Report: Colo. gunman warned of attacks online

updated 7:56 p.m. ET Dec. 11, 2007

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - With the identity of the gunman now known, residents of two Colorado towns were left Tuesday with deeper questions: What drove Matthew Murray to a rampage that claimed four lives at a church and missionary training center, and were there warning signs that could have prevented it?

Autopsy results show Murray, who was kicked out of a missionary training center where the first shooting occurred, killed himself, police said.

Murray, 24, was struck multiple times by a security officer at New Life Church Sunday but died after firing a single shot at himself, the El Paso County Coroner's Office concluded after an autopsy.

In between his two deadly shooting sprees, Murray apparently posted a furious threat on the Internet to kill Christians. But whether the warning reached police before he struck again was unclear Tuesday.

The warning — and other anguished, despair-filled messages over the past few months — were posted by someone using the screen name "nghtmrchld26." The postings paint a picture of a home-schooled Colorado youth once affiliated with the Youth With a Mission program — as 24-year-old Murray had been.

"I'm coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the (expletive) teeth and I WILL shoot to kill," Sunday's posting by nghtmrchld26 said.

"God, I can't wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don't care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world. You Christians brought this on yourselves," Murray wrote, according to the station, which did not identify the site. "All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world."

The online threats appear to include whole passages lifted from a manifesto written by Eric Harris, one of the teens who carried out the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School — 13 miles from Murray's hometown, the Denver Post reported.

Police cannot say with certainty who nghtmrchld26 is.

Online threat reported
At least one visitor to the site was alarmed and contacted the FBI promptly, before the second attack, the site's administrator said. But the FBI would not immediately confirm that.

The threatening message was posted on a site for former Pentecostals at 9:55 a.m. or 10:55 a.m. — the time zone was not clear, said Joe Istre, site administrator and president of the Association of Former Pentecostals.

Either way, that was several hours after Murray killed two people at Youth With a Mission, a training center for missionaries in the Denver suburb of Arvada, and at least two hours before he killed two more people at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs around 1 p.m.

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