WEBVTT - The Roommates 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:09.480 Cool Zone Media. It was a little after five point 0:00:09.520 --> 0:00:12.560 thirty pm on a Friday evening when the first Nine 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:16.159 When One call came in. The property manager at a 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:19.840 gated condo complex in Tampa sounded almost like she was 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:23.000 asking a question when she told the operator that a 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:26.040 man had walked into the leasing office and announced that 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:30.159 he'd just killed two people. What a strange thing to 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:32.600 say to a lobby full of maintenance technicians and a 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:35.960 woman who was just trying to check her mail. Maybe 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:39.199 it didn't quite sink in right away that he meant it. 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:44.840 He left the office and started walking as she dialed 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:48.720 nine when One she followed him, telling the operator that 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:51.159 he kept grabbing the back of his pants as he walked, 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:54.200 as if there was something heavy tucked into his waistband. 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:58.560 The police were already en route when the second call came. 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:01.640 Woman on the other end of the line this time 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:03.880 was calling from a smoke shop and a strip mall 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:09.000 across from the apartment complex. She was crying hysterically, barely 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:12.080 able to get the words out. There was a man 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:16.840 in the store pointing a gun at her. When the 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:20.399 police arrived, Devon Arthur's was holding a handgun in one 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:22.760 hand and a bottle of Coca Cola in the other. 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:27.360 He was ready to surrender, but he wanted to finish 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:31.840 his soda first. Once he was in handcuffs, an officer 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:37.000 asked him if anyone was hurt. He responded cryptically saying 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:42.320 that there were people he'd hurt out back in the confusion, 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:45.000 his hostages had seized the opportunity to run out the 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:49.160 back door away from this ball little situation. So the 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:51.920 officer assumed that he meant one of those people had 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:57.680 been injured, but they were all unharmed. The officer again 0:01:57.840 --> 0:02:05.040 asked him, who is hurt. He replied calmly, oh, the 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:10.280 people in the apartment. But they aren't hurt. They're dead. 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:35.000 I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird, Little guys. This 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:37.720 is a story that I've mentioned in passing a few 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:41.640 times before. It's always just a quick aside, a sort 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:45.480 of hand waving acknowledgment of that time two members of 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:49.480 Adam Woffin were murdered by their roommate. It was a 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:52.519 pivotal moment in the history of that now defunct neo 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:56.120 Nazi terrorist organization. So it comes up in just about 0:02:56.120 --> 0:03:01.160 any story involving any member of Adam Woffin, but I've 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:05.400 never really bothered to explain it. I'm usually busy trying 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:09.200 to get somewhere else. I was thinking about it again 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:12.640 this week because I was thinking about Brandon Russell, the 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:16.520 founder of Adam Woffen. These murders usually come up when 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:19.200 I mentioned Brandon Russell because they're kind of what put 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:23.000 him in federal prison the first time. Not because he 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:27.639 committed them. He didn't. He wasn't even home when it happened, 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:31.400 but it was his name on the lease at the condo, 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:34.280 and it was his name written in sharpie on the 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:39.080 cooler full of explosives police found in the garage. Brandon 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:41.880 Russell did his time for having that little bomb workshop, 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:45.520 and he's since been convicted again, this time for conspiring 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:48.680 to blow up the power grid in Baltimore. If you're 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:51.320 listening to this episode the day it came out, he 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:53.920 might be sitting in front of a federal judge right 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:59.160 now receiving his sentence. I'm not psychic, so I couldn't 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:01.360 tell you how long he's going away for this time around. 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:06.000 But that upcoming sentencing got me thinking about how he 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:11.800 ended up there, and that story starts with these murders. 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:16.440 I hadn't intended to focus so much on the murders themselves. 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:19.280 I didn't think there was really all that much meat 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:22.360 to the story. Most of the news articles I've read 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:25.159 in the past kind of say the same thing, just 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:29.320 those broad strokes. I was already familiar with Devin Arthur's 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:32.159 shot and killed Andrew Onischuk and Jeremy Himmelman in the 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:35.440 apartment they shared with Brandon Russell. All four men were 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:38.839 members of Adamoffen, and the investigation into the murders led 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:41.599 to the discovery of the explosives in the garage. The 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:45.080 explosives belonged to Brandon Russell, and he was federally charged 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:49.560 for possessing them. His federal case doesn't have a lot 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:52.000 of detail to it because he pled guilty pretty quickly, 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:57.240 and Devin Arthur's criminal case wasn't federal. But then I 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:02.960 remembered this happened in Florida. People love to make jokes 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:06.600 about the Florida Man, the idea that people in Florida 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:12.159 are uniquely predisposed of committing bizarre crimes. Florida man throws 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:15.840 live gator at fast food cashier. Florida man leads cops 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:18.920 on high speed horse chase. Florida man Rob's convenience store 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:24.279 a dressed as Spider Man all real headlines, But people 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:27.919 in Florida aren't actually more likely than people from anywhere 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:31.719 else to crash a car into a grocery store while 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:35.000 high on meth or whatever else. This mythical Florida man 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:38.840 is getting up to. Florida just happens to have some 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:42.720 of the broadest public records laws in the country, making 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:45.760 it incredibly easy for journalists to quickly gain access to 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:50.800 police reports and court records. I wish every weird little 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:53.000 guy would do his weird little crimes in the state 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:56.320 of Florida, because it makes my job so much easier. 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:00.360 In this case, it means I was able to read 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:06.080 hundreds of pages of police reports, watch police interrogation videos, 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:09.039 and view court records not just for this murder case, 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:15.560 but filings from the murderer's parents' divorce. And it painted 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:17.680 a slightly different picture from the one I had in 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:23.960 my head. But as always, let's start before the beginning. 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:31.800 Adam Woffen was an international network of neo Nazis. It 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:34.920 was one of several organizations that formed out of relationships 0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:40.360 that started on an online forum called Iron March. Iron 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:43.719 March first appeared online in twenty eleven, launched by a 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:49.160 Russian nationalist named Alisher Mukitnadoff. In its six years online, 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:52.560 it was an incubator for neo Nazi ideology around the world. 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:57.919 Fascist organizations like National Action in the United Kingdom, Adam 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:02.320 Woffen and the United States, Tschidas in Lithuania, and Antipodean 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:08.160 Resistance in Australia were all born on this forum. Existing 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:13.480 organizations grew and networked, and they recruited online posters into 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:19.120 real life terror cells. The site disappeared without explanation one 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:23.240 day in November of twenty seventeen. There was plenty of 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:26.920 speculation about why the site went dark, but Mukitnadov declined 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:28.960 to answer any questions about it when he hung up 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:31.320 on a reporter from the BBC in twenty twenty. 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:32.760 One. 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:36.040 Theory popular among American neo Nazis is that there was 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:41.800 international governmental pressure to shut the site down because of 0:07:41.880 --> 0:07:47.760 these murders. The birth date of Adam Waffen is typically 0:07:47.760 --> 0:07:52.520 offered as October twelfth, twenty fifteen. That's the day Brandan 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:55.720 Russell posted a thread on the forum formally announcing the 0:07:55.720 --> 0:08:00.240 group's existence. There were a handful of posts that refer 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:03.240 to the group by name that pre date that announcement thread, 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:06.400 and there are photographs of Russell holding an Adam off 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:09.040 and flag that were taken in the late spring and 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:14.280 summer of twenty fifteen, so it did exist prior to October. 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:17.720 But his claim in that post that the group had 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:23.600 existed for three years already is unlikely, especially considering that 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:28.040 he hadn't founded the group alone. His co founder was 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:33.640 a teenage boy named Devon Arthur's. Devin Arthur's was young. 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:38.840 He was born in nineteen ninety nine. His parents separated 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:41.240 when he was five, but didn't actually file for divorce 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:47.040 until twenty ten. The divorce was contentious, and it dragged 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:51.480 on for years. The court appointed a guardian ad item, 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:53.840 an attorney whose role is to advocate for the best 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:57.040 interests of the child. In one letter to the court 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:00.319 in twenty eleven, the guardian ad litem noted that Devan 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:03.560 was taking the divorce much harder than most children in 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:09.080 his position, and he was having behavioral problems. In twenty twelve, 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:12.360 his parents agreed in mediation that Devon should be evaluated 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:16.120 by a child behavioral specialist, which his mother claimed in 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:21.600 subsequent filings never happened. In the fall of twenty fourteen, 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:24.640 when he was still living primarily with his father, he 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:28.680 ordered a copy of Mine Kampf of of Amazon. When 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:31.200 the package arrived in the mail, his father opened it, 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:34.559 saw what was inside, and refused to let his son 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:38.760 have the book. After Devon physically confronted his father over 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:42.880 the text, his dad kicked him out. According to his 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:46.400 mother's filings in the divorce case, his father abandoned him 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:51.000 at her house. The estranged couple lived in different counties, 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:53.280 so the sudden move meant that he had to change 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:57.920 schools midyear. He only ended up attending his new school 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:00.760 for a few months. He dropped out of school later 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:06.240 that year before finishing the tenth grade. Devon Arthur's joined 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:09.720 the Iron March Forum in March of twenty fifteen, just 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:12.160 a few days before his sixteenth birthday, and the same 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:15.360 month he dropped out of high school. By April of 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:18.120 twenty fifteen, Arthur's and Russell were hanging out in person 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:23.320 after realizing they both lived in the Orlando area. In 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:26.200 the fall of twenty fifteen, when Russell announced that Adam 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:29.679 Woffin was open for new members. He claimed the group 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:35.080 already had chapters in Chicago, Texas, Boston, New York, Kentucky, Alabama, Ohio, Missouri, Oregon, 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:40.559 and Virginia, with more than forty members nationwide. A private 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:43.720 message that Arthur sent another user around that same time, though, 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:48.560 puts that number closer to fifteen, mainly in Central Florida, 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:51.319 though there was a small cell of just three guys 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:56.079 in the Chicago area. When Brandon Russell bragged in November 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:58.640 that the group had met up to do quote a 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:02.360 lot of activism, what he actually meant was that he 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:04.840 and Devon had gone to the University of Central Florida 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:09.000 to hang up racist flyers. It was a group of two, 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:15.640 but the pair were close. In separate police interrogations on 0:11:15.679 --> 0:11:18.480 the night of the murder, both Brandon Russell and Devon 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:21.439 Arthur's told police that they were the best of friends, 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:25.640 and they had been for years. When Russell joined the 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.840 National Guard in twenty sixteen, he left Arthur's in charge 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:33.320 of Adam Woffin. At first, things seemed to be going 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:37.240 really well for Arthur's as the group's interim leader, he 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:39.920 was recruiting and vetting new members, and he was even 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:43.840 trying to get some new chapters off the ground. In April, 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:46.280 he exchanged messages with a prospective new member in the 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:49.600 Boston area, one of the men he would murder a 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:53.880 year later. In May of twenty sixteen, he organized a 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:58.280 flyering campaign in Boston. There were only two Adamoffin members 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:01.080 in the Boston area at the time, a woman who 0:12:01.160 --> 0:12:05.240 posted under the username Rexa, and the young man Arthur's 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:11.079 had just approved for membership, Andrew Onischuk. A few weeks later, 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:15.680 Rexa got a direct message from Slavros, the site's moderator, 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:19.400 who is widely believed to be the site's founder, Alexander Mukitnadoff. 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:23.360 He sent her a link to a now deleted post 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:27.160 on Twitter showing that someone had made the connection between 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:30.719 the flyers and the Iron March users who'd put them up. 0:12:32.120 --> 0:12:34.520 The post claims that there were two known Adam Woffen 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:37.839 members in the Boston area and that one of them 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:42.720 was a student at MIT. The post didn't actually reveal 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:47.920 her name, but she was panicking, how could they know 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:52.080 any of that? What else did they know? She begged 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:55.319 Slavros to wipe out her account history, writing can you 0:12:55.360 --> 0:13:00.000 delete my account here please? Or delete all my posts please? 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:03.560 I go to university. I cannot be involved with this. 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:07.840 If they find me, my entire life is ruined. But 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:10.920 he refused, saying that it would only make her look 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:13.480 even more guilty if the posts were deleted now, and 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:17.080 she had nothing to worry about anyway. He assured her 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:20.160 that there was simply no way for anyone to access 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:23.960 her IP address. They didn't know it at the time, 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:27.480 but an anti fascist researcher had made an account on 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:30.679 Iron March and tricked several users into clicking a link 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:34.680 that recorded their IP addresses. She clicked it from a 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:38.960 school computer, revealing her to be a student at MIT. 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:45.200 Without knowing how this person knew exactly where she was, 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:48.520 they had to consider the possibility that someone had sold 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:52.520 her out. She insisted in her messages with Slavros that 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:57.600 despite Devin Arthur's recent conversion to Islam, they were still 0:13:57.600 --> 0:13:59.760 on good terms, and he assured her that he hadn't 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:04.720 said anything to anyone. The forum was buzzing that week. 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:09.480 The interim leader of Adam Woffen had announced his conversion 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:14.640 to Islam. Sometime in May of twenty sixteen, Devon Arthur's 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:18.680 updated his Iron March profile. Older archived versions of his 0:14:18.760 --> 0:14:22.880 user profile show that he'd listed his location as quote 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:30.040 Dixie Land and his ideology as Confederate national Socialism. With 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:32.840 this new update, he now lived in the Land of 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:38.240 non Believers and he identified as a Salophist national socialist. 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.560 There was apparently a bit of a blow up over 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:47.320 this conversion in the massive data dump of leaked posts 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:52.320 from Iron March. This threat isn't there. It was deleted 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:56.000 by the moderators pretty quickly, so it wasn't there to 0:14:56.080 --> 0:15:01.120 scrape when researchers pulled everything off the site later. But 0:15:01.160 --> 0:15:06.400 the moderators didn't delete people's direct messages about the thread, 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:11.960 and those private conversations are in the data. Despite what 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:16.160 Devin Arthurs would later claim, his conversion to Islam wasn't 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:20.600 a renunciation of his prior beliefs, it was a twisted 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:24.840 evolution of them. In one direct message, a user who 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:27.680 saw the thread before it was deleted said that Arthur's 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:32.400 plan to convert other Adam Waffen members to Islam. He 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:35.800 failed to convince the forum that his newfound commitment to 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:39.560 jihad was the right direction for American neo Nazis, and 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:43.360 he was banned from the website. Slavrose threatened to cut 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:46.640 ties with Adam Woffin entirely, but several members of the 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.320 group said they'd convinced Arthur's to step down as interim 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:53.920 leader until Brandon Russell returned from army training. Two other 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:58.600 members would step up to run the group. Ironically, one 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:02.360 of those new interim leaders was also a Muslim convert. 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:07.200 David Cole Tarkington had converted to Islam more than two 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:10.440 years before Devon Arthur's did, and it doesn't appear to 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:15.560 have been a secret. Tarkington was a major recruiter for 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:18.800 Adam Woffen, bringing in at least eleven new members to 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:22.960 the group in twenty sixteen, including John Cameron Denton, the 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:24.560 man who would go on to lead the group after 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:28.680 Russell went to prison. But when Arthur's was being interviewed 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:32.560 by that homicide detective, he said that after he converted, 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:36.640 he realized his prior beliefs had been wrong, that the 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:39.840 hate left his heart, and guided by the Koran, he 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:42.200 came to understand that there was no point in wanting 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:46.400 to kill people. Of other races. A lot of the 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:50.120 news coverage takes his statements at face value. He killed 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.600 his roommates because they were Nazis, and since his conversion 0:16:54.240 --> 0:16:58.600 he wasn't anymore. But I have a really hard time 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:03.080 believing that. We talked a little bit about the idea 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:07.199 of this strange melding of neo Nazism and interest in 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:10.280 Islamic extremism a few weeks ago, in the episode about 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:13.160 Nicholas Young, the DC Metro transit cop with the Nazi 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:15.800 tattoos who went to prison for trying to send gift 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:20.320 cards to Isis. And it seems like an obvious contradiction. 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:24.400 How can a neo Nazi be a Muslim? Don't white 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:31.160 supremacists hate Muslims? They do, of course, But it's more 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:36.960 complicated than that. It's a contradiction, sure, but plenty of 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:42.480 people live in contradiction. And there's a lot of overlap too. 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:45.040 Even neo Nazis who would never entertain the idea of 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:49.359 a conversion are willing to talk about the possibility of 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:52.560 finding common cause with people they see as allies in 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:57.960 anti Semitism, people whose commitment to armed extremism is appealing 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:04.120 to them, and all of the finer points of syncretic fascism, 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:10.480 aside Devon Arthur's didn't know what he believed. His conversion 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:14.640 happened in a Minecraft chat. Several friends he met through 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:17.840 the online game converted around the same time, and it 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:19.680 seems like for some of them it was a bit. 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:24.160 One of those friends later told Rolling Stone that Devin's 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:30.400 version of Islam was weird. Quote. It wasn't true Islam. 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:33.399 It was more about idealizing the prophet Muhammad as a 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:37.359 white arian. You know, Muhammad as an ideal male form. 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:43.960 I don't know, he says, you know, but I don't 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:49.639 know what he's talking about, and it is unkind I 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:53.400 think to cast out on the sincerity of someone's religious conversion, 0:18:55.320 --> 0:19:01.600 but I'm going to He was extremely online line. His 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:05.679 exposure to Islam was through memes and jokes in a 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:09.840 chat room populated by teenage gamers who met on four Chan. 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:14.480 He was a high school dropout with absent parents. He 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:17.919 was struggling with mental illness. He never spoke to in 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:21.399 a mom about his religious path. When it came to 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:24.840 reading the Koran, he was entirely self taught, and it 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:29.960 sounds like he didn't get it, but taking a face value, 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:36.520 Devin Arthur's was Muslim in his own way. The other 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:39.000 neo Nazis didn't like it, and he was kicked off 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:42.080 the Iron March Forum. He was forced to step down 0:19:42.119 --> 0:19:45.399 as interim leader of Adam Woffin, but he wasn't kicked 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:48.680 out of Adam Woffin, and he didn't even stay off 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.520 of Iron March. He still logged in to use the 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:56.040 site under Brandon Russell's account, and he stayed best friends 0:19:56.040 --> 0:20:01.000 with Brandon Russell. In October of twenty sixteen, months after 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:04.439 this blow up, he and Brandon traveled to Massachusetts together 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:08.160 to visit Adam Woffin's Boston cell, which at the time 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:12.960 consisted of just two members, Andrew Onischuk and Jeremy Himmelman. 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:16.680 They'd both joined the group that year and quickly became 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:22.520 very close friends. Several of Jeremy's friends in Boston met 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:26.399 Devon Arthur's and Brandon Russell during that trip, and they 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:30.919 all said the same thing. These guys are fucking weird. 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:37.399 They cannot behave in a normal fashion. Jeremy Himmelman's sister 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:40.159 begged him to get these people out of the apartment 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:44.239 that the siblings shared they wouldn't stop drawing swastikas on 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:48.719 things and making Holocaust jokes. Devon kept calling her a 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:53.879 dumpster slut. Another friend of Jeremy's said quote, it was 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:58.880 very obvious that they were mentally unstable people. A few 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:02.920 months later, in January twenty seventeen, Jeremy Himmelman flew down 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:06.200 to Florida to visit Brandon after he faked a suicide 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:11.600 attempt as a joke. It was a cruel joke. I mean, 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.040 it would be cruel in any context, but Brandon almost 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:18.440 certainly knew that Jeremy had tried several times in the 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:21.840 last few years to end his own life, so of 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:24.560 course he dropped everything to be there when he believed 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:29.359 Brandon had nearly died. Two months later, in March of 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:34.359 twenty seventeen, back home in Massachusetts, Jeremy Himmelman attempted suicide 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:38.199 for a fourth time after an argument with his roommates. 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:42.840 He survived. His girlfriend and his parents say that it 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:45.680 was a wake up call for him. He was ready 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:49.280 to leave Adam Waffin behind. It wasn't good for him. 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:54.639 These weren't his friends. This wasn't a path forward, but 0:21:54.800 --> 0:21:59.320 he didn't have any other path forward either, and he 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:03.399 was having trouble cutting ties. He didn't leave the chats. 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:08.000 He was still best friends with Andrew on Ashuk and 0:22:08.040 --> 0:22:12.240 he didn't have a lot else to do, so when 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:16.120 Brandon Russell invited them both back to Florida, they went 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:34.480 that same month. In March of twenty seventeen, Brandon Russell's 0:22:34.480 --> 0:22:37.920 grandmother co signed e lease for him. It was a 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:42.400 nice little condo in a gated community in Tampa. Sometime 0:22:42.440 --> 0:22:46.480 in early April, he and Devin moved in, and that's 0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:49.600 when he started begging Andrew on Ashuk and Jeremy Himmelman 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:52.320 to come down and visit, come down and spend the 0:22:52.320 --> 0:22:55.960 summer with us. He promised them a rent free summer 0:22:56.000 --> 0:22:59.359 in Florida. They could go fishing, there was a pool, 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:05.719 it would be fun. Andrew and Jeremy regretted it almost immediately. 0:23:07.119 --> 0:23:09.879 Barely a week into their stay, they were already talking 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:14.000 about going home early. His two bedroom condo wasn't big 0:23:14.119 --> 0:23:18.120 enough for four men. Andrew and Jeremy shared the smaller bedroom, 0:23:18.720 --> 0:23:21.440 Devin slept in the living room, and Brandon kept the 0:23:21.520 --> 0:23:27.040 larger bedroom for himself. Brandon was gone along on top 0:23:27.080 --> 0:23:28.640 of being in the National Guard, he had a job 0:23:28.680 --> 0:23:32.640 at a shooting range. Andrew and Jeremy got temporary jobs 0:23:32.640 --> 0:23:35.920 at a recycling plant, but Devin just sat in the 0:23:35.960 --> 0:23:40.520 living room all day on the computer. The place was messy. 0:23:41.680 --> 0:23:44.560 No one did dishes. I was going to say, I 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:47.480 assume they didn't even own a vacuum cleaner, but I 0:23:47.520 --> 0:23:49.879 did see one in the crime scene photographs. It was 0:23:50.320 --> 0:23:52.760 pushed up against the wall in the living room, underneath 0:23:52.800 --> 0:23:57.200 the North Korean flag. They barely even had any furniture. 0:23:58.040 --> 0:24:01.040 The room that Andrew and Jeremy shared didn't have a bed. 0:24:01.800 --> 0:24:04.040 It was just a futon and a mattress on the floor. 0:24:05.600 --> 0:24:09.800 This wasn't the fun Florida summer they'd imagined. Devin was 0:24:09.920 --> 0:24:15.040 weird and annoying, and things were tense. They wanted to 0:24:15.040 --> 0:24:20.840 go home. On May seventeenth, Andrew Anashuk told his parents 0:24:20.880 --> 0:24:23.880 that he was going to come home early. He told 0:24:23.880 --> 0:24:26.280 his mom that he planned to stay another week just 0:24:26.320 --> 0:24:28.879 to finish out his temp job. He didn't feel right 0:24:28.960 --> 0:24:33.840 walking away from it. Just two days later, though, on Friday, 0:24:33.840 --> 0:24:37.640 May nineteenth, he'd changed his mind. He had to go, 0:24:38.119 --> 0:24:41.919 and he was going to leave on Monday. Jeremy Himmelman 0:24:42.000 --> 0:24:46.119 called his girlfriend that day to lament Andrew's decision. He 0:24:46.200 --> 0:24:49.119 was going to miss Andrew, but things had gotten too 0:24:49.160 --> 0:24:55.080 uncomfortable in the apartment. That same day, May nineteenth, Brandon 0:24:55.160 --> 0:24:58.239 Russell left the condo early in the morning. He had 0:24:58.359 --> 0:25:01.200 National Guard drill that weekend had to report in that day. 0:25:03.320 --> 0:25:07.280 Devin was, as always, at home on the computer all day. 0:25:08.880 --> 0:25:12.360 Around five pm, Jeremy was texting with his girlfriend back 0:25:12.400 --> 0:25:17.360 home in Massachusetts. At five four pm, she asked him 0:25:17.440 --> 0:25:21.399 if they could FaceTime. I'm hanging out with Devin and 0:25:21.400 --> 0:25:25.320 Andrew right now, maybe later, he replied with a heart emoji. 0:25:27.040 --> 0:25:29.320 She said she might take a nap, and he joked 0:25:29.320 --> 0:25:31.200 that she was probably going to fall asleep for seven 0:25:31.240 --> 0:25:35.600 hours again like she had last time. His phone was 0:25:35.600 --> 0:25:38.800 still resting on his stomach under his right arm when 0:25:38.840 --> 0:25:41.480 crime Scene Texts photographed his body a few hours later. 0:25:44.080 --> 0:25:47.520 I can't tell you exactly what happened in the fifteen 0:25:47.560 --> 0:25:51.080 minutes between five oh five pm and five twenty pm. 0:25:52.400 --> 0:25:54.679 When Jeremy sent his last text to his girlfriend at 0:25:54.680 --> 0:26:00.199 five oh five, nothing was wrong. He seemed relaxed. He 0:26:00.240 --> 0:26:02.040 said that he was hanging out with his roommates, and 0:26:02.119 --> 0:26:06.320 he gave no indication that anything was amiss. She knew 0:26:06.320 --> 0:26:09.680 all about the ongoing tension in the apartment. Who would 0:26:09.720 --> 0:26:12.320 have mentioned it if anything out of the ordinary was happening. 0:26:14.080 --> 0:26:17.200 But at five point twenty Devon Arthur's called his father 0:26:17.840 --> 0:26:23.600 and told him that he'd just killed two people. There's 0:26:23.640 --> 0:26:28.520 no dispute about the basic facts. Devon Arthur's shot Andrew 0:26:28.520 --> 0:26:32.960 Anoschuk and Jeremy Himmelman with a Wasser ten that's a 0:26:33.080 --> 0:26:37.800 Romanian version of an AK forty seven. Based on the 0:26:37.800 --> 0:26:41.400 medical examiner's report, both men would have died instantly from 0:26:41.480 --> 0:26:43.560 multiple shots to the head and torso fired from the 0:26:43.600 --> 0:26:47.520 rifle at close range. They were both in the bedroom 0:26:47.560 --> 0:26:51.400 they shared. Jeremy was lying on the futon and Andrew's 0:26:51.400 --> 0:26:55.320 body was on the floor near the bathroom door. Devon 0:26:55.400 --> 0:26:57.840 left the rifle on the couch in the living room, 0:26:58.160 --> 0:27:01.040 picked up a clock seventeen, and walked out of the apartment. 0:27:02.480 --> 0:27:04.640 He walked over to the leasing office, where he announced 0:27:04.640 --> 0:27:07.080 what he'd done to two maintenance texts, the property manager 0:27:07.119 --> 0:27:10.159 and a resident, and then he walked across the street 0:27:10.160 --> 0:27:13.120 into the strip mall and entered the smoke shop, where 0:27:13.119 --> 0:27:15.439 he held the store clerk and two customers hostage at 0:27:15.480 --> 0:27:20.640 gunpoint until the police arrived. He's never denied what he did. 0:27:21.920 --> 0:27:27.040