Mass killer ‘rejected’ by girl at party
Police believe one victim may have spurned Kretschmer’s advances
Mourners gather at the school where nine pupils and three teachers were shot dead
Detectives disclosed yesterday that Kretschmer, who was described by friends and family as quiet and polite, had a secret identity on the internet, where he participated in a discussion about school shootings under the name “JawsPredator1”.
“The funny thing is that even when people like that announce what they are about to do in advance, no one believes it,” he was said to have written in an online chatroom. Detectives searching for clues to his character found more than 200 pornographic images on his computer’s hard disk, including 120 photographs of female bondage.
It was also revealed that Kretschmer, who was studying at a private business school, had recently written an essay on firearms control in which he called for more restrictions on the sale and ownership of guns after a school massacre in Erfurt in 2002 in which 16 people were murdered.
“Rules and regulations must be put in place and they must also be obeyed. One must not be allowed to aim at people,” he wrote in January.
“He simply wrote what he knew I wanted to read,” said Theresia Zurhorst, his ethics teacher, last week.
Kretschmer’s father, Jörg, a wealthy businessman, has a passion for guns: his 15 handguns and rifles were meant to be locked in a safe but Kretschmer would proudly show off to friends the Beretta pistol that he went on to use.
“You could say he was a true gun fanatic. Weapons were [Tim’s] obsession,” said Michael Veit, 17, a neighbour.
Kretschmer’s father had started taking him to a shooting range at the age of eight, according to Zdenka Karanovic of the Lautenbach gun club. Just three weeks ago he went back to the range with his father, telling him he wanted to practise his aim.
He appears to have been a spoilt child. When he insisted on playing table tennis with Timo Boll, then European champion, his father arranged an exhibition match for his 11th birthday.
“He had a lot of talent, but he was a poor loser and would always blame his losses on outside circumstances such as faulty rackets and the like,” said Marko Habijanec, his trainer. Kretschmer was even allowed to drive his father’s vintage Porsche, with his father in the passenger seat. A Volkswagen Jetta was going to be his 18th birthday present.
“He never faced bullying or anything similar. None of the teachers ever noted any problems with him,” said Astrid Hahn, head teacher of his secondary school.
The only shadow over his teenage years was his mother’s fight with breast cancer. Family members say he was “traumatised” by her suffering during years of chemotherapy.
In the past two years he had lost touch with many of his old schoolfriends. He would occasionally be seen in Domino, a local disco, but never in female company. He was also receiving counselling for depression but police sources say he was not on medication and his condition was not serious.
Yesterday one of his victims, Nicole Nalepa, was buried in Winnenden. At a memorial service on Friday held in Weiler zum Stein, Kretschmer’s village, almost the whole tight-knit community turned out to mourn the dead. “In moments like this it is difficult to understand God,” said the priest.
From fantasy to fact: Game link to massacre
The teenage gunman spent the night before his spree playing a violent video game in which a heavily armed mercenary tracks down and kills an arms dealer, police revealed yesterday, writes Adam Lewitt.
Tim Kretschmer spent from 7.30pm to 9.40pm playing Far Cry 2, in which the player takes on the role of the killer.
Remarkable parallels emerged between the video game and the 17-year-old’s rampage. In the game it is essential to hijack cars to move around. Kretschmer hijacked a car, held a pistol to the driver’s head and asked: “Should I have fun and pick off some more drivers?” Characters in the game, which is made by the French company Ubisoft and has sold 2.9m copies, wear black camouflage uniforms – the clothing Kretschmer wore on Wednesday.
Most sinister of all, Far Cry 2’s killer uses a Beretta 92 handgun, the weapon fired 112 times by Kretschmer. The game, which carries an 18 certificate in Britain, includes sequences in which the aiming, firing and reloading of a Beretta are portrayed in vivid detail. It also rewards players who shoot their victims in the head, the style of killing chosen by Kretschmer.
Kretschmer also played Counter-Strike, another game featuring gunplay, and TacticalOps, a special forces action game, both of which have a 16 certificate in Britain.
Some American experts are convinced of a link between school shootings and violent games.
Lieutenant-Colonel Dave Grossman, a West Point psychology professor, said: “You can see their influence in the way these school shooters aim and shoot accurately and move from one target to the next, moving through people dispassionately.”
Walter Hollstein, a sociologist working with the Council of Europe, disagreed. “It’s nonsense to assume they turn adolescents into school shooters,” he said.
“A variety of factors, such as helplessness, anger and loss of control, must come together for them to become the trigger, but the games themselves don’t make anyone a killer.”
