Overshadowed in the national news by the recent Virginia Tech and NASA shootings was the case of David Logsdon in Kansas City. Logsdon, a former Target employee with a history of mental problems and alcoholism, killed his next-door neighbor and then went on a shooting spree at a mall killing two more and injuring several others.

“After the officer pulled Logsdon over Sunday, police say he shot the officer in the arm. The officer, whose wound was not life-threatening, returned fire and shattered the window of the gunman’s car. Logsdon drove to the shopping center, fatally shot two people in the parking lot and wounded seven others outside the Target where he used to work, then went inside the mall, where he was killed by police…”

Almost immediately the press starting looking for some sign of motive (beyond mental illness and alcoholism), and it looked like they had found a clear sign of evil-doing thanks to a neighbor’s testimony.

“Neighbor Jo Ann Correa said she’d known Logsdon since he was 11 years old and was becoming increasingly alarmed by what she suspects were satanic rituals. ‘I don’t approve of that, and it scared me. Actually, it scared me. I didn’t feel safe in the back yard anymore,’ Correa said. She said it wasn’t just Logsdon, but that others were also at the rituals, which included chanting. ‘We understood it as some sort of marriage ceremony there. And we understood it was a Satan worship. I don’t know it for a fact. I do know something strange was going on there,’ Correa said.”

Local Pagans who remembered Logsdon from his saner days, stepped up to correct the notion that he was some sort of Satanic agent.

“Many pagans contacted NBC Action News complaining about our story which discussed neighbor concerns that chanting and other ritualistic behaviour in Logsdon’s backyard were satanic in nature. They are angry that neighbors assumed the behavior was satanic and angry that their religion is being dragged into a killing spree. Criswell says, ‘He needed help. He needed counseling. He needed medication. And that doesn’t have a thing to do with his spiritual beliefs at all.’ She knew him as a customer at her store. Her son, Russell Chriswell, runs a store next door. He says, ‘obviously, he had problems and he snapped, but no bearing at all in his religion.’”

It soon became clear that Logsdon, who once hosted a local radio program concerning Paganism, fell out from the Pagan community (under unclear circumstances) and started a slow downward spiral into mental illness.

“Somewhere between being a bastion for local pagans and s******g in a box of kitty litter, Logsdon broke with the wiccan community for vague reasons that all sources connected to a woman. Chambers hinted that at least one former love interest committed suicide and said another, more recent one, had died of alcohol poisoning. ‘I think it was five years ago, he sort of broke with the community. I know that he was seeing someone and I’m not sure if it’s that she didn’t like or if the community didn’t like her or how it happened, but he turned away from it,’ says Russ Criswell”

Perhaps his ties to the local Pagan community, rather than driving him to some sort of Satanic-inspired killing madness, was one of the few things keeping him stable and sane. Unmoored from a supportive atmosphere, and unable to get support from the medical/mental health establishment, his mind slowly slipped from him. Leading him to such a grave tragedy. Its too bad that the press, always looking for some sort of motivation to explain such madness when it occurs, leaped at accusations of Satanism without doing a bit of background research first.

One hopes the victims of this tragedy and their relatives kind find some kind of peace and closure, and that when such madness occurs in the future we can be more cautious in ascribing some sort of demonic motivation.