Crime & Safety

Isla Vista Mass Murderer Says He Was Bullied at Valley Schools

Elliot Rodger describes life at Crespi in Encino and Taft High in Woodland Hills in a 140-page manifesto.

Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old man identified as the killer of six people near UC Santa Barbara, attended public and private schools in the San Fernando Valley, according to a manifesto he wrote.

The 100,000-word document titled "My Twisted World" details his childhood in the Valley and his difficulties at school, which included, according to the manifesto, being bullied at Crespi Carmelite High in Encino and Taft High in Woodland Hills.

"On my very first week (at Crespi), I had my first experience of true bullying," he recalled. "Some horrible Twelfth Graders saw me as a target because I looked like a ten year old and I was physically weak. They threw food at me during lunchtime and after school."

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"It enraged me, but I was too scared to do anything about it," Rodger added.

At Taft, where he transferred from Crespi, "The first week ... was living hell," the manifesto said.

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He attracted bullies "like moths to a flame," he wrote, detailing an incident when one boy called "me a 'loser,' right in front of his girlfriends."

"This was what truly opened my eyes to how brutal the world is," Rodger said. "The most meanest and depraved of men come out on top, and women flock to these men."

Rodger also attended Topanga Elementary School and the Pinecrest Schools in Woodland Hills. He finished his primary education at Independence Continuation High in Van Nuys.

According to the manifesto, he decided to enroll at Santa Barbara City College after watching the movie "Alpha Dog," a film about the 2000 abduction and murder of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz of West Hills. The boy was taken to Santa Barbara, where he was kept in a motel before being shot to death.

"The movie had a profound effect on me, because it depicted lots of good looking young people enjoying pleasurable sex lives," Rodger wrote. "... That was the life I wanted. A life of pleasure and sex."

--City News Service


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