Canada's Latest School Shooting: What We Know

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. It's me, Brandon Kyle Goodman, but you can call me Messy Mom because on my podcast, Tell Me Something Messy, my fantastic guests are bringing their mess, like singer-songwriter Duran Bernard suggesting we reinstate adult sleepovers with friends. Here's the thing. Get a group that's mature enough not to be putting your hand in warm water and tickling you. You know what I'm saying? I mean, granted, I might be doing it. Listen to Tell Me Something Messy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, everyone. It's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week, we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers. We're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl. He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, I'll tell you that story and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. Last Friday, I teamed up with Lance from the Canadian-based politics show The Serfs to talk about the tragic events of last week in Tumblr Ridge, British Columbia. On Tuesday, February 10th, an 18-year-old named Jessie Van Rootslar killed her mother and stepbrother in their home, then took two guns and went to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, where she killed five students, one teacher, and finally herself. Two other kids were critically injured with gunshot wounds, but have survived. The shooter did attend Tumbler Ridge Secondary School years ago, but dropped out. For the past three to five years, it's kind of unclear, Jesse identified as a transgender girl. Tumblr Ridge is a very small town with just 2,400 residents in northeastern British Columbia. This was the worst school shooting in Canada since 1989. The sequence of events during this incident were very similar to the Lelouch shooting in Canada 10 years ago, where the gunman killed two family members at home before going to a school. During our conversation, Lance and I discuss the spread of misinformation, how the online writers tried to weaponize the deaths of these people for their own political agenda, and how the shooter's online activity shows a growing fascination with mass shootings this past year. Here's that conversation. I'm sure everyone knows that right now Canada's a nation in mourning. And I also did probably want to start this out by reading the names of the deceased, because it's one of the things that the families have been asking for. So the victims from the Tumblr Ridge Secondary School shooting are Abel Wanza, who was 12, Ezekiel Schofield, who was 13, Kylie Smith, who was 12, Zoe Benoit, who was 12, to Karya Lampert who was 12 Shanda Evigwanda Duran who's 39 Emmett Jacobs who was 11 and Jennifer Jacobs who was 39 years old so I guess I'll start with Garrison how have you been processing and or tracking the story since it happened yeah pretty horrifying incident that happened last Tuesday very soon after it happened there was like right-wing narratives trying to use the deaths of these children and family members for their own political agenda. And I started tracking that pretty soon and then also trying to verify as much information about the actual circumstances of the shooting and who the shooter was around that same time. Things have gotten pretty clear now a few days later. But I mean, it's been a nightmare to sort through all this stuff, especially all of the political opportunism being done by a variety of right-wing influencers and, you know, quote-unquote news agencies. Yeah, I was doing the same thing like right after the event happened. I noticed that there was a lot of, for people who don't know, right-wing online operatives like The Pleb Reporter and Juno News and Cat Canada. And these are all very popular right-wing social media accounts on Twitter in Canada, or at least based in Canada for their origins. But then they usually get retweeted, quote tweeted and amplified eventually by the far right in the U.S., which has a very corrosive effect. And I think by the time we're talking about this right now, I saw that Donald Trump Jr., the son of the president of the United States, is doing an entire, I assume, blowed out of his mind, rumble special on the shooting. Just uniquely going after trans people the entire time. Like for a small little town of what, like just over 2,400 people, it has to be beyond like a shell shock to first have to go through something this horrifying and then deal with the international right wing apparatus. Yeah, they're going through the motions, right? Like this is not the first time. This won't be the last time that they try to do something like this. It's not getting as much traction, I think, as it used to. There's a lot of other stuff happening in the States. Around the time news was breaking in the States about the shooting that happened, it was Wednesday during Pam Bondi's Epstein hearing. So there's been a lot of other stuff happening. So I don't think they've gotten as much concentrated attention on this as some of the online right has wanted to, or the Matt Walsh types, Lips of TikTok, that sort of thing. But they're definitely giving it a go. It's gross, right? It's gross to use the deaths of all these people. Yeah, absolutely. Not to mention the way the entire thing's being framed is abhorrent. I mean, obviously, you know, we're speaking from a perspective where we don't want to vilify an entire group based on one, like, you know, horrifying monster's actions kind of thing, right? Because that doesn't happen in the other direction for cis people. And that's what you got to be quick to point out. But I feel like the Matt Walsh's and the libs of TikTok have, and it's a horrifying thing to say, but like, they're perfect narrative, right? It's kind of like in a twisted way, something they're actually quite pleased about, it almost seems. Yeah, they make a lot of money off this. Yes, yeah, exactly. They profit off of human suffering and they try to spread as much of it as possible. The first aspect I was trying to look at this story from was what it was early. What are the families themselves asking for? What does the town need in terms of support? That kind of stuff. And you move on from that. And then immediately it was, well, now there's just an overwhelming, very apparent right-wing mechanism gearing up. And it's going to be kind of devastating for a country like Canada that doesn't really have maybe or isn't as used to having the eyes of the world from the transphobic, you know, turf side of the Internet. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about Jennifer Strang, the mother of the shooter. despite being a self-described conservative libertarian jesse's mother publicly supported her transition made posts in support of trans people in july 2024 she shared a lgbtq pride graphic reading good people don't spend their time harassing marginalized communities and wrote quote as a conservative leaning libertarian who lives in the north and loves living in a small town i really hope the hate i see online is just bored old people and not true hatred do better and educate yourself before spewing bullshit online makes you look dumb. Evolve. I normally don't say anything. I normally don't go on shitbook to see the keyboard warriors, and I know I can't control or shield my kids from everything, but please, for the love of fuck, can you get your shit together so we don't have to bring our kids up in a world full of hatred? Do you have any idea how many kids are killing themselves over this kind of hate? Please stop the bullshit, unquote. So pretty soon after the shooting, based on an early active shooter report describing the shooter as a quote-unquote female in a dress with brown hair. Online right-wing accounts started trying to identify who this possible shooter was by looking at trans people in the area of Tumblr Ridge. They misidentified one person who is a relative of the shooter, but put out photographs of them claiming that she was the shooter. This person is now having to lock down all of their accounts and is scared to go outside due to the horrific wave of harassment they're facing. What is wild about that aspect of the story is I've seen accounts like the Plob reporter who popularized publishing that photo. But I think Rachel Gilmore is the one who also pointed out that there was the misuse of a photo in an actual CBC radio broadcast image thumbnail as well, which is also kind of just shocking to hear. Because these are, again, innocent people who might have targets now put on their back because they're being directly identified as some kind of a mass shooter or monster. And then in addition to that, like now I'm wondering how much of this is going to be something that they're capable of containing, especially considering that it's been still proliferated. Like I saw an account called Bricks News, which I assumed would be about Bricks, you know, the economic alliance between a number of different nations, and instead was publishing the false photo of, again, a completely innocent person. And sadly, I think at the time, 17,000 likes, you know, hundreds of thousands of impressions. It's really dangerous. I mean, yeah, I mean, that's part of the intent here. You know, places like Kiwi Farms trailblaze a lot of this, quote unquote, early research. And the point is to cast as large of an event as possible to damage as many trans people as they can using horrific events like this. the cruelty is part of the point. And blame gets laid at a combination of trans-enabled mental delusion, SSRIs and hormones, saying that those things are causing the shooting well before we have any evidence to determine what types of medications someone could be on, who they actually are, or any possible motive. One kind of crude thing that I've seen a lot is right-wing accounts like End Wokeness, allegedly Jack Posobiec, saying that the shooter, quote-unquote, gunned down 35 kids to make it seem like a massacre of such a large magnitude, right? The number of kids that have been killed and other people as well, obviously it's horrific. 35 people were not shot in this shooting, though. There was 25 people with non-gunshot-related injuries as a result of the incident. And that is the number that people are framing as being total number of people shot, which just isn't true. And then they also very quickly start sharing unsourced graphs. I'm sure you've seen stuff like this, right? Saying that trans girls make up the highest demographic of mass shooters per capita. You see these things go all over the place. By the world's richest man. He's sharing that a lot online right now. yeah i mean and this is this has been a thing the past three years right this is something they've been doing well before any any actual incident can be even used to create data they've they've created fake graphs that show this there's factors that get people to you know believe these sorts of things right there is certainly a selection bias that determines which types of shootings gets like a lot of media attention and the other issue that i've talked about a lot in in previous shootings is there's a lot of different definitions of a mass shooting. You know, a mass shooting versus a mass killing versus like a school shooting, right? All these are different terms. Even the term school shooting can be used to refer to a variety of very different incidents revolving around gun violence, right? There can be gang-related violence at a school. There can be shots fired as an escalation of a physical fight. Students bringing guns to school and accidentally firing them, which happens more often than what you would think. Like someone who just brings a gun in their backpack, not intending to do a shooting, but it accidentally fires in the school. This happens multiple times a year. There's shootings at dormitories, right? Those get counted as mass shootings at like a college dormitory. It's interpersonal violence. There's neighborhood shootings that affect but aren't targeting the school, like drive-by shootings. Or even something like the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which some people have categorized as a school shooting because it was on a college campus, right? But these are all very different types of violence, right? These aren't like, you know, intentional, you know, mass shooting violence where someone who's trying to shoot as many people as possible and then usually kill themselves, right? That's a different thing than a lot of these other things that I mentioned. But they all get lumped under this one label of school shooting. And all these different data collection criteria could produce very different stats. And depending whether you're measuring injuries versus deaths, specific weapons like knives versus guns, and how many years are being sampled or if there's connections to other violent activity, there could be very, very different results in how you categorize mass killings or mass shootings. The MassKilling database has 631 incidents in the United States since 2006, of which about one to three, it's kind of unclear, one to three are done by people who have been reported as transgender, which is an underrepresented sample size. The Violence Project has one transgender mass shooter in their database of about 195 mass shootings. And according to the Gun Violence Archive, which also measures gunshot injuries, not just deaths, fewer than one in 1,000 mass shooters over the past decade have been identified as transgender. According to a Gallup poll for 2023, about 2% of Gen Z identify as transgender. And if you also count non-binary people, it brings it up to 4%. But you can have all the stats on hand if that doesn't really do very much. Once you're arguing about statistics and semantics of terms when kids have died, you're kind of already starting to lose the emotional battle, right? I can say all of that, But like, that's not actually going to be helpful, right? Like fact checking doesn't work to dissuade disinformation. And when you're dealing with such an emotionally charged incident, like kids being murdered, having to read off a paragraph like that just doesn't doesn't really help, right? Parents just want to know why this is happening and what can be done to stop it. And all they know is that, you know, since 2023, there has been a series of shootings done by young people who either attempted to or did transition genders. Right. That's what they know. And they want to know, you know, why is this happening and how to stop it? Yeah. One of the things that I've tried to push up against, because you are getting a lot of Americans who are pushing that narrative right now, is to point out because I've seen people saying like this epidemic of trans mass violence is a scourge. I think they're blending Canada and the US into one nation because I was like just to be clear this is the first mass shooting committed by a trans person in Canadian history ever and there's a lot of trans people in British Columbia yeah well across the country I mean it's one of those things for him like this this this is not an epidemic of which like oh my god you you have a high probability of being hurt by a trans person in your life It couldn be further from the truth right Like the stats are still overwhelmingly in the other direction You more likely to be the victim of physical or sexual violence if you trans person than if you're a cis person. Yeah, no, that is another problem here is, yeah, a lot of these data collection tools aren't counting violence in Canada. These are all stuff based in the States. But for, you know, the culture war, it's not that hard to, you know, move that border up 500 miles to include things that are happening in Canada in a rhetorical sense for, you know, your Matt Walsh's, your end wokeness's, even, you know, your Fox News anchors, right? Yeah. are bringing their mess to share with the class. Like singer-songwriter Duran Bernard suggesting we reinstate adult sleepovers with friends. Here's the thing. Get a group that's mature enough not to be putting your hand in warm water and tickling you. You know what I'm saying? I mean, granted, I might be doing it. But you know what I'm saying? And I think it's important for those examples of that, of us just being gentle with one another because the world and the people in it are already finding brand new ways to whip our ass every single day. 1,000%. The day. 1,000%. So the least we could do is make strides to handle each other in a way that is... With care. Yeah, that's with care and a bit more mindful. Listen to Tell Me Something Messy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, everyone. It's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette Podcast. Each week, we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers, we're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents. I lied to police. I lied to everybody. There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of bitches. Come around here and my wife. Boom. Boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. this thing that people are talking about on the right about this you know epidemic of trans violence what this has also done is created like a counter reaction from trans influencers to whenever something horrible happens like this to blame these other groups like you know o9a or 764 right this has become something that's also now been very consistent you know there is a kernel of truth in this this is based on a real thing that has happened before but the invocation of this has often you know expanded greatly beyond it's actually can you explain it for people who are completely unfamiliar because i remember like even a year ago i had to start reading up on like what is what is all this satanic cult rituals with participation requirements of self-harm and all this stuff like okay yeah so you see a lot of people now when there's news coverage you know a A lot of trans people who have, you know, accounts online, you know, talking about how, quote-unquote, satanic Nazi pedophiles have groomed another vulnerable queer kid into doing a mass shooting. There's a viral tweet, a semi-viral tweet on Twitter right now that reads, quote, fuck anyone talking about trans and not Adam Woffin. This includes the cops and the media, like the CBC and BBC, unquote. So, yeah, what are they talking about here? You know, Adam Woffin, satanic Nazi pedophile cults. I said, you know, 09A, 764, right? These are originally, you know, 09A is this older group, but as contemporary internet lore, it is seen as this neo-Nazi occultic organization that grooms people into sexual exploitation or into doing violence like mass shootings. 764 is a extortion ring that operated mainly on Telegram and Discord, which tried to get kids to do self-harm, produce blackmail, Roblox 2? Is that true? Yeah, they're active across a lot of places, but the organizing hubs were on Discord and Telegram, and they attempted to get child sexual abuse material out of these kids and then used that to blackmail them to get even more material, and then also encouraging self-harm and acts of violence. These have been real groups historically. They are getting cracked down upon pretty heavily, at least in 764's case. O9A is not really a real group anymore, arguably, but it exists as lore. And there has been no instances of 764-affiliated people doing public acts of violence. So in this case, there's been people who have, you know, trans people online or, you know, allies who have said that this shooting is another one of these instances where these online groups of, you know, Nazis and pedophiles have, you know, groomed someone into doing violence. And they have produced some evidence for this. There was a Twitter account that allegedly belonged to the shooter that had a profile picture of a Sonnenrad on top of a trans flag, as well as the face of the Christchurch shooter. This account had posts glorifying white supremacist mass killers and promoting the idea of creating a white homeland in the Pacific Northwest. This was a Canada-based account. But in reality, this was actually just another Nazi's account who changed their username to match that of the Tumblr Ridge shooter. And this was an attempt to troll people and just spread disinformation. And this even fooled the ADL, whose research standards have dropped dramatically the past three years. But a few days ago, the ADL put out an article where they credited posts made by this Twitter account to the Tumblr-ridge shooter and claimed that a quote-unquote preliminary investigation showed that the shooter had showed interest in white supremacy. but this was this was not their real account this was just someone who also is a fan of mass shootings like the shooter was as we'll soon discuss but this was someone who was just trying to troll other other you know researchers on on twitter and and see how far their disinformation can spread this is the the consequence of an organization like the adl doing preliminary research based on kiwi farms posts and not actually verifying the information i mean the fact that i I think they're actively pursuing Hassan Piker more than Elon Musk is pretty much all I need to know in terms of where they're prioritizing, you know, the search for racism. Yeah, I can get into the actual like online footprint of the shooter, which we do have a decent idea of, actually. Before you get to that, because I think that's what everyone is kind of interested in. I just want to wrap up that last part. So just to be clear, when you were mentioning those groups, you know, 764, etc., there is no actual history of the shooter having been into Nazi, the occult, that kind of stuff. Based on their presence, they have not been active in specific 764 communities or have showed interest in white supremacy, neo-Nazism, or the occult pedophile Nazism of O9A. this is not observable in the online footprint they have left which is which is not to say the online footprint they have left is you know normal and good uh if anything it does point towards you know significant factors that are causing kids to do shootings like this and we can trace it to a number of shootings that have happened but the the 098764 thing is more so like a meme at this point that people similarly deploy the same way that you know the right deploys you know this epidemic of trans violence. This has become like a counter meme to say that every time a trans person does something bad, it's actually the fault of 098 and 764. Right. Because there has been incidences in the past that could point towards that. Yeah, there could be suggestions in the past. And certainly when 764 was more active years ago, I mean, a lot of the kids they were grooming for child sexual abuse material were a lot of queer kids because those kids are uniquely leave vulnerable and are looking for community. But I mean, that is the majority of kids affected by 764 are people who have been groomed into self-harm or producing child sexual abuse material to circulate among the organizers of these groups. So it turns out that there isn't really a connection in those two directions. You're correct in pointing out there, there's a counter push. Like I did the same thing with Charlie Kirk, right? Like I remember when the first image of the Charlie Kirk shooter being in a Kruiper, Pippe, the frog style jumper, I was like, oh, this has to be a griper, right? Like, that's immediately where my brain went because they do have a history of targeting that community. So, you know, you can understand why there's a pushback. Yeah, and I think people feel like they understand ideological violence easier, like violence caused by political ideology and are uncomfortable with the increasing amount of horrific public violence that is seemingly linked to no political ideology. It's much more like nihilistic and scattershot and that's like uncomfortable. it's harder to understand like the causal forces producing that rather than just saying you know oh it's another nazi right that's that's easy at this point sadly easy thing for people to understand because of you know a very high number of neo-nazi mass shootings that happened in the past 10 years but it is not 2017 anymore and there's the circumstances that are inducing shootings like this have have changed can you talk about that because like you said it's a conversation that people don't want to have is it because we are uncomfortable with the conversation itself or because there's not enough information available yet to truly understand what is leading these super online shooter slash nihilistic you know deep in the memes style stuff yeah i think a mix of both it is both an emerging phenomenon so people have to observe it for a certain amount of time to see the pattern and then also it's it's uncomfortable and it's it sucks it sucks to be in these places and like and like look at all this stuff right like i've been the past few days. I've been looking at, you know, these horrible forum posts and reading about all kinds of like, you know, bad stuff. And it sucks. And no one wants to do that. So I think it's a mix of factors. But yeah, I do want to talk about that. That's the kind of the, I've kind of like two sections that get into that. The first one based on her actual online footprint. The second one on more like, you know, basic societal forces, I think is getting people to go so far to the social margins. That pushes them to places like where the shooter hung out online. So in 2021, Jesse's mom shared a link to her kid's YouTube channel where, quote, he posts about hunting, self-reliance, guns, and stuff he likes to do, unquote. This YouTube account shared the username as Jesse's Reddit account. The earliest posts from 2019 were about like Roblox gaming. Then in 2021, Jessie started posting about firearms and shared a photo of her Chinese SKS, which is kind of like an AK-47 style gun, which she used for hunting. Around 2023, she started posting about, quote-unquote, starting MTF transition soon, as well as her phobia of needles. The police say that she started transitioning before this, but the earliest indication we have from her online activity puts this around 2023. On other posts, on r slash trans, she asked for advice on girls' clothing, what to expect from HRT, and talked about body dysmorphia. Her very last gender-related post on Reddit still refers to herself as pre-HRT. Jesse made a single post on r slash trans guns in October 2023, sharing a video of her firing a Desert Eagle handgun at a shooting range. at this point around like the end of 2023 almost all of her posts switch to being about psychedelic drug abuse asking how to vape or smoke weed without leaving a smell in the house being scammed by an online psychedelic seller in canada and asking if you can get high off drinking the urine from a drug addict and asked on reddit if it's safe to do five meo dmt alone after she returned from the quote psych ward. She was admitted to a psychiatric facility after attempting to burn down her home with a count of aerosol while on three grams of mushrooms. Jesse also said that she was diagnosed with ADHD, autism, major depressive disorder, and OCD, and was prescribed a mix of different SSRIs, as well as an antipsychotic for sleep. In one comment on one of her multiple Reddit posts asking about trying 5-MeO DMT after being arrested for arson. She wrote, quote, It is a wonder I'm still alive, yet I am. Speaks volumes about how much I've been trying to keep breathing when all my effort goes towards keeping alive, unquote. Her Reddit activity drops off in April of 2024. This could mean that she just stopped using Reddit around then or that she has deleted a whole bunch of posts. She did scrub some of her online activity prior to the shooting. Now, in the aftermath of the shooting, The police have said that they made multiple mental health-related visits to the shooter's home the past few years and had previously confiscated guns from the home. But the owner of the guns, it's unclear who exactly, successfully petitioned for their return. And Jesse did have a minor's firearms license, but that expired in 2024. It's unclear if the guns that were confiscated were the same ones used in the shooting. Jesse has posted a number of different photos of guns, and we still don't know which exact ones were used. We just know that there was a long gun and a handgun recovered. So though the shooter's Reddit activity ceases in early 2024, her online presence moved to darker corners of the internet, which demonstrate a declining mental well-being and a growing fascination with mass shootings. The past year, Jessie was active on an internet forum called Watch People Die, which is pretty much what it sounds like. It's a website to host footage of real-life gore. Yeah, I was like, is that what it sounds like? It is. Okay All right You know like snuff like real gore is hosted there and shared as well as a lot of you know like edits of mass shooter footage of people filming themselves doing mass shootings that then circulates This forum is way more of like a social orbit around this recent wave of mass shootings than 764 is. And there is some crossover, you know, there is some 764 people who are also, you know, active on this forum. people who used to be 764, because that group is also not really what it used to be. But this form is its own thing. Rather than being linked to explicit Nazi groups, the occultic 09A, or the child's exploitation rings like 764, the shooter's verifiable online footprint suggests much more of a nexus of involvement with what I've been calling the school shooter fandom. They call it TCC, or the true crime community. and in the past two years we've seen an increase in shootings based on this like neo-Columbiner variety right people doing copycats of other school shootings the abundant life christian school shooting in december 2024 by Columbine cosplayer natalie cement the rupnow who the right falsely labeled as trans there was also the catholic school shooting in august 2025 by robin westman who did at one point attempt gender transition but later regretted it and originally planned to attack an LGBTQ music venue. Westman was similarly obsessed with mass killers and wrote the name of Repnow on one of their rifles. Last April, a 22-year-old man in Florida was arrested for threatening to commit a mass shooting on Discord. The FBI believes that he was in communication with Samantha Repnow prior to her shooting, and they both discussed with each other plans for their mass killing attacks. In September 2025, a 16-year-old named Desmond Hawley shot two kids before killing himself at Evergreen High School in Colorado. He also idolized Samantha Rupnow, replicated her selfies, and was active on the same forum, Watch People Die, that Rupnow herself was active on. So Jesse was on this forum, but Jesse also displayed other traits similar of the TCC group. Jesse created a mass shooting simulator game on Roblox, which was set in a mall where you act out a shooting, killing people in the mall. I'll talk a little bit about this forum specifically now, right? Like, this forum essentially exists to desensitize people to extremely violent content that glorifies mass killings. Jesse's very first comment on Watch People Die was on a compilation video of mass shooter footage, and she wrote, quote, I appreciate this post. She also commented on another thread of mass shooting footage, quote, I love these first-person perspective-type videos. When a shooter records his or her own actions, it's always heat, unquote. The most worrying comment is something that, you know, if police were aware of, should have been a cause to prevent this from happening. It came about five months ago in a thread on Watch People Die about the psychology of watching gore. She wrote, quote, I find it addictive. It's hard not to watch violent content. I'm just drawn to it. I don't think much of it. Though, to say it doesn't affect me is likely naive. I'm sure maybe subconsciously it does. It just doesn't feel like a big deal. I'm drawn to substances too. It's easy to get high and just zone out into videos of this stuff. Does it impact my mental health? Eh, mine's probably already fucked. I tried to stay away from watching this type of thing before because it really sucks me in and it's a massive useless time dump, but I never really saw any benefit. I think the R words in the comment section are more bothersome mentally than the videos, so I try just not to interact with dorks. XD. And these types of sentiments are not uncommon among people who regularly engage with this type of content. I think it's an unusual thing to ask you, but at this point it almost seems as if the two biggest things that are often blamed for mass shooting that I have to push up against and I have been doing my whole life drugs and in the other case hyper online radicalization right the history that you're painting here kind of seems like someone who needed a variety of help 100 i'll reiterate that in like a sec okay yeah i mean as i was reading this this reminded me a little bit there was a shooting a few years ago at a fourth of july parade the highland park mass shooting the sort of writing that Jesse did in this post reminds me a bit of the writing done by this other mass shooter. Talking about getting sucked into violent content or this idea of it beckons you further into the concept. It's almost like hypnotic. Very similar writing done by this other shooter. So, one other post I'll reference that she made on this forum was a video of a father hanging himself in front of his children and she claimed that her stepdad attempted the same thing trying to kill himself in front of her when you know she was just a little kid and she wrote quote i wish his bitch ass would have died on the noose then and they're probably better than beating your kids unquote so obviously you know this person had like long-standing issues that at certain points seemed like better right like around 2021 they seem to be doing better right they were they were making you know youtube content about guns and hunting and felt like they had more of a stable social outlet. And then around 2023, with this abuse of psychedelic drugs leading to this mass shooter obsession, it's a pretty clear picture of a mental spiral. Two months before Jessie's own shooting, she did visit the Watch People Die profile for Samantha Rupp now. And if we're going to talk but like causal factors, right? And especially like in reference to, you know, this idea that, you know, parents have where, you know, there has been a sequence of trans people doing shootings. You can argue about, you know, the per capita percent rates are like stats again, but that doesn't go so far. But at a certain point, I mean, we have to all be comfortable or maybe comfortable is the wrong word, but we have to like, you know, realize that like as more people, you know, transition, right? Gender is not this like immutable thing. As more people attempt transitioning, there's going to be some trans people who do bad things. This happens with every social group of people. To borrow from sociologist Mark Worrell, who wrote about the social phenomenon of mass shootings, destruction of others is the means towards another end. The desire for self-destruction that the self was incapable of inflicting in isolation. A lot of mass shootings end with suicide, or trying to get the police to kill you through suicide. Like public shootings like this have a very strong suicidal component. And some people might not be able to do that themselves. They need to create a social context in which they feel like they can. And at least in terms of the states and to a smaller degree in Canada, these shootings exist as this cultural ritual, this ritual of destruction of the self. and destruction of the self can include the social apparatus that makes up the self and for like a young person that's what that's that's their family in school the two things that were targeted in this shooting right this this network that makes up like my sense of self as a 17 year old 18 year old it's going to be my family which is you know uh for jesse that's that's her mom she's been separated from her father for for a while as well as her stepbrother and then also this school that she used to go to, right? That's the network that makes up your idea of the social. And like I said before, as the trans community grows, there's going to be some overlap between antisocial, mentally unwell individuals who act out a mass killing as a suicide and disintegrated and socially under-regulated people who try transitioning as a way to ease tensions, both internally and externally. And if anything, I think transitioning can often be maybe one of the healthiest ways to attempt to relieve some of these tensions. But being trans is a marginal position in society, right? And the people who commit school shootings and suicide through mass shootings are at the very, very extreme end of social dysregulation and marginal isolation. And some people in those latter categories will also try transitioning as a method of social regulation. And in Jesse's case, like considering all their posts about like mental health and drugs, never once is being trans cited as like a point of their distress. Like that's the thing that's causing them the distress. It is a method of relief, at least according to like their own writing on Reddit. Like the cause of the distress are all these other things. And like people can blame mass shootings or mass killings on like any number of specific factors, right? Such as access to weapons, whether that's knives, firearms, bullying, substance abuse, mental health, and lacking mental health services and like mental health oversight. But like the common base factor across most of those things is that there's like social disintegration and deregulation happening. That's like a failure to balance like egoism and altruism, right? A healthy individual sense of self, as well as a place of belonging within a larger social group. Like, we need a mix of freedom and available structured paths for social life. Ritualistic outbursts of suicidal violence against society happen when these things are extremely unregulated and someone falls out of the social fabric. And, like, marginal classes, like trans people, can be particularly affected by social disintegration and deregulation. And, like, it's important to note here, This isn't caused by some vague medical condition like gender dysphoria. That's not causing the violence. Prescribed estrogen is not a causal force in this. We don't even know if Robin Westman or Jesse was even on estrogen. We don't know. But these things aren't causal. But these are social positions that include these larger social factors that affect large populations. One of those populations can be trans people. There's a lot of social disintegration that affects the cis men currently. They do a lot of shootings. Majority seems so. Yeah, the overwhelming majority. You can also graph these things on class lines. Lots of people who go and do public shootings, either themselves or their families, are suffering from economic instability. Or people in the middle class as well, which has this other problem in Durkheim's methodology of suicide, which I'm kind of pulling from a little bit here. is like this sense of like over-regulation can also produce an unhealthy balance. So it's either, you know, very over-regulated people, you know, like Elon Musk has too much freedom, has too much access to like money and possibilities that he's then a very dysfunctional person. This can happen with some probably like middle-class kids as well that can produce violent outbursts. But a lot of the time it's, you know, lower middle-class or lower-class conditions that can lead to violence. and sometimes it does not go to the extreme of doing a mass killing. It can often just result in petty crime, which is arguably a more healthy method of regulation compared to something like a mass shooting, which is the most desperate, the most marginal act of suicide that we could envision as a society. I'm Brandon Carl Goodman, the host of the Tell Me Something Messy podcast. I wanted to create a safe, comfy place for all of us to talk about sex, relationships, and what it means to be human. And baby, my fantastic guests are bringing their mess to share with the class. Like singer-songwriter Duran Bernard suggesting we reinstate adult sleepovers with friends. Here's the thing, get a group that's mature enough not to be putting your hand in warm water and tickling you. You know what I'm saying? I mean, granted, I might be doing it. And I think it's important for those examples of that of us just being gentle with one another because the world and the people in it already finding brand new ways to whip our ass every single day. One thousand percent. The day. One thousand percent. So the least we could do is make strides to handle each other in a way that is with care. Yeah. That's with care and a bit more mindful. Listen to Tell Me Something Messy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, everyone. It's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week, we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers, we're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents. I lied to police. I lied to everybody. There were years, Ryder, where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of a** to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's, played poker with Harry Truman, and had a long affair with a congresswoman? And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I just wanted to specifically say when it came to factors, you're distinctly not saying that video games were in any way responsible. I know you're not, but people should know that when you mentioned Roblox, I had, I think my mom and someone else asked, oh, well, what's the storyline for Roblox? And I was like, it's like asking what's the story for Minecraft. right i was like yeah i was like these these are world building it's it's it's similar to seeing someone basically trying journal out their thoughts right i think in in that she was building these these mass shooting simulators that wasn't her being influenced uh i say by some kind of like template that roblox had that was her showing yeah creating something to to express something else yeah and and that sort of like like cosplay or replication very common among this you know growing community of of the true crime community the school shooter fandom which which attracts a lot of people in marginal populations right like the fact that samantha rupnow is like one of the first like you know cis female school shooters like is notable here and like a lot of like the early like columbine fandom on tumblr was was young girls the fact that tcc is attracting like a wider net than just cis males, I think, is interesting. But it points to these other social forces. I think condensing it down to being like a certain mixture of SSRIs and HRT is what's causing this. Or psychedelics, right? No evidence for that. Yeah, or psychedelics, right? I mean, like anything, these things can exist within a healthy equilibrium, right? Psychedelics can be a very healthy tool for people to deal with mortality. PTSD or a bunch of things, you know. Yeah, no, absolutely, right? Whether that's MDMA, ketamine, or mushrooms. Mushrooms are being used to treat people who have cancer, right? To help them get comfortable with this idea of their own mortality. These things can exist within a healthy equilibrium of the social, but they can also exist in an unhealthy non-equilibrium, right? And I think the types of ways that Jesse was writing about psychedelics online, I think, demonstrates a very unhealthy use of these drugs, especially as a 16-year-old. Right. Well, it sounds like self-medication. It sounds like unsupervised medication. And it also sounds like something that was most likely acting as an accelerant, right? Like if you already have a host of other problems, if you are introducing a very large amount of incredibly powerful, like, you know, psychostimulants into, you know, what you're ingesting every day, then it's going to have potentially very, very dangerous outcomes. yeah again these are largely correlating factors not cause not causal forces right the causal forces is this like social disintegration and deregulation of which you know abuse of psychedelics can do a lot of damage to your sense of self and your sense of self within like a larger a larger community and the the fact that i think like specifically you know the lacking mental health services lacking like oversight of these things in terms of terms like a policy outlook like these are things that we as a society should be putting more work into if you actually want to start solving this problem. You can get into larger things about the alienation of, quote-unquote, late-stage capitalism, which also can be a factor in this. Another accelerant, right? I think a lot of these are accelerants, right? Every other thing that you've been listing, and it seems to me like this compounded upon this, which compounded upon this, and eventually led someone to looking up more and more extreme content. Yeah. One thing that I do want to mention, which I've kind of seen discussed, is that this term, like, radicalization, saying that, you know, she was, like, radicalized into this, like, violent content. This is more of, like, a semantic note. I'm not sure how useful, like, the term radicalization is in this case. If anything, I think she was, like, desensitized to horrific acts of violence through repeated viewing and was in communities that encouraged this sort of thing. I think that's the way that I'm framing it, as opposed to, you know, radicalization makes you think of, like, politics and, like, ideology. Right, right, or not Nazism or white supremacy or something like that, right? Yeah. Yeah, and it's, like, A higher calling. It's not that they're getting like politically radical. It's that they're dropping out of the social fabric and desensitizing themselves to this concept of like, you know, horrific, like societally targeted violence. I know now that like obviously the right wing is decided that they're uniquely going to be attacking trans people. I'm not sure if you're aware of the shooter's father's statements that were just made recently. The father intentionally uses terms like I am the biological father, refers to her with he, him pronouns, says that he was allowed to raise her, that she was taken from him. Part of me is also really fearful that this is going to be maybe the future of the Matt Walsh lives at TikTok circuit. Right. Here we have the case, like the number one horror story that every right wing personality always talks about. Right. Or that myth that Elon Musk perpetuates. Yeah, exactly. But this is somehow negatively impacting their children. No, yeah, that is a good thing to keep an eye on. I have not seen that. In terms of your analysis, and I appreciate it, by the way, a lot. I hadn't thought of it in those terms, in terms of disconnecting from the social fabric itself. Is there things that can be done? Is there recommendations beyond, obviously, late-stage capitalism, mass alienation? I'm not solving that tomorrow. Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to solve that on a stream. No, you have to. On Friday the 13th. Isn't it called it could happen here? Let's let it happen. Come on. I mean, yeah, like there's a lot of things that we can do, like even just like increasing like social services, right? Like funding social services can be a thing. Like what can we do to strengthen the social fabric, right? Give people available paths for their life. You know, that's through education, free college. Make life actually feel like you have a way to exist within a social matrix. Canada already has, you know, compared to the States, fairly restrictive gun laws. Those are a factor, but there's even mass killings like this that happen, you know, in Europe where people find other means of enacting them besides guns. Or Japan that sits swords and knives oftentimes. Yeah, right, yeah. So, like, these things have some, like, based social aspects that are going to be the things that, you know, solving is kind of more challenging rather than just, you know, taking away guns, making drugs that are already illegal harder to get, right? These things aren't going to actually eliminate this problem. But, I mean, funding social services can be an aspect of this. Having more comprehensive mental health care, free health care check-ins, you know, that's a big thing in the States. Canada has that to some degree, but still there's obviously room for improvement. But, I mean, yeah, solving these larger social problems, that's the question of the 21st century. yeah and and i mean you know based on the story that you're telling and the research you did it does really seem like this is one of those cases where this doesn't happen often but when you see it get to that end state this this is pretty much right the the patterns become a lot more evident the the obsession with prior shootings uh the mental health episodes and now the combining that with you know a very very prolific uh psychedelic drug use and then here we are i mean this person should not have had guns, right? At a certain point, their guns were taken away or guns in the house were taken away. If police knew about their activity on these forums, I'm sure this wouldn't have been returned. So there's certain things like, you know, parents being more aware of these sorts of like online spaces, the school shooter fandom, you know, picking up signs of, you know, social isolation, how much time your kid is just spending alone on the internet and you might not be knowing what they're doing. Solving that's, you know, hard because the solution for a lot of, you know, states is just like increased surveillance on platforms like, you know, Discord, age verification. But those types of, you know, guardrails don't exist on a forum site like Watch People Die, right? You can have a very, you know, safe, regulated Discord, which just pushes people to, you know, even more niche, even more dangerous parts of the internet. You know, Watch People Die started as a Reddit page that was, you know, taken down like seven years ago. Now it's, you know, a far less regulated, you know, thing that kids are spending a decent amount of time on. But, you know, being aware of, the risks of this type of social isolation is also a start. And ideally, we do not have a forum site dedicated to glorifying mass killings, but banning a website is not so simple. It's easier said than done, figuring out a way to take that down, right? Same problem with 8kun or 8chan back in the day, 4chan. And eventually Kiwi Farms. But this one seems blatant to the point of illegality. I know you don't have time for me to start a whole topic, but how does that exist? Adquin's also illegal, right? They host a lot of illegal content there. Finding a way to take it down is still tricky. A lot of websites host illegal stuff. Just because it's illegal does not mean it's going to be solved. The legal pathway there is tricky. But isn't the rule of thumb typically that if a lot of those companies that provide them with the necessary DDoS security, their through line seems to be as long as it's not illegal, right? Like if you're not running a child porn or sorry, child sexual abuse material website, if you're not running like an assassination or cryptocurrency like drug site, you're fine. Like, but that just does in practice doesn't work. I'm unsure of the current hosting situation of watch people die. But I wouldn't be surprised if they went through the same kind of loopholes by registering at like a certain foreign country with has that that's very loose guidelines. Like, you know, that was the thing with like it coon for a while. but yeah i'm i'm actually unsure of the the current the current like setup that watch people die has yeah i've been talking about you know tcc and the school shooter fandom increasingly the past two years and it's really tragic that it is something that i've that is you know a pattern that is that is continuing right this is like the really the the main the main force across these shootings whether you're you know a cis girl cis boy a trans girl trans guy whatever whatever demographic you know racial you know there was the the antioch uh school shooting in january 2025 that was done by this like black ironic neo-nazi similarly linked to to tcc as well like whatever the demographic is the through line that we're seeing is this is this just like nihilistic obsession with like the act of school shooting and this like fandom that is developed around it do you find the media picks up on that at all like i know you've done a lot research into it do they reach out to you like do they never say every every once in a while but it takes them time it took about three years after like the peak of 764 to start reporting on 764 and now there's 764 articles all the time but it took them about three years to like catch up to it i would not be surprised if in a year and a half we get tons of articles about tcc but a lot of legacy media is very slow to this sort of thing my own internet presence also exists kind of in the margins. My monitoring is in the margins, but those margins can have very, very destabilizing social effects. But it does take a while. I mean, same thing with the FBI, right? It took them years to get on top of 764, even though people were reporting this stuff in 2019, 2020. But before 764 was even that organization, there was previous iterations called CVLT. But that style of thing was a problem for years. And the FBI did not really get on it until much later. And the media then followed suit. right i do i just don't have trust in you know the current the current american law enforcement to really be on it right now you know i i can't i i'm unsure of how that works in canada at the at this point but certainly certainly i don't think catch patel's fbi is going to be you know on this one super super well even though they you know been trying been trying to you know push some stuff like the nihilist violent extremism label which does cover stuff like this but i know this is controversial, but in my opinion, it almost feels as if Kash Patel is actively trying to push narratives that will benefit this entire story that we're talking about in the opposite direction, right? Like if you're trying to push a narrative that Charlie Kirk's shooter, and we're not going to change topics, but I'm just, you know, bringing this up because you mentioned Kash Patel. You're trying to push that narrative that he was in fact trans or inspired by trans ideology or inspired by furries or furry culture, et cetera. They've tried everything. And now, now we're at the point where It's like the loosest of connections. It's like, well, there may have been a lover who is or is not, may or may not be trans or non-binary. We're not sure. But that's enough. We got it. Kach Patel will push the story. I mean, yeah, this administration comes out of the same kind of network of influencers who try to grossly use horrific events to their own ideological advantage, including to, you know, attack groups of people that they find to be bad. It's wild because it turns out they're all pedophiles. they're all part of an elite group of insiders and so uh let's start talking about the epstein files for the next time my brain is i know i'm just joking i'm just joking uh where can everyone find you and uh your incredible work uh outside of listening to the amazing it could happen here podcast yeah well i mean i i occasionally post about yaoi on on x the everything app at by shonen type i'm trying to post more about yaoi on blue sky there's just not as much of it but you know maybe i should be the change i want to see is it not friendly the environment it's more so that there's just not as many yaoi artists on blue sky a lot of yaoi artists are shockingly japanese and this japan has a very large presence on xc everything app at least at the moment i know some of their like ai image stuff is pushing is pushing people to other platforms but it's slow So, but yeah, I'm on those two places. I also occasionally post photography at Instagram, also by ShonenType. And I suppose if you enjoyed listening to me getting informed by the only information you heard here today, you should check out youtube.com slash atthesurftimes where I post videos. And this one too will be there. Hey, you can look at, yeah, me in a black turtleneck. Talk about sad things. There you go. If you enjoyed the audio version and you want to see the visual version of it, head on down to youtube.com slash atthesriftimes. Thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. It was a ton of fun. Well, actually, it was sad, but it was very informative. Yeah, that's the needle I try to thread. Absolutely. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. It's me, Brandon Kyle Goodman, but you can call me Messy Mom, because on my podcast, Tell Me Something Messy, my fantastic guests are bringing their mess, like singer-songwriter Duran Bernard suggesting we reinstate adult sleepovers with friends. Here's the thing. Get a group that's mature enough not to be putting your hand in warm water and tickling you. You know what I'm saying? I mean, granted, I might be doing it. But you know what I'm saying? Listen to Tell Me Something Messy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, everyone. It's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week, we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers, we're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature, and trees, and praying, and drugs. No, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl. He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, I'll tell you that story and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.