You can ask the very same question to the murderer mentioned in the OP. From his point of view, murdering his victim would result in a more profitable situation than not murdering him. Whether he made a miscalculation and regretted his actions afterwards does not matter, because at that very moment he too asked himself "Why would I not murder him?" and came to the conclusion that murder would be more profitable than anything else.

Coke=/=Murder.

What's going on in your head?

I don't always profit on my decisions.

I think choice may not be possible without some motivation or desire for to fulfill, but I think one can choose a less desirable action over a more desirable one.

I make bad decisions all of the time, though.  I even say, "Man, I know I shouldn't be doing this...." right before I do it.  I'm totally random like dust in the wind.

But the OP would argue that the dust in the wind isn't random, either.  Each blow of the wind (is "blow" the technical term?) is previously controlled by the rotation of the earth, the oceans current, the environment, the time of day, and the flap of the butterfly's wings in China.  And maybe he's right about the dust.  Me, on the other hand, I don't even know what I'm going to do five minutes from now.

Yes, you could, but that doesn't disprove free will. Or just "will", which I think is probably a better philosophical term, because of course your actions aren't completely untethered from the past experiences that have come to define your character over the years. If free will means that you just drift through life making a series of utterly random choices, then you'd have neither a chracter nor will. But if what you argue is true, every single thing that has happened - including me typing this post right now - was set into motion from the moment of the Big Bang or whatever and could never have happened any other way.

There is a huge gulf between this, where the leopard attacks purely based on instinct and literally could make no other choice because it operates purely on biological imperatives, and someone like James Holmes who shot up a movie theater after much meticulous planning and could have called the thing off at any time but chose to do it anyway.

My thoughts are exactly this: there really is no such thing as right or wrong. We are simply bound by either man's law or physics, and what we are taught what right is or wrong is. Ultimately, it's arguable if that started with religions. That's another topic.
We are also a product of events we've witnessed or went thought and every other events thereafter.

On that note, you're looking at life in black and white. Nothing truly is. Unless you can provide a formula or even formulate a reason to randomness then we'll find the common ground.

I think "free will" is an oxymoron, one that si often ignored because people simply feel that "free will" is a concept, without question, because they have heard that notion before.

Let's be clear, freedom is the opposite of being willful when you analyze them. "Freedom" is more like the all options on the table, whereas "Will" is more like you make a choice. In many ways they may not even be talking about the same thing

If I use my will to buy a coke, and I succeed, then I have executed an exercise in my personal choice. If I have 100 dollars then I have freedom (all options on table) to buy coke or candy, whether I choose one or the other or neither. If I have no money, in this particular example, I have no freedom (no options on the table) - and just cause I have freedom doesn't mean I will execute my will and buy the coke.   All I am merely doing right now (not picking a side) is showing that these two concepts "get" at different things, may not be compatible with each other, and maybe are related in a weird way.

As you can see, from my perspective, if I say the kid has no free will I am really saying he has no freedom AND he has no will, and vice versa if I say yes. The concept is flawed from the beginning. If we separate the concepts I will (and so will you) very easily be able to argue there are numerous examples where we either execute or don't execute freedom or willpower.

If you throw a dice, the result is completely defined by laws of physic. But as little and uncontrollable changes change the outcome, we say the result of a dice-roll is random. We cannot predict the outcome. Same with free will.. Yes, if we know someone else we may have an idea, what he will decide. But everyone surprises us sometimes.

That's proven wrong. Eonomists have condensed the formula 'humans make decisions based on what prfits them most' into the model of the homo oeconomicus. Experimental psychologists have set up experiments to prove the model - and showed that actual humans often decide against their profit. Hmans are far more comlex in their decisions, maximizing profit is one possibility, but altruism is also part of human nature.