KUALA LUMPUR, May 26 — Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old man who killed six people before taking his own life in a rampage through a California college town last Friday had a Malaysian mother, according to a report from The Star Online today.
Rodger stabbed three people to death in his apartment before gunning down three more victims on Friday night in the town of Isla Vista near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB).
The son of Hollywood director, Peter Rodgers, who was the assistant director of the popular 2012 film “The Hunger Games”, revealed his Malaysian connection in a manifesto sent to about two dozen people including his parents and his therapist.
According to the 140-page document titled “My Twisted World — The Story of Elliot Rodger”, his mother, identified as Lichin Rodger, was of Chinese ethnicity and was born in Malaysia, and later worked as a nurse in England on several film sets.
“She became friends with important individuals in the film industry including George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. She even dated George Lucas for a short time,” wrote Rodger.
Rodger also wrote about the time his family visited Malaysia on vacation twice, once when he was three, and once on his 13th birthday, after his parents’ divorce.
“Sometime after my third birthday, we all went on a vacation to Malaysia, my mother’s home country. I have only flashes of memory of that vacation.
“I enjoyed it very much. We visited a few of my mother’s relatives,” he wrote.
Rodger also visited his Malaysian relatives on his second trip to Malaysia on his 13th birthday. He said his mother took him and his sister Georgia to visit his grandmother, whom he called “Ah Mah”, and some relatives, including an aunt and her family who were visiting from England.
“We met up with my grandma Ah Mah, my mother’s sister Min and her husband Jack and cousin Emma. They were also visiting Malaysia from England.
“During the trip, we toured around the island of Penang, visited George Town, went to a fun water park and had very delicious meals at many exotic restaurants.”
“Three weeks flew by very fast and I cried a little when it was over. It was a good sadness,” he added.
According to Reuters, less than a month before the attacks, Rodger, a former student at Santa Barbara City College, opened his door to a knock to find about seven officers looking for him.
“I had the striking and devastating fear that someone had somehow discovered what I was planning to do, and reported me for it,” Rodger said in the manifesto, published in part by the Los Angeles Times.
“If that was the case, the police would have searched my room, found all of my guns and weapons, along with my writings about what I plan to do with them. I would have been thrown in jail, denied of the chance to exact revenge on my enemies. I can’t imagine a hell darker than that,” he wrote.
Rodger said he learned that videos he posted online had alarmed his mother, and believed either she or a mental health agency had asked authorities to check up on him. He said the police left after he told them it was all a misunderstanding.
In a YouTube video posted shortly before the rampage, a young man believed by police to be Rodger bitterly complained of loneliness and rejection by women and outlined his plan to kill those he believed spurned him.
In a plot laid out in writing, Rodger said he planned to first kill his housemates then lure others to his residence to continue his killings, before slaughtering women in a university sorority and continuing his spree in the streets of Isla Vista. Then, he would commit suicide.
More victims planned
He wrote that he also planned to kill his younger brother, “denying him of the chance to grow up to surpass me”, as well as his stepmother, who he said would be in the way — killings he did not carry out.
But he did not think he was mentally prepared to kill his father, an assistant director on the 2012 film “The Hunger Games,” according to the manifesto.
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office on Sunday identified the three men stabbed to death at Rodger’s apartment as Cheng Yuan Hong, 20, George Chen, 19, and Weihan Wang, 20. At least two of the three men were Rodger’s roommates, the sheriff’s office said.
Students Katherine Cooper, 22, Veronica Weiss, 19, and Christopher Michael-Martinez, 20, were shot and killed in the rampage. Brown said thirteen people were wounded, including eight who were shot.
Following the attack, police found Rodger dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. In his car were three legally purchased semiautomatic guns, two Sig Sauers and a Glock, and some 400 rounds of unspent ammunition, Brown said.
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown has said that Rodger was seen by a variety of healthcare professionals and it was “very, very apparent he was severely mentally disturbed,” as quoted by Reuters.
