Even in his own angry manifesto, the motives of Vester Flanagan, the man accused of murdering a TV crew on air, were confused.
He was aggrieved at being sacked, he was the victim of racist and sexual harassment at work and he was responding to the calls for a race war by Dylann Roof, the Charleston church killer.
But one thing is chillingly clear. Flanagan painstakingly designed his murders to be a media event, and a social media event in particular.
Sometime on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning local time Flanagan, who was sacked by WDBJ7 in 2013 for his angry outbursts, sent a 23-page document outlining his many grievances to ABC News in New York.
Then, just after 6.30am in a small town shopping mall in southern Virginia, he approached his victims – WDBJ7 reporter Alison Parker, 24, cameraman Adam Ward, 27, and their interview subject, Vicki Gardner, 61.
Knowing they were on air he lingered by them and raised his gun, at one point just centimetres from Ward's back. It is not clear if he was wearing a Go Pro-style body camera or filming his actions with a phone.
What is clear is that he captured the footage of his murders down the barrel of his own gun. It looked like a first-person shooter video game.
One of the disturbing clips shows Flanagan holding a hand gun behind Adam Ward and Alison Parker as they conduct an interview.
His gun is visible in his extended hand as he walks slowly up to them until he inches away from Mr Ward and points his gun towards each journalist as they continue to work, oblivious to his presence.
The gunman then takes a couple of steps away and shoots Parker at close range as she is heard to scream and run off. He then shoots Ward in the back.
After the killings Flanagan managed to escape, and while on the road he published his footage on both Facebook and Twitter.
At 11.10am he tweeted from an account under his on air name Bryce Williams, "I filmed the shooting see Facebook."
Five minutes later the two short video clips were posted.
Some people saw them on their feeds both unwittingly and unwillingly, as they had auto-played on the social media accounts of anyone who had viewed his accounts or a re-tweet of his original post.
Flanagan had effectively made thousands of social media uses witnesses, arguably even secondary victims of his crime.
Many were appalled, and took to Twitter to ask that people stop sharing the messages.
Wish videos in timeline would not automatically play. Don't want to watch two people executed on live TV. #RIP— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior)
August 26, 2015
Can't go back and ID/unfollow whoever posted the autoplay video of the shooting in my timeline cuz they took it down.— Kellie Allen (@thirtyseven)
August 26, 2015
Turn off autoplay videos by going to the General part of settings. It's the last option— Emma (@bergeronprocess)
August 26, 2015
None of this was an accident.
Flanagan had either set up or started using his Twitter account – which has now been shut down – over the past two weeks.
On August 12, he wrote "Hey there. Nice weather today"
According to his manifesto though, this was well after he had decided to kill.
In that he claims he bought the gun after Dylann Roof, a white racist, shot dead nine African-Americans in a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
"Why did I do it? I put down a deposit for a gun on 6/19/15 [June 19] the Church shooting in Charleston happened on 6/17/15.
"What sent me over the top was the church shooting and my hollow point bullets have the victims' initials on them."
In the weeks after the account became active, Flanagan began posting photographs from his youth. It appeared he wanted the account to be mined by reporters after his death.
He also posted a photo of a newspaper article about a lawsuit he had filed against a previous employer, online journal Slate has reported.
In the manifesto Flanagan also claims to be inspired by the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre of 2007, Seung Hui Cho.
But in his cold and effective use of social media, he might well have been inspired by terrorist groups who have taken to online networks to spread vision of their crimes.
This was a point not lost on Ms Parker's father, Andy Parker, who told the Washington Post, "It's like showing those beheadings. I am not going to watch it. I can't watch it. I can't watch any news. All it would do is rip my heart further than it already is."
He also took to Facebook on Wednesday.
"Barbara, Drew, and I are numb, devastated and I find my grief unbearable," he wrote.
"Alison was our bright, shining light and it was cruelly extinguished by yet another crazy person with a gun.
"She excelled at everything she did and was loved by everyone she touched. She loved us dearly, and we talked to her every single day. Not hearing her voice again crushes my soul."
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