero del Mar, a horseshoe-shaped street. Students packed
its bars and restaurants. As he slid his BMW to a halt, he called out to student Sienna Schwartz, saying: ‘Hey, what up?’
When she turned abruptly away, he began firing. Bullets whizzed past her head. ‘I felt, the wind pass right by my face,’ she said.
After this encounter, he shot at a group of students outside a 7-11 store. ‘I saw one woman go down but then people started pushing other women inside. It all happened so fast,’ said a witness.
Witness Robert Johnson said: ‘He seemed to be targeting only girls. I saw him shoot at one group and then drive off. He was driving slowly.’
He headed south around the loop, shooting another woman who was walking along the street, before rounding the bottom curve and driving back up the Embarcadero.
Witnesses said he knocked down a cyclist outside the Freebirds burrito restaurant and then opened fire on another two people nearby. Student Daisy Duenas said: ‘I was in my apartment when I heard eight to ten gunshots. Most of the time Isla Vista is such a laid-back town.’
Sheriff’s deputies and police cornered Rodger at 9.37pm. A witness who did not give her name said: ‘He was in the car and there were deputies on foot and in patrol cars. They had a running gun battle with him.’
Rodger crashed his black BMW into a parked Jeep and was discov- ered dead inside with a gunshot wound to the head. A sheriff’s department spokeswoman said: ‘It is not known at this time whether he was killed in the exchange of fire with officers or whether he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.’
Santa Barbara County sheriff Bill Brown called the shooting ‘a premeditated mass murder’.
In another online film Rodger secretly filmed a couple kissing on a beach which he says ‘is torture for me to watch... but I have to show why life isn’t fair’.
Elsewhere on YouTube, Rodger said he never understood why girls are ‘repulsed’ by him as ‘I’m such a perfect, beautiful, fabulous guy.’ He
adds: ‘I’m the ultimate gentleman, yet you girls never give me a chance. I’m 22 years old and I have never had a girlfriend. I am still a virgin. I have never had the pleasure of having sex with a girl, sleeping with a girl, kissing a girl. I have never even held a girl’s hand.’
Last night seven further victims of Rodger’s rampage remained in Santa Barbara Cottage hospital, most being treated for gunshot wounds. The cyclist hit by his BMW was being treated for trauma. Two victims were in critical condition with one woman’s wounds described as ‘life-threatening’.
Meanwhile, police cordened off most of the town centre surrounding Rodger’s bullet-ridden car. At his father’s £1.2million home in Calabasa, an upmarket suburb of Los Angeles where neighbours include Britney Spears, Justin Bieber and Will Smith, a man in his 50s told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Peter’s not making any statement at this time. The family are in deep shock.’
Peter Rodger, whose father founded the Magnum Photo Agency, lives at the home with second wife, Soumaya Akaaboune, an actress who appeared in The Green Zone, and their two young children Jazz and Georgia. Mr Rodger arrived in Los Angeles as a successful commercial director and quickly started directing movies. He was an assistant director on the first film in the blockbuster Hunger Games franchise about futuristic death matches.
Elliot’s mother Li Chin divorced Peter when Elliot was eight. Last night she refused to comment at her home in West Hills, California. A neighbour said: ‘They are a really nice family. I can’t believe the son would do something like this.’
As police investigated Rodger’s background, a troubling portrait emerged of a solitary loner with a deep hatred of women. Earlier this year Rodger posted on a forum called Puahate [Pick Up Artist Hate]: ‘There are too many delusional males worshipping women who would only spit in their faces.’
Yet his social media accounts are filled with pictures of Rodger enjoying a seemingly privileged world, on the red carpet of film premieres and at his father’s hillside mansion.