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Seattle Zombie Party Massacre
A couple of nights ago here in Seattle there was a mass murder which made national news. With the bizarre circumstances surrounding it, I can see why. First off, it seems to have involved a “rave” which the media loves to pick on. There have even been allegations that “alcohol and marijuana” may have been in use at this party. Shock of all shocks! From here on out is where it starts to get weird though: the rave was a zombie-themed party. One website reports:
“It was a zombie party. People had a lot of makeup on,” Mr Kerlikowske said.
“There was fake blood squirted, and people were made-up to look as if they were dead.”
The theme of the party was “Better off Undead.”
In what’s being called one of Seattle’s worst crime scenes in history, the gunman left the house of an after-party he had just attended, and returned ten minutes later with a small arsenal, which he used to commit “execution style” killings, leaving seven dead. Also very odd is this small detail, which I have yet to see anyone explain:
With orange spray paint, he wrote “now,” on at least three concrete steps at homes near the party.
According to all the information I’ve seen, the killer was described as emotionless during the event. Police have so far discered no possible motive. There doesn’t seem to have been any fight or other event which precipitated the act. When the killer came outside, a police officer ordered him to stop, but before he could even finish the sentence, the man shot himself in the mouth and died. Aside from this event, the shooter is being described in his personal life as “quiet” and “humble” and even “respectable” by his former apartment manager.
Regina Gray, manager of Town & Country Apartments, described the brothers as her “twin teddy bears” - ideal tenants who paid their rent on time and were respectful and polite toward their neighbors.
“It’s a total shock,” Gray said. “He and his twin brother are the kindest, sweetest gentlest people.”
Via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, I also just tracked down the flyer for the Better Off Undead party - available online, but probably not for long.
The other side of the flyer included the text: “Please leave your drugs, alcohol and weapons at home. Please come in undead attire.” And it offered a $5 discount on the $20 admission if you were wearing a costume. According to articles I’ve seen, over 1,000 people attended the actual rave, but I haven’t seen notes on how many people were at the infamous after-party. Also check out the MySpace account for the Seattle Ravers group which has lots of additional info from the actual community of people this affected.
- Where’s Kyle Huff’s Autopsy?
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- Was the Zombie Rave Killer a Sleeper Assassin?
- Seattle, In Retrospect
- Prev: Texas Arrests Drunks in Bars
- Next: Snapple Divination
March 26th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
I would be interested in any details about this. Was he caught “orange-handed”, so to speak? Are the locations identified?
March 26th, 2006 at 8:51 pm
I wonder if we would be able to go track down and photograph these 3 locations or if they’ve already been painted over…
March 26th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
I’d say you have a geographical advantage here, Tim. I’m on the east coast, but you can bet I’d be down there on the ground with a camera if I had the chance.
March 27th, 2006 at 1:47 am
This whole thing freaks me out a little.
I was at a party last night (nothing like the one in the story; a birthday party for a 5 year old) and it turns out that the brother of the woman throwing the party knew a couple of the people who had been killed… Wild.
As for the “now” thing, The Stranger picked up on this too and even discovered a “connection”…
http://www.thestranger.com/blog/archives/2006/03/19-25.php#a005070
March 27th, 2006 at 1:56 am
Speaking of which, I remembered something else… when I was taking the bus home that night, around 1:00am (the shooting happened like six hours later), a crazy old man on the bus was talking about how tomorrow he was going to take his shotgun out and do something or other with it. I saw him again on the bus the next night though, so I assume it was just a peculiar coincidence.
March 27th, 2006 at 10:59 am
http://www.slate.com/id/2138483/nav/tap1/
off topic, but this might come in handy for that Gnostic Da Vinci Code you were discussing a while back.
Brown has done a lot of thinking about what makes a successful Dan Brown thriller. He has found that it requires a few essential elements: some kind of shadowy force, like a secret society or government agency; a “big idea” that contains a moral “grey area”; and a treasure. The treasures in Brown’s four novels have been a meteorite, anti-matter, a gold ring, and the Holy Grail. The shadowy forces have included the Priory of Sion, Opus Dei, and the National Security Agency. The big idea, if I’m reading him correctly, goes something like this: Is the Vatican good … or is it evil? Is the National Security Agency for us … or is it against us? When all of Brown’s elements come together, doled out over cliffhanging chapters, with characters that exist to “move the plot along,” it is like mixing the ingredients to make a cake. For example, Deception Point, Brown’s third novel, is “a thriller about a meteorite discovered in the Arctic—a discovery that turns out to have profound political ramifications for an impending presidential election.”
March 27th, 2006 at 11:55 am
a couple of thoughts:
1. i used to live a block away from where this happened, which makes it doubly-weird.
2. the regulatory wonks are already jerking off all over this one. they’re already suggesting we need new rules and regulations for underage dances and teen house parties (not, as the slog notes, for guns and nutjobs). i especially like this observation:
“how many new rules and regulations do we need to make sure that something that has never happened before does not ever happen again?”
March 27th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Truly my condolences to all the people killed. I wish disgruntled people could alleviate themselves some other way with out having to kill innocent people. I can only imagine the horror that was unleashed upon people completly innocent.
There were 6 people killed in Mexico not too far from where I live in Pharr Texas. Probably not too innocent but still violent deaths only will increase the violence in the world. http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/03/27/mexico.bodies.ap/
Lastly Opus Dei is not a radical Catholic organization. Brown writes elaborate fantasies. The wiki entry on Opus Dei is fair. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_Dei
March 27th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
It would have been my hood (about 5 blocks away) had I not moved to your hood jp. I wonder if I would have heard the shots had I still lived there. Cos you know, I used to actually regularly hear gunshots coming from what sounded like the vicinity of Volunteer Park in the wee hours.
There was some other murder at Miller Community Center a few years back if I remember correctly too. Ah yes, almost two years to the week to boot.
March 27th, 2006 at 10:07 pm
Oddly enough, I actually had a dream the night before it happened about a shooting occuring in a blue house. In my (gloss) dream version, the shooter was looking at items at an estate sale and then randomly shot and killed everyone in the room who was looking at everything he was interested in.
I had *assumed* that I had this dream because I’ve been reading a lot of William Burroughs recently, but I haven’t had a dream like that since. Freaky…
March 28th, 2006 at 12:00 am
This incident hit close to our home, as my roommate Erin used to work with was was friends with two of the guys who were killed. Incidentally, the shooter was from Whitefish Montana, a small town just 8 miles from my hometown in Montana.
March 28th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
I noticed a very strange coincidence while reading about the Seattle murders: Another murder spree happened in Sacramento, CA the same night, by a man with the same name (Aaron) and the same age (26)! He randomly walked down the street shooting people in the head and back with a 12 guage rifle (Same gun type); two people died, I believe. The shooter was also characterized as a nice, quiet young man. I just thought all of the similarities were remarkable and wondered if they were possibly possessed by conspiring demons.
March 28th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
ay yai yai….
no wonder… delta 9 was spinning… that style is def kill people music.
actually negative shit like this theme party has been going on alot in the rave scene for the last few years…. not how it used to be at all… kinda sad really….
welp, im glad i was in miami…… i just played the largest rave in the country on the 25th… this is the first i heard about this, ive been raving for the last 5 days…
damn, im sure this is gonna lead to some great press… ill post up here if i hear anything interesting from the scene
one
human?
March 31st, 2006 at 5:19 pm
[…] 7;s forums (a local Seattle rag), offering an interpretation of the motivations behind the Seattle zombie rave murder. “Pernapi” writes about the in […]