Motivations of Orlando killer hard to untangle

MIAMI – He is the worst mass murderer in American history. But why?

Was he another homegrown terrorist inspired by radical Islam? A homicidal homophobe who might have been gay himself? A lifelong loser hoping to gain infamy like so many other American mass killers? Some or all of the above?

The emerging evidence continues to twist the narrative surrounding Omar Mateen, as federal agents and experts in criminal profiling labor to untangle the confusing motivations that drove the 29-year-old security guard to massacre a packed gay nightclub in Orlando – all while checking Facebook to see if his act was getting noticed.

Only one thing seems clear, experts say: The FBI’s first assessment of Mateen as a self-radicalized jihadi likely reflected only part of his motivation.

“This is a hard one to disentangle, but there are three strands,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “The dominant strand is that he hates gays. Then, there is his personal rage. He doesn’t like his life at all.

“The third strand is Islamist ideology, which is the weakest of the three,” said Potok, whose organization tracks extremists. “It’s almost like an afterthought.”

The FBI initially touted the theory that U.S.-born Mateen was motivated by his support of the notorious Islamic State group. But the portrait has turned far more complicated, with experts saying Mateen appeared to be driven by a mix of bigotry, self-loathing and, perhaps, mental illness.

Most startling are reports from patrons at Pulse. They’ve told media outlets and investigators the married Fort Pierce security guard regularly visited the Pulse club and used gay dating apps.

Experts stress much of the initial profiling of Mateen amounts to informed speculation. They say it’s too early to draw conclusions from evidence collected by federal agents, who are still combing through the killer’s electronics and probing his past relationships and employment.

The killer’s own words shaped his initial image. During the shooting, Mateen said on a 911 call that he was carrying out the killings for the leader of the Islamic State, while also posting terrorism-related content on his Facebook page and doing social media searches for “Pulse Orlando” and “shooting” during the attack June 12.

Although there are reports that he was a regular at Pulse, Mateen could have simply been casing a future target. Or he could have unleashed his rage on a place where he pursued social or sexual connections.

“No one knows exactly why Mateen singled out the Pulse nightclub,” said Miami defense lawyer David Weinstein, former chief of counterterrorism in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida.

But this much is certain: the killer’s “motivation for the selection of his specific target to act out on his plan would make this case unique amongst all of the homegrown terrorism cases that we have seen since 9/11,” Weinstein said.

Authorities say Mateen opened fire with a Sig Sauer MCX rifle and Glock 17 pistol inside Pulse right around last call at 2 a.m. Sunday – killing 49 people and wounding 53 others. He spent about three hours inside the club before police finally burst into the club and killed him around 5 a.m.

But about two hours after he started the attack and while holed up in a bathroom, Mateen texted his wife, Noor Salman, asking if she had seen the news, according to published reports. She responded with a text saying that she loved him. The wife, who was questioned for hours after the shooting, faces potential charges of knowing about her husband’s plot but failing to report his crime to authorities.

South Florida criminal defense attorney Khurrum Wahid, who has represented several defendants accused of terrorist-related activities, said he spoke with Mateen’s family in the aftermath of the shooting.

Wahid said that, in the post-9/11 era, the U.S. government and society as a whole tend to want to interpret the motive for crimes like the Orlando massacre through a “political prism” – opting to put the perpetrator in the “terrorism bin” because he’s a Muslim and pledged support for the Islamic State.

“It’s a lot easier to call it Islamic terrorism because we’re all united against that,” Wahid said. “But it’s not as easy to call it homophobia because we’re not all united against that.

“To me,” he said, “this case smacks of someone who was not comfortable in his own skin – maybe because of his sexual identity … If I’m a self-loathing gay man, this (Islamic State pledge) is the mantle I’d rather carry.”

Dr. Harley Stock, a clinical psychologist who has profiled terrorists and taught at the FBI Academy, said questions about Mateen’s possibly repressed sexuality turning into violence may be overblown.

“This concept of repressed sexuality came from Freud. It’s outdated. People have latched onto it because it’s an easy explanation,” said Stock, of the Incident Management Group, which assesses workplace threats.

As the horror of the nation’s biggest mass shooting dominated the news, details of Mateen’s past began to trickle out.

His family came to the U.S. from Afghanistan and lived in Queens, New York, where Mateen was born. They moved to Florida’s Treasure Coast, where Mateen attended Martin County High School and developed a reputation for being a hot-tempered “bully,” according to a school administrator. Mateen was arrested for beating up a classmate, expelled and transferred to another school, records show.

When terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Mateen stood up in class and claimed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was his uncle and taught him how to shoot an AK-47, classmates recalled.

After high school, he enrolled in criminal justice courses at Indian River Community College while he participated in a training program to become a prison guard at Martin Correctional Institution. He was let go from the program after six months for reasons that are unclear, but that didn’t stop him from becoming a security guard for a private contractor in 2007 – his occupation until death.

His ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, has told news media he was verbally and physically abusive before she fled their Treasure Coast home in 2009. She said he was religious but had never expressed sympathies for terrorist organizations. She said, however, he did make anti-gay comments when he was angry.

Wahid, the defense lawyer, said from talking with Mateen’s father and current wife, Salman, he came away believing the onetime security guard did not fit the model of a jihadi. He viewed Mateen as a frustrated security guard with a “paramilitary mindset who desperately wanted to be a police officer.”

Mateen had provoked his co-workers at G4S with his comments about Islamic terrorist organizations. In 2013, while he was working as a guard at the St. Lucie criminal courthouse, they reported to the FBI that he made some statements that were “inflammatory and contradictory” about terrorism – including claiming family connections to al-Qaida and then saying he was a member of the West Bank terrorist group Hezbollah.

Mateen, when questioned by federal agents, said he admitted making the remarks but said he did so out of anger “because he thought his co-workers were discriminating against him and teasing him because he was Muslim,” FBI Director James Comey said.

This week, Comey said no evidence gathered in the Orlando shooting pointed to a “plot directed from outside the United States” or that the killer was a member of a foreign terrorist organization – suggesting Mateen was a so-called lone wolf who channeled extreme Islamic propaganda on the internet.