It has become a hauntingly routine paradox in the aftermath of horrific shootings.
An assailant leaves piles of evidence that investigators scrutinize. But law enforcement officials are often left with more questions than answers as they seek to determine a motive.
Officials in Minneapolis were bracing for that outcome as they examined the writings and social media posts of the person they say opened fire through the window of a church packed with schoolchildren on Wednesday, killing two.
“We will follow all of the evidence to its logical conclusion,” Brian O’Hara, the Minneapolis police chief, told reporters on Thursday. “This may not ultimately provide the answers that our public is looking for.”
Robin Westman, 23, carried out the attack and died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the authorities said. The attacker left behind a lengthy suicide note, journal entries and scribbling on the weapons used in the ambush at the Church of the Annunciation, which is affiliated with an adjacent Catholic school.
The content includes disparaging messages about President Trump, Christians, Black people, Hispanic people, Jews and Israel.
“The shooter expressed hate toward every group imaginable,” said Joseph H. Thompson, the acting United States attorney in Minnesota. “The shooter’s heart was full of hate.”
The sprawling nature of the assailant’s rantings and grievances led government officials and other observers to zero in on single pieces of information in the immediate aftermath of the attack, which also injured 15 children and three adult parishioners.
Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, characterized the incident as a “hate crime targeting Catholics.” Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, drew attention to a message threatening violence toward the president and to the shooter’s gender identity. According to court records, when Ms. Westman was 17, she filed a petition to legally change her name to Robin, noting that she identified as female.
Social media was filled with rampant speculation about the shooter’s gender identity and whether the attacker’s recent work at a cannabis dispensary and previous attendance at the school adjacent to the church had factored into a motive.
But the only clear finding so far, law enforcement officials said, was that the attacker had come to idolize mass shooters, particularly those who have killed children.
Jillian Peterson, a professor of criminology at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., who studies gun violence, said the facts that have emerged so far fit a pattern. Shooters who target children in these attacks tend to be young, isolated, depressed and angry individuals who become obsessed with previous slayings that have generated extensive news coverage.
“It’s sort of this self-hatred that turns outward, and then you have this really angry person who plans to go out in a blaze of glory,” Dr. Peterson said.
As communities process the shock and grief of these shootings, she added, there is often a natural desire to make sense of the attacker’s state of mind and intent.
“We want to be able to say, ‘Oh, this person was psychotic, this person was racist, this person was homophobic, and just put a label on it,’” Dr. Peterson said. “In many cases, the motive is always the same: to kill as many people as possible” and generate splashy headlines.
In an era of diminishing trust in government institutions and the media, conspiracy theories about high-profile crimes can get significant traction in the absence of a conclusive motive.
The teenager who fatally shot 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, had behaved in alarming ways before the 2022 tragedy. But to this day, the gunman’s motivations remain unclear.
After a former student opened fire at a Christian school in Nashville in 2023, killing three children and three adults, conservative commentators were convinced that the fact that the assailant had identified as transgender played a role in the crime. But the authorities have not been able to draw a clear link, instead emphasizing the assailant’s desire for infamy and fixation on other mass shootings.
After a 15-year-old girl killed two people and wounded six at a Christian school in Wisconsin late last year, the authorities said she had become obsessed with previous school shootings. But what motivated the teenager, who died during the attack, was never established.
When shooters are taken into custody and agree to talk about their crimes, their motives can be even murkier.
Early reports from officials about the Minnesota man who prosecutors say opened fire on two state legislators in June appeared to indicate that the suspect was motivated by anti-abortion views.
But later, the suspect, who is facing trial for murder and other crimes, provided a set of confounding explanations. In a letter to the F.B.I., he called the attack part of a dark plot involving Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and competition for the state’s U.S. Senate seats.
More recently, he told reporters the crime had to do with his theories about Covid-19 vaccines.
Mary Ellen O’Toole, a retired F.B.I. agent who spent years assembling profiles of infamous criminals, said that sometimes attackers themselves seem unable to make sense of their actions.
“When the offender survives and you go in and talk to them and say: ‘What were your motives?’ they oftentimes cannot articulate what they were,” said Dr. O’Toole, a forensic sciences professor at George Mason University.
While the question of motive certainly matters — particularly if a defendant goes on trial — a more pressing one is how to identify and respond to risk factors.
Dr. O’Toole and Dr. Peterson said these types of shooters often are consumed with rage in a way that becomes apparent to loved ones and acquaintances. Men between the ages of 15 and 25 appear to be particularly susceptible to becoming fixated with mass carnage, Dr. O’Toole said.
In the months ahead, Dr. O’Toole said, federal investigators will strive to assemble a detailed portrait of the Minneapolis church shooter. Their main goal will not be to understand precisely what motivated the attacker, but rather the evolution of the shooter’s radicalization and any warning signs that may have gone unheeded.
“They want to be able to use this information to prevent the next one,” she said. “I can tell you there are already people that are considering carrying out a mass shooting based on what they’ve seen” this week in Minneapolis.
The questions that grieving parents and shellshocked leaders in Minnesota began grappling with this week are painfully familiar to those who lost loved ones in the 2012 attack at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., which killed 12 people.
The prosecutor who secured a conviction and life sentence in that gunman’s trial argued that he had a wanton hatred of humanity. The assailant’s defense lawyers said he was mentally ill and delusional.
People parsed the Aurora assailant’s notebook entries and social media photos for clues.
“Even ourselves, we were like, ‘Why would anybody do this?’” said Sandy Phillips, whose daughter, Jessi Redfield Ghawi, a budding sports reporter, was killed in the shooting.
But after learning how easily the gunman had obtained the weapons and ammunition he used in the attack, Ms. Phillips said the motive ceased to matter.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We want an easy answer: This guy was crazy, or this was a white nationalist, or this guy was trans. Who cares? The fact is, we’re not doing what needs to be done as a society to stop the killing.”
Ms. Phillips, who has called for tougher gun regulations and co-founded a group that works with victims of shootings and their families, said she was frustrated to see news coverage of the Minneapolis church shooting again focused on trying to parse the shooter’s motive.
“The answer to the ‘why’ is,” Ms. Phillips said, “because he could.”
Emily Cochrane and Jack Healy contributed reporting.
Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy.
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