A man who shot and killed three women in a Pennsylvania health club, then himself, apparently blogged his rage-filled preparations — with the final chilling entry announcing the "big day" of the massacre.
The killer, who late Tuesday burst into the LA Fitness Gym in Bridgeville, near Pittsburgh, and unleashed a spray of gunfire, appeared to have written the blog on a personal web page starting last November.
On the eve of the killings, he wrote: "Took off today, Monday, and tomorrow to practice my routine and make sure it is well polished.... Tomorrow is the big day."
The blog has still to be authenticated by police and was removed from the Internet early Wednesday.
If authentic, the net diary reveals in unusual detail the sinister and twisted thought process of a man crippled by sexual frustration, anger at women, self-pity, and depression.
It identifies the writer as George Sodini, 48, shown in a picture attached to the blog to be a lean, white man with slightly greying hair and wearing a smart blue shirt.
Police say Sodini, a member of the gym, sprayed gunfire into a Latin dance class after turning out the lights to make escape harder. Three women died and about 10 other people were wounded before he apparently killed himself.
In the blog, Sodini writes as far back as November 5, 2008, that he "planned to do this in the summer" but decided to see the result of the presidential election won by President Barack Obama.
In December, he again wrote that he'd "planned to do this already" and sets January 6 as the new date.
Less than two hours before the appointed time on that day, he apparently writes: "I wish life could be better for all and the crazy world can somehow run smoother. I wish I had answers. Bye."
But the next entry describes him pulling out at the last minute: "It is 8:45PM: I chickened out! S***! I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!"
Throughout nine months of rambling entries Sodini reveals his fixation on rejections from women and his extreme sexual frustration.
"Who knows why. I am not ugly or too weird. No sex since July 1990 either (I was 29)," he writes.
"Last time I slept all night with a girlfriend it was 1982. Proof I am a total malfunction. Girls and women don't even give me a second look ANYWHERE. There is something BLATANTLY wrong with me."
He is angry at a brother whom he describes as a bully and what he says was his distant relationship with his father. In April he also blogs about his worries over being laid off at work, where the recession is starting to make an impact.
Ironically, the blogger writes that going to the gym helped him relieve his psychological problems.
"My anger and rage is largely gone since I began lifting weights," he wrote in December last year.
But those positive feelings are fleeting and the blogger appears to be set on preparing his destructive end.
"What is it like to be dead? I always think I am forgetting something, that's one reason I postponed," he wrote. "In this case, I cannot make a return trip!"
In the last entry, dated August 3, he describes alarm at meeting a happy neighbor, who he worries will distract him from the murders.
"I need to remain focused and absorbed COMPLETELY."
His last words on the blog: "Death lives!"
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