The Incel Killer: Elliot Rodger and the Isla Vista Attack

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Elliot Roger grew up around red carpets and film sets, but none of it helped him figure out how to be a person.

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He blamed women, his height, his race, his roommates, his candles.

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Basically, everyone except himself.

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What started as social isolation turned into a 137-page manifesto, a YouTube spiral, and a plan he called "The Day of Retribution".

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This story is about entitlement, unchecked rage, and a system that saw the warning signs but looked the other way.

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Before we dive in, if you like your true crime brief and bingeable, you're in the right place.

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Hit follow now for at least two new episodes every week.

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This is 10-minute murder.

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Let's get into it.

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[Music]

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Elliot Roger grew up in a world that looked from the outside like privileged wrapped in prestige.

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Born in London, he was the son of Peter Roger, a filmmaker who would go on to work on major Hollywood projects.

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And Lin Chen, a Malaysian Chinese nurse who transitioned into on-set medical work after meeting Peter.

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His early life was a split screen.

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By day, he went to private schools in the UK.

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By nights, he was tagging along to movie premieres and hanging out on the fringes of Hollywood's inner circle.

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When he was five, the family relocated to Los Angeles, and that divide between the life he had and the life he wanted started to stretch even wider.

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Not long after the move, his parents divorced.

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Elliot and his younger sister split time between the two households, bouncing back and forth on a weekly schedule.

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Then Peter remarried, this time to a Moroccan-born French actress.

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Elliot hated her.

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He hated what she represented, but he hated school even more.

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Back in LA, Elliot wasn't the interesting kid with international ties and a famous last name anymore.

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Everyone had a famous last name. Every other student was the child of someone important.

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Where they were outgoing, he was withdrawn.

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Social interactions overwhelmed him.

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He barely spoke in class, whispering answers when called on.

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He didn't want to play with the other kids.

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Even stuff like birthday parties or Disneyland events, most kids begged for.

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These things sent him spiraling into tears.

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There was something off, but no one really knew just how off things were going to get.

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By the time Elliot was nine, his mom filed paperwork asking for more child support.

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The reason?

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She said Elliot was autistic and needed extra help, both in school and at home.

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His dad wasn't exactly on board.

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He didn't fully buy the diagnosis, but he did admit that Elliot was different.

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Elliot agreed with that part, at least, but instead of focusing on things like social skills or anxiety,

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he zeroed in on what he thought was really holding him back.

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His height, his weight, and his race.

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He believed people didn't want to be around him because he was short, skinny, and mixed race.

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So he did what any deeply insecure kids soaking in LA culture might do.

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He died his hair blonde, picked up a skateboard, and started trying to look like the boys he thought people liked.

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For a while, it worked.

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He made a few new friends.

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He tried to blend in, but nothing clicked in a lasting way.

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His worldview stayed narrow.

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He still didn't understand how people worked, and the loneliness just kept growing.

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Things got even weirder when his mom started dating George Lucas.

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Yes, that, George Lucas.

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Suddenly Elliot was brushing shoulders with Hollywood royalty, going to premieres and

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playing the role of a bright connected kid from a privileged life.

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But behind closed doors, he spent most of his time holding up in online forums.

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That was the only space he felt even a little bit understood.

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When puberty hit, Elliot's focus shifted again.

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Friends didn't matter as much anymore.

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He became obsessed with losing his virginity.

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The problem was he didn't know how to talk to girls.

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Not really.

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And online forums weren't helping.

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Well he believed there was a formula.

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He had seen it a million times in Hollywood.

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If you're rich and you're successful, women show up.

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Period.

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So he gave his mom a task, marry someone wealthy.

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So Elliot could finally have the life he deserved.

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Lynn refused.

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Elliot dropped therapy, dropped his meds, and enrolled at Los Angeles Pierce College.

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Not because he was passionate about school, but because it gave him somewhere to be a distraction.

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That didn't last long either.

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He quickly started blaming the happy couples around him for making it impossible to concentrate.

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Love, sex, smiling people, everywhere he looked, they reminded him of what he did not have.

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And the resentment was starting to turn into something darker.

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By his late teens, Elliot had exactly one friend left.

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His childhood best friend, who at that point was really more of a benchmark.

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The only comfort Elliot claimed to have was that his friend was also a virgin.

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That was it.

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That was the bond.

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But where his friend tried to work on himself, Elliot just stood in blame.

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He decided the problem wasn't him.

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It was everyone else.

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Women, mostly, in the world for not giving him what he felt entitled to.

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He told his friends that one day he'd get revenge.

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That's when the friendship ended.

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Trying to course correct, Elliot's parents got together on one thing, helping him start

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over in Santa Barbara.

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The idea was that college, roommates, and new surroundings might help him develop some

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basic social skills.

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It didn't.

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roommates came and went.

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One called him a ticking time bomb.

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Others just left.

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And Elliot started talking openly about something he called his day of retribution.

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The plan?

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Target couples and women.

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Make them pay.

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But first, he needed money.

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He started buying lottery tickets.

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This logic was deeply unwell, but weirdly consistent.

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If he won, he'd use the money to attract women.

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If that didn't work, he'd fund his revenge.

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When yet another lottery ticket came up short in the summer of 2012, Elliot took a different

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route.

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He went to a shooting range and started practicing.

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By Halloween 2013, he picked that night to launch his plan until he realized police patrols

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would be heavier.

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He pushed the date again and again, always circling, waiting for something to change.

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He thought maybe sex could fix it.

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That if he could just sleep with someone, the rage would go away.

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So in July 2013, he went to a party, got drunk, and told himself this was it.

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It wasn't.

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He didn't talk to anyone.

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Instead, he insulted people, climbed onto a ledge, and pretended to shoot party goers

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with his fingers.

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Then he tried to push several women off the ledge.

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Unsurprisingly, he got shoved off instead.

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He broke his ankle, but was too drunk to realize it.

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Got kicked out of the party, stumbled into the wrong house, trying to get back in, and

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was beaten up by the homeowners who thought he was breaking in.

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The bruises, the swollen eye, those became part of his origin story.

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In his mind, the world had made him suffer, and it owed him blood.

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His roommates, David Wang and James Hong, were already frustrated.

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David had reported him for blasting music late at night.

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Things escalated when Elliot filed a formal complaint over stolen candles.

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Yes, candles.

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Turns out David had taken them in retaliation.

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Elliot had borrowed some of his cooking equipment and never returned it, so David decided to hold

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the candles hostage until he got his stuff back.

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Instead of resolving it, Elliot called the police.

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He held David under a citizen's arrest until they showed up.

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David got arrested for petty theft of candles.

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At that point, Elliot went full escalation mode.

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He demanded management evict both roommates.

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They didn't respond.

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Mostly because they had already found a new place and were counting down the weeks, but

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Elliot wasn't done with them.

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In April 2014, Elliot uploaded 22 videos to YouTube.

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He talked about his loneliness, his virginity, his confusion about why women didn't like him.

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He listed his credentials like a sad LinkedIn bio.

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Good car, expensive clothes, decent face, still nothing.

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The problem, he said, must be them.

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And then came the manifesto.

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A 137 page document titled My Twisted World, where he laid out his worldview.

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Women, he said, were a plague.

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The freedom to choose their partners had ruined everything.

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He proposed rounding them up into camps and giving civilized men control over reproduction.

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It was rage dressed up as ideology.

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Then came the plan.

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Step 1.

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Kill his stepmother and half brother at his dad's house.

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Then steal their SUV.

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Step 2.

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Return to Isla Vista and kill his two roommates.

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Step 3.

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Start what he called a war on women, targeting sororities, specifically Alpha Phi.

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And shooting as many people as possible before dying in a final shootout.

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But Elliot didn't wait.

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He started early by skipping to part 2 of Step 1.

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He murdered his roommates by stabbing them to death in their apartment.

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Next, he drove to the Alpha Phi house, but he couldn't get in.

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So he opened fire on three women outside the Delta Delta Delta house, instead, killing

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two.

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From there, he drove through Isla Vista, randomly shooting pedestrians, eventually exchanging

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gunfire with police before turning the gun on himself.

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In the end, six people were murdered.

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14 others were injured.

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Elliot Roger was dead.

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Starting from a smart fridge, and in that case, I have questions mostly about the fridge,

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because I don't know how to make that work again.

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To make it work, I'm sure you'll find a way to make it work.