Report: 4 dead in Pittsburgh-area shooting

[samanthajane13]

BRIDGEVILLE, Pa. – A Pittsburgh television station says a shooting at a suburban health club has left four people dead, including the shooter.

KDKA reports the killings were at the L.A. Fitness Center in Bridgeville, a community of about 5,000 residents not far from downtown Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh International Airport.

Allegheny County police tell The Associated Press a person called them Tuesday evening and said someone was shooting inside.

Witness Ashley Ogordowski tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper she was in an exercise class when a man came in a back door and started shooting.

Gym member Lauren Dooley tells the Post-Gazette she heard 12 to 15 shots.

Perry Calabro was playing racquetball inside. He says when the shooting began "everybody started running."

UPMC Mercy Hospital says five critically injured women were taken there. Allegheny General Hospital says it has two women with gunshot wounds.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090805/ap_on_re_us/us_health_club_shooting

[samanthajane13]

Pa. man kills 3, himself; Web page describes plans
By GENARO C. ARMAS, Associated Press Writer Genaro C. Armas, Associated Press Writer – 11 mins ago

BRIDGEVILLE, Pa. – A man who sprayed bullets into a fitness class filled with women, killing three and then himself, apparently kept a Web page in which he wrote about years of rejection by women and an earlier plan for violence at the gym in which he said he "chickened out."

Neighbors described 48-year-old George Sodini as anti-social, and the Web page in his name showcased a resume setting forth his credentials as an unhappy loner. It listed his date of death — Aug. 4, 2009 — and his status of "Never married." The page ended with the words "Death Lives!"

On Tuesday night, the gunman walked into the fitness center, entered a "Latin impact" dance aerobics class and placed a duffel bag on the ground. After pausing a few moments, he took at least two guns out of the bag and started shooting.

Three women were killed and nine people were injured. Police say he may have fired as many as 52 shots before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide.

"He walked right into the room where the shootings occurred as if he knew exactly where he was going," Allegheny County police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said. "I think he went in with the idea of doing what he did."

Authorities on Wednesday identified the gunman as Sodini, of nearby Scott Township. The three women who died were Heidi Overmier, 46, of Carnegie; Elizabeth Gannon, 49, of Pittsburgh; and Jody Billingsley, 38, of Mount Lebanon.

The 4,610-word Web page, on a domain registered in Sodini's name, appeared to be a nine-month chronology of his plans to commit the shooting, his decision to delay it and the process that led to the eventual carnage at the health club Tuesday. Authorities did not immediately confirm that the site belonged to Sodini, but the elaborate nature of the comments suggested authenticity.

"The biggest problem of all is not having relationships or friends, but not being able to achieve and acquire what I desire in those or many other areas," said an entry dated Sunday. "Everthing stays the same regardless of the effert I put in. If I had control over my life then I would be happier. But for about the past 30 years, I have not."

The Web site's author wrote of planning the attack since at least November, and had tried to do it when the same Tuesday-night dance aerobics class he targeted met on Jan. 6.

"It is 8:45PM: I chickened out!" he wrote. "I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!"

A neighbor of Sodini's, Connie Fontanesi, said she was interviewed by county detectives Tuesday evening.

"He was so anti-social we really didn't learn anything personal about him," she said.

The violence rocked the suburban Pittsburgh town of about 5,300 residents some eight miles southwest of downtown.

Joann Gazzam, a member of the weekly dance aerobics class, saw the gunman walk to the back of the room near some weights, set down a bag and fumble with it for a few minutes before coming up with what appeared to be two guns and opening fire, according to her sister, Debi Wozniak, of suburban Dormont.

Gazzam told Wozniak that the instructor was among those who appeared to have been shot.

"She told me, 'Debi, I seen everything. Oh, my God, I seen everything. I seen him pull out the guns,'" said Wozniak, who usually attends the class every Tuesday from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. but was running late and didn't make it. Police say the shooting happened about 8:15 p.m.

The clean-shaven gunman walked in the room wearing workout gear, turned off the lights and, at first nobody knew what was happening, said Stacey Falk, 26, of Bridgeville, who was in the class.

"All of us girls were just ducking behind each other and it was just, you know, I was behind a girl, one of the girls in front to get hit, and when he was in the opposite corner shooting, I booked it," she told WPXI-TV.

The gunman went into the health club planning to shoot several people — firing "multiple" weapons "indiscriminately" — and didn't say anything before unleashing a burst of bullets, Moffatt said. Moffatt said police recovered at least two guns from the scene and a note from the shooter's duffel bag, but he would not say who wrote it.

"I don't think anyone could have stopped him," Moffatt said.

Five of the wounded victims arrived in critical condition at UPMC Mercy Hospital, but three of them were upgraded to serious condition by early Wednesday. Two women remained in fair condition at another Pittsburgh hospital. One victim was treated and released for a shoulder wound and a woman with a bullet wound to the knee remained in stable condition Wednesday.

Loretta Moss, 44, of McDonald, said she was exercising on a treadmill when she heard a popping noise.

"I didn't pay any attention, and the next minute, people were screaming," said Moss, who had come to the gym Tuesday night for the first time in a couple of weeks. She said she then heard more pops.

"There was like a whole spray of them. I'd say about 15 altogether, and then people started screaming and yelling and started running out the building," she said.

"We laid down, and then after the last set of ... gunshots, we got up, and someone said, 'run.'"

___

Associated Press writer Kimberly Hefling in Bridgeville, Pa., contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090805/ap_on_re_us/us_health_club_shooting

[samanthajane13]

Shooter's online rants were like trees in forest
By JOCELYN NOVECK, AP National Writer Jocelyn Noveck, Ap National Writer – 47 mins ago

NEW YORK – In hindsight, it seems so obvious. We look back at the creepy online ramblings of a tortured soul like George Sodini and realize we should have known all along of the horrors to come.

That is, if anyone actually read Sodini's Web page before he sprayed bullets into a suburban Pittsburgh fitness class, killing three women and then himself.

But in an age where publishing your thoughts online is as easy as scribbling them in a notebook — where millions broadcast the details of their lives to anyone who will listen — were Sodini's murderous rants the equivalent of a cybertree falling in a cyberforest?

Certainly, anyone happening upon Sodini's tortured online thoughts before his rampage Tuesday would have had ample cause for alarm.

His date of death is listed right at the top, under his name and birthdate: "DOD 8/4/2009." Later, a description of his first attempt at what he calls "this project," in January. "It is 8:45 p.m.: I chickened out! I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!"

And then, on Monday: "Tomorrow is the big day."

It was more than enough to alert authorities, to be sure, even without Sodini's hate-infused musings on his inability to find a girlfriend and how long it had been since he'd had sex. But did anyone know?

"Perhaps no one at all ever read this Web site," says Chris Hoofnagle, a lecturer at the Berkeley Law School who specializes in Internet privacy. "There's this obscurity in being in a cacophony of different voices."

How many voices? According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, some 14 percent of adult Internet users said in a 2007 survey that they had created or worked on their own Web page.

To put that in perspective, 79 percent of U.S. adults are Internet users, according to an April 2009 Pew survey. "So assuming the segment of people who have created or worked on their own Web page is at least as big as it was in 2007, that 14 percent of Internet users would translate into roughly one in 10 U.S. adults," says Pew researcher Mary Madden.

At the same time, and perhaps as a result, we as a society are becoming more and more comfortable with less and less privacy, Madden says. For example, a quarter of Internet users have posted some kind or writing online using their real name.

"In the age of digital footprints, those people who don't have some kind of online trails left behind them are really becoming the exception rather than the rule," Madden says.

So Sodini certainly had an online trail. But it was on a personal Web page, not on a social network, and that makes a big difference, notes Madden. "His Web page may have been posted to an audience of one," she says. By contrast, "people become more accountable when they're connected to a network. There are cases where kids post things on their pages — perhaps suicidal tendencies — and that will raise an alarm."

In February, Jesse Coltrane in Camden, N.J., was corresponding with a despondent California teenager when suddenly he saw, on his webcam, the teen starting to cut the skin of his forearm with a razor blade. The teen then logged off his computer.

Coltrane called Sacramento police. By the time officers found the teen he had decided not to go through with the attempt.

Months earlier, on the other hand, some Internet users did nothing as they watched a Florida college student, Abraham Biggs, kill himself by overdosing on pills in front of his webcam on a site for bodybuilders. Biggs' father said those who watched — and the Web site operators, too — shared blame for his son's death.

While that latter case evokes images of an Internet-age Kitty Genovese story — hers is the now-challenged tale of a New York woman killed in 1964 while callous bystanders ignored her calls for help — one can't say the same in the case of one man venting on a Web page.

"There are a lot of personal Web sites where people vent," says Hoofnagle, the Berkeley lecturer.

Is there any way to monitor these sites, and perhaps prevent crimes like Sodini's killing spree? "To my knowledge, there's no organized effort to look for the foreshadowing of this type of event," Hoofnagle says.

Some federal agencies do monitor Web sites as part of their enforcement of specific federal statutes, like those barring crimes against the president or interstate child abuse or some terrorist statutes. In some cases, if they stumble upon indications of potential criminal activity outside their jurisdiction, they refer it to state or local law enforcement.

The numbers are certainly daunting. There are about 100 million registered domain names in the world, says Christine Jones, general counsel for godaddy.com, the world's largest domain registrar. Her company has 36 million of them (Sodini's domain is not one.) It depends on third parties to report issues, and it has two departments investigating public complaints, both of which operate 24/7.

"We do as much as we can do," Jones says. "For us, on our scale, it's impossible to monitor all the domains ourselves — no number of humans could do that, especially because Web sites can be changed all day."

Sodini's site had been taken down by Wednesday afternoon.

Jones says that when she saw the content on it, she was surprised that no one had seen it and alerted authorities because he had apparently been writing dangerous things for months — though it remains unclear when the Web page was posted and whether it had been updated repeatedly since November or posted in its entirety recently.

"Even one person who read that would probably have alerted authorities," Jones says. "There must have been no traffic on that site."

Sodini's domain was registered with DomainDiscover.com, a San Diego-based company, but it was hosted by a provider in India, gohsphere.com, which could not immediately be reached. At DomainDiscover, supervisor Jenny Dempsey said her company's security department does monitor traffic on sites, but not sites that are not hosted by them.

Allegheny County police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said Wednesday that investigators would try to determine if anyone had read the Web site early enough to stop the attack.

As for Sodini himself, he seems to have known he would only get page views once he was gone.

"Why do this?? To young girls? Just read below," he writes at the beginning. "I kept a running log that includes my thoughts and actions, after I saw this project was going to drag on."

And now, tragically, he has not an audience of one, but a worldwide audience.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090805/ap_on_re_us/health_club_shootings_cyberspace

[samanthajane13]

Gunman at Pa. health club was bitter over women
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press Writer Michael Rubinkam, Associated Press Writer – 46 mins ago

BRIDGEVILLE, Pa. – George Sodini seethed with anger and frustration toward women. He couldn't understand why they ignored him, despite his best efforts to look nice. He hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984, hadn't slept with a woman in 19 years.

"Women just don't like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the US (my estimate) and I cannot find one. Not one of them finds me attractive," the 48-year-old computer programmer lamented in a chilling diary he posted on the Internet.

For months, he also wrote vaguely about using guns to carry out his "exit plan" at his health club, where lots of young women worked out.

On Tuesday, Sodini put his plan into action.

He went to the sprawling L.A. Fitness Club in this Pittsburgh suburb, turned out the lights on a dance-aerobics class filled with women, and opened fire with three guns, letting loose with a fusillade of at least 36 bullets.

He killed three women and wounded nine others before committing suicide.

"He just had a lot of hatred in him and (was) hell-bent on committing this act, and no one was going to stop him," Allegheny County Police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said Wednesday.

The 4,610-word Web diary appeared to be a nine-month chronology of his plans to end his misery with a shocking act of carnage at the health club. He portrayed himself as painfully and inexplicably lonely.

"Every evening I am alone, and then go to bed alone," he wrote. "I see twenty something couples everywhere. I see a twenty something guy with a nice twentyish young women. I think those years slipped right by for me. Why should I continue another 20+ years alone?"

It was unclear when the Web diary was posted and whether it had been updated online repeatedly since November or posted in its entirety recently. Moffatt said investigators are trying to determine whether anyone saw it online before the rampage.

"If anyone knew of it, they would have a moral and ethical obligation and legal obligation to bring it forward," the police superintendent said.

The violence rocked the town of about 5,300 people just outside Pittsburgh.

Killed were Heidi Overmier, 46, of Carnegie, a sales manager at an amusement park; Jody Billingsley, 37, of Mount Lebanon, who worked for a medical-supply company; and Elizabeth Gannon, 49, of Pittsburgh, an X-ray technician at Allegheny General Hospital.

"She can't be gone," said Gannon's next-door neighbor and close friend, Carl Rady, who knew her for 35 years and said she loved to work out and pamper her dog. "It can't happen that way."

Sodini was a member of the health club and had been there two times Tuesday before he came back at night, police said. He did not have a relationship with any of his victims, according to police.

In his Web diary, Sodini wrote of planning the attack since at least November and said he tried to carry it out when the same Tuesday-night aerobics class met on Jan. 6. "I cannot wait for tomorrow!" he exulted the night before. But he backed out at the last moment.

"It is 8:45PM: I chickened out!" he wrote. "I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!"

In his diary, he complained that women "don't even give me a second look ANYWHERE" even though he was tan and fit and claimed to dress well and smell nice. He listed his status as "Never married." In a chilling addition, he recorded the date of his death as Aug. 4, 2009.

On that evening, he walked into the health club wearing black workout gear and a headband, and entered the "Latin impact" class with four guns.

Jordan Solomon, 14, said she thought it was weird when a man walked into the all-female class and put a black duffel bag on the ground and reached into it.

"All of a sudden all the lights went out and I turned around, he started firing. I turned around and I saw him holding a gun," she said.

Solomon said the man was expressionless, and she didn't hear him say anything as he sprayed bullets. The teenager ran out of the room and into the parking lot, bolting into a restaurant where she told the workers to call 911.

Lauren Dooley, 27, who was exercising on a treadmill on the second floor, ran down the fire escape and out the rear of the building, where bystanders were applying pressure to victims' gunshot wounds.

"You just feel like you're in a movie ... a horrible movie where someone comes in and unleashes fire on everyone. You just don't know what to do," Dooley said.

She returned to the gym Wednesday morning to retrieve her purse and cell phone, but the doors were locked. A sign read: "Each of us in the LA Fitness family are shocked and saddened by the senseless acts of violence that took place at our Bridgeville club Tuesday evening."

Sodini did not have a criminal record, and he legally bought the guns he used, police said. Sodini used his cell phone a few minutes before the shooting, but Moffatt would not say whom he called.

Sodini's family issued a brief statement: "Our hearts and prayers are with the victims and their families and we pray for the full recovery of the survivors."

Six patients remained hospitalized, including the aerobics instructor, Mary Primis, 26, who was listed in fair condition. Primis is pregnant but said doctors told her the baby is fine.

Authorities initially had difficulty identifying the victims because they had workout clothes on and weren't carrying wallets.

Sodini graduated in 1992 from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in computer science and had worked as a systems analyst at a Pittsburgh law firm since 1999.

A neighbor, Connie Fontanesi, said Sodini was so anti-social that "we really didn't learn anything personal about him."

Roberta Kozel, co-owner of Salon IAOMO, said Sodini was a regular at the tanning salon and last visited on Saturday. "He was just pretty normal, a little quiet — like the classroom nerd," Kozel said.

___

Associated Press writers Joe Mandak, Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Genaro Armas and Jennifer Yates contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090805/ap_on_re_us/us_health_club_shooting

[samanthajane13]

Pa. shooter had company in feelings of isolation
By JOE MANDAK and BEN DOBBIN, Associated Press Writers Joe Mandak And Ben Dobbin, Associated Press Writers – 1 hr 47 mins ago

PITTSBURGH – Before opening fire on an aerobics class, George Sodini wrote about feeling lonely and rejected — yet those very characteristics gave him the company of other mass killers whose isolation helped create a murderous cocktail.

Sodini's deadly rampage at a suburban Pittsburgh health club shares threads with other massacres analyzed by psychiatrists and legal experts, who say the line between lonely and homicidal remains hard to place.

"These people get into a very self-centered, sometimes self-aggrandizing, often psychotic path that enables them, in their mind, to finally get the attention they crave," New York attorney Carolyn Wolf, whose firm specializes in mental health issues, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Thursday.

The 48-year-old Sodini fatally shot himself after killing three women and wounding nine others attending a weekly Latin dance aerobics class in Collier Township on Tuesday night. He wore black workout gear and fumbled around in a duffel bag before producing three guns, firing indiscriminately after shutting off the lights.

Killed were Heidi Overmier, 46, of Carnegie, a sales manager at an amusement park; Jody Billingsley, 37, of Mount Lebanon, who worked for a medical-supply company; and Elizabeth Gannon, 49, of Pittsburgh, an X-ray technician at Allegheny General Hospital.

About 75 people turned out in downtown Pittsburgh for a vigil Thursday night to remember the victims, offering prayers, lighting candles and observing a moment of silence. Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl was among who attended.

Funerals are planned for Saturday for Gannon and Overmier and Wednesday for Billingsley.

Police say Sodini didn't know his victims. His scathing, 4,000-plus-word blog reads like a monthslong diary lamenting his wrongful rejection by "30 million" American women and alluding to his plans.

When Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007, then committed suicide, his "message" was a video tirade to NBC railing about being overlooked by "snobs" and rich "brats."

When Jiverly Wong killed 13 people and himself at a Binghamton, N.Y., immigration center in April, it was uncovered that unemployment, perceived police persecution, mockery for poor English skills and a dose of psychosis led him to kill.

While their grievances, lifestyles and mental states varied widely — Cho and Wong had documented mental problems, while, so far, there's no indication Sodini did — Wolf said their choice to kill others, and not just themselves, shows they had one thing in common.

"They're thinking, 'I want everyone to understand and appreciate why I'm doing this,' and the way to do that, in their mind, is to kill other people and not just themselves," Wolf said. "In their mind it sends a broader message."

Many mass murderers feel rejected by a "pseudo community" — a group that may exist, only in their minds, that has rejected them, said Dr. James Knoll, a forensic psychiatrist at the State University of New York's Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. He spoke Thursday at a conference he organized to analyze the actions of Wong and Cho.

"He probably worked out at this gym, he was tanning and working out, trying to improve himself," Knoll said of Sodini. "These are things he thought would get him a relationship. It wasn't working."

Dr. Michael Welner is a forensic psychiatrist and associate professor at New York University and frequent expert witness in criminal matters, including two other mass shootings near Pittsburgh about nine years ago.

On March 1, 2000, a black man named Ronald Taylor killed three white men, including a handyman fixing his apartment door, and police later found a racist screed in his home. Less than two months later, Richard Baumhammers, a white unemployed immigration lawyer, killed five ethnic minorities after frequenting racist Web sites.

Neither man tried suicide, and both were convicted of murder. Yet both, Welner said, had something in common with Sodini: They were chronic failures with women and isolated loners who "diverted their masculinity to destructive episodes that make them significant and larger than life."

In his Web diary, Sodini wrote that his anger stemmed from unfulfilled desire: The women at his gym "look so beautiful as to not be human," he wrote.

Two undated videos apparently recorded by Sodini were posted on Starcasm.net showing him touring his home and talking about hiding his emotions and trying to "emotionally connect" with people.

He notes that a sofa and chair in his living room match and says, "women will really be impressed." He also focuses on reading material on a table that includes a book titled "Date Young Women."

Wong, the Binghamton shooter, sent a message — but it wasn't received until three days later, when a letter he wrote arrived at News 10 Now in Syracuse. In it, he repeated a psychotic fantasy he'd had for years about undercover police officers dogging him.

Sodini spoke to his mother by cell phone shortly before entering the fitness club, said Charles Moffatt, Allegheny County police superintendent. He wouldn't say what they discussed.

It's unclear when Sodini posted his screeds and videos and whether they were meant as warnings. Dr. Alan Manevitz, a psychiatrist at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital, said the timing of such messages means everything.

"Someone who puts it out in advance may have ambivalence; they may want to be stopped," Manevitz said. "The guy who does it after the fact is leaving the explanation, the diary of what it is that they're hoping will be understood in their very irrational mind."

___

Ben Dobbin reported from Syracuse, N.Y.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090806/ap_on_re_us/us_health_club_shooting

[samanthajane13]

Expert: Pa. shooter wanted acts to be understood
By JOE MANDAK and BEN DOBBIN, Associated Press Writers Joe Mandak And Ben Dobbin, Associated Press Writers – 34 mins ago

PITTSBURGH – The man who went on a deadly shooting rampage at a Pittsburgh-area health club shares a chilling trait with other mass killers, an expert says: the desire to make their woes understood through multiple deaths.

No indication has surfaced that George Sodini had documented mental problems, but his massacre shares threads with others analyzed by psychiatrists and legal experts, who say the line between lonely and homicidal remains hard to place.

"They're thinking, 'I want everyone to understand and appreciate why I'm doing this,' and the way to do that, in their mind, is to kill other people and not just themselves," New York attorney Carolyn Wolf, whose firm specializes in mental health issues, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Thursday. "In their mind it sends a broader message."

The 48-year-old Sodini fatally shot himself after killing three women and wounding nine others attending a weekly Latin dance aerobics class in Collier Township on Tuesday night. He wore black workout gear and fumbled around in a duffel bag before producing three guns, firing indiscriminately after shutting off the lights.

Killed were Heidi Overmier, 46, of Carnegie, a sales manager at an amusement park; Jody Billingsley, 37, of Mount Lebanon, who worked for a medical-supply company; and Elizabeth Gannon, 49, of Pittsburgh, an X-ray technician at Allegheny General Hospital. About 75 people attended a vigil to remember them Thursday night in downtown Pittsburgh.

Police say Sodini didn't know his victims. His scathing, 4,000-plus-word blog reads like a monthslong diary lamenting his wrongful rejection by "30 million" American women and alluding to his plans.

When Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007, then committed suicide, his "message" was a video tirade to NBC railing about being overlooked by "snobs" and rich "brats."

When Jiverly Wong killed 13 people and himself at a Binghamton, N.Y., immigration center in April, it was uncovered that unemployment, perceived police persecution, mockery for poor English skills and a dose of psychosis led him to kill.

It turns out Sodini bought accessories for a handgun from TGSCOM Inc. of Green Bay, Wis., the same online gun dealer that sold Cho a .22-caliber handgun two months before the Virginia Tech massacre. Police say Sodini legally owned three guns he used in the shooting.

Still, the grievances, lifestyles and mental states of the gunmen varied widely — Cho and Wong had documented mental problems, while, so far, there's no indication Sodini did.

"These people get into a very self-centered, sometimes self-aggrandizing, often psychotic path that enables them, in their mind, to finally get the attention they crave," Wolf said.

Many mass murderers feel rejected by a "pseudo community" that may exist only in their minds, said Dr. James Knoll, a forensic psychiatrist at the State University of New York's Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. He spoke Thursday at a conference he organized to analyze the actions of Wong and Cho.

"He probably worked out at this gym, he was tanning and working out, trying to improve himself," Knoll said of Sodini. "These are things he thought would get him a relationship. It wasn't working."

In his Web diary, Sodini wrote that his anger stemmed from unfulfilled desire: The women at his gym "look so beautiful as to not be human," he wrote.

Two undated videos apparently recorded by Sodini were posted online showing him touring his home and talking about hiding his emotions and trying to "emotionally connect" with people.

He notes that a sofa and chair in his living room match and says, "women will really be impressed." He also focuses on reading material on a table that includes a book titled "Date Young Women."

It's unclear when Sodini posted his screeds and videos and whether they were meant as warnings. Dr. Alan Manevitz, a psychiatrist at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital, said the timing of such messages means everything.

"Someone who puts it out in advance may have ambivalence; they may want to be stopped," Manevitz said. "The guy who does it after the fact is leaving the explanation, the diary of what it is that they're hoping will be understood in their very irrational mind."

___

Ben Dobbin reported from Syracuse, N.Y.


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