Funny how they all look so normal, even when they’re bat-shit crazy. From the New York Times:
Terry Ratzmann, 44, left no suicide note and gave no explanation for the killings during Saturday’s weekly meeting at a suburban Milwaukee hotel. It was unclear what specifically upset him, but Ratzmann was a member of the Living Church of God, a denomination whose leader recently prophesied that end times are near. (Italics mine.)
Gee…you don’t suppose it upset him to learn that?
Ratzmann, a buttoned-down churchgoer known for sharing his homegrown vegetables with his neighbors, walked into the room and fired 22 rounds from a 9mm handgun. He even dropped a magazine and reloaded another.
Yep–it upset him, all right…
Neighbors said Ratzmann built his own greenhouse, kept a well-tended garden and even used humane traps to free squirrels that got in the yard.
“He wasn’t a dark guy. He was average Joe,” said Shane Colwell, a neighbor who knew Ratzmann for about a decade. “It’s not like he ever pushed his beliefs on anyone else.”
But another neighbor called Ratzmann a drinker, and church members said he struggled with depression for years.
“Terry suffered from depression, on and off. When he was really depressed he didn’t talk to people. Sometimes it was worse than others,” said Kathleen Wollin, 66, who was sitting at the front of the room during Saturday’s service.
Hell, I suffer from depression on and off, too. What this guy had wasn’t depression. It’s called PSYCHOSIS, people. Probably due to alcoholism, if that neighbor says true. In any case, it’s nothing that religion can cure. Truth be told, religion can make these things a lot worse:
Earlier this year, the group’s leader, Dr. Roderick C. Meredith, wrote that events prophesied in the Bible are “beginning to occur with increasing frequency.”
“We are not talking about decades in the future. We are talking about Bible prophesies that will intensify within the next five to 15 years of your life,” he wrote in the church’s magazine, Tomorrow’s World.
Couple that with depression, drinking and a threatened job loss, and you have a human powder keg waiting to go off. And looking to take innocent others with him.
PS: A Daily Kos diarist has the lowdown on the shooter’s church and “End Times” beliefs, and how much they have in common with–yes, DUBYA. Check it out. It’s a doozer.
