Modern killers turn to video to get message out

By Kate Holton

LONDON (Reuters) - The posting on YouTube of a clip announcing a school shooting in Finland before it happened shows how self-shot videos have become the favored means for modern killers wanting to get their message across.

The nature of 24-hour media means such videos are also likely to get worldwide attention very quickly in a way which letters never could.

Seven children and the school principal were killed on Wednesday when a fellow pupil opened fire at a school in southern Finland, hours after a clip posted on video sharing Web site YouTube predicted a massacre there. The shooter later died in hospital after shooting himself in the head.

The YouTube video, set to a hard-driving song called "Stray Bullet," shows a still photo of a low building that appears to be the Jokela High School.

The photo breaks apart to reveal a red-tinted picture of a man pointing a handgun at the camera.

"Go back 50 years or 25 years, they wrote letters and now they've moved onto YouTube," Mike Berry, a professor in criminal psychology, told Reuters. "He's just using today's modern facilities. Young people use YouTube instead of a pen and paper.

"I don't think this will produce copycat situations but what I do think is that people who want to make a message will see this as a new avenue."

The YouTube video, entitled "Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007," was posted by a user called Sturmgeist89.

"I am prepared to fight and die for my cause," read a posting by a user of the same name.

"I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection." "Sturmgeist" means storm spirit in German.

The user's account has since been suspended.

TAPE

Earlier this year Cho Seung-Hui killed 33 people, including himself, at Virginia Tech in the United States and mailed a video explaining his actions to U.S. broadcaster NBC during the killing spree.

Unlike the Finnish case, where the video appeared on a freely accessible video sharing site, NBC had to choose whether to air the footage or not. Its decision to do so triggered a debate about whether the diatribe should have been made public.

Access to media was very different a decade ago.