Guns, pedophiles on shooter’s blog

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PORTLAND – A blog belonging to a Canadian man accused of shooting two sex offenders in Maine underscored his interest in guns as well as his disdain for pedophiles.

Stephen A. Marshall included links to his favorite guns as well as a guide to spotting pedophiles, including instructions on what their mug-shot smiles tell about their intentions. The blog was created several years ago while he lived in Idaho.

State police investigators have not yet discussed Marshall’s motives for coming to Maine to kill two sex offenders, but his Web log, or blog, further painted a picture of a young man who liked guns and found pedophiles to be repugnant.

The 20-year-old, who had lived in several different places over the years, also told viewers of his blog: “Please e-mail me, I’m lonely.”

Marshall used a computer to review 34 profiles from Maine’s online sex offender registry before killing two of the men on Easter morning, investigators say. He later killed himself on a Boston-bound bus that was detained by police.

Marshall’s mother, Margaret Miles of Little Bras d’Or, Nova Scotia, said she learned of the blog on Thursday. Miles found parts of the blog disturbing, but she also found it revealing.

“I’m glad it’s there because it gives insight into his personality,” she said.

But Miles is still at a loss to explain what might have prompted the shootings.

“It’s hard to speculate,” she said. “I don’t think enough information is in.”

Marshall’s laptop computer was being examined by the Maine Computer Crimes Task Force, but investigators do not plan to release any information until they have a complete picture of the material they retrieve, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety. That process could take several days.

McCausland said Friday that the two Maine State Police detectives who went to Canada to conduct an investigation there were expected home by this morning.

“There will be no details until we have as complete a picture as we can on this young man,” he said.

The details of Marshall’s blog were reported by The Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto.

The Web site had been removed as of Friday morning. An automated message said Marshall’s page violated the terms established by the Web site. Officials at Lycos.com had been reviewing the site after it was called to their attention, Meredith LeDuc, assistant to the general counsel for Lycos, said from Waltham, Mass.

A friend of Marshall’s when he lived in Idaho, Joe Reisdorph, said the Web site was several years old and may not have represented Marshall’s recent views. He said Marshall posted some of life’s annoyances at the time.

The blog in many ways was like a typical personal Web site for a teenager. It includes quotes from the late musician Kurt Cobain and suggestive photos of tennis player Anna Kournikova and actress Carmen Electra.

Marshall listed as his likes food, “chicks,” maple syrup, Canadians, hockey and pornography.

His dislikes included law enforcement, homosexuals, “minorities getting special treatment” and “women in general,” The Globe and Mail reported.

In an eerie foreshadowing of his own death, Marshall listed suicide methods in a section labeled “How to kill yourself like a man.”

Marshall expressed strong feelings about sexual predators when the subject came up in the news, Reisdorph told The Associated Press. He said they were in agreement that sexual predators were “worthless” and their crimes made them “worse than killers.”

Maine’s sex offender registry was taken offline for 24 hours after the killings, but it is back online and remains as popular as ever, officials said.

McCausland said the site averaged 200,000 viewings a month. But officials said Friday that the number is much higher, averaging 575,000 hits a month during the first three months of 2006.

On Monday, the day after the murders, there were 118,280 hits, and on Tuesday that number was 189,592, McCausland said Friday.

Meanwhile, the mother of one of Marshall’s shooting victims spoke out about her son, saying he was kind and generous.

Shirley Turner of Hartland, the mother of William Elliott, 24, told WCSH-TV she felt sorry for all of the families involved in the killings. Her son, she said, would help anyone in distress.

“If he had an appointment and there was someone stuck in the snowbank, he’d stop. ‘Nope, I’ll be late for the appointment, I’ve gotta help this man, this person in trouble in the snowbank, then I’ll go on my merry way,'” she said.

Joseph Gray, 57, of Milo also was fatally shot in the attacks. A Vietnam War veteran, Gray was buried Thursday at Maine Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Augusta with full military honors.

BDN writer Aimee Dolloff contributed to this report.