‘Bored, lonely’ man charged in horrific crime

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His greatest wish: Be ‘like a normal person’
“Pretty much the only time I believe in God is when I blame him for something,” he said. “Or, when I’m really depressed, to cry and beg him to make me better, to make whatever is wrong in my brain go away, so that I can live like a normal person.

“That’s all I want in life, is to be able to live like a normal person.”

He wrote that he rarely left his apartment for long stretches, except to go to work and to buy food. “I just sit here at the computer every minute of the day, when I’m not at work. A week or so ago, I spent my day off sitting here at the computer, barely moving from the chair, for 14 hours.”

He said one of his main interests was the online role-playing game “Kingdom of Loathing,” in which stick figures battle one another.

In September 2004, he wrote that his depression deepened after several months without taking the medication Lexapro, an antidepressant also used in the treatment of anxiety disorders.

“For example, my fantasies are just getting weirder and weirder. Dangerously weird,” he wrote. “If people knew the kinds of things I think about anymore, I’d probably be locked away. No probably about it, I know I would be.”

Dutiful but ‘boring’ worker
Underwood worked for nearly seven years at a Carl’s Jr. restaurant, where shift leader Bill Verdan described him as a quiet person who kept to himself. “He did a good job,” Verdan said Sunday.

However, he said Underwood, who quit about a year ago, was a “boring” man who rarely smiled.

“Just his tone of voice, he just sounded dull,” Verdan said. “Trying to get a smile out of him took an act of Congress.”

Verdan said he and his wife and young daughters never suspected anything unusual. “He gave my wife rides home from work numerous times,” he said. “We never felt uncomfortable. I talked to my girls after this happened, and they said they felt comfortable around him.”

His most recent job was as a stocker at a Griders Discount Foods grocery store in Oklahoma City, where he arrived early for his shift Friday, said a manager at the store, Jerry Castro.

“He was the same as always,” Castro said. “He was quiet and kept to himself. He didn’t interact with people. It just didn’t dawn on you that this was something he’d do.”

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