- RAWSTORY.COM - Raw Story - 21/Aug 10:11

Horrifying website revealed as 'gateway' that linked school shooters

When Natalie Rupnow and Solomon Henderson, two teenagers separated by more than 500 miles, carried out school shootings in late 2024 and early 2025, they were linked by a global online network that encouraged obsession with mass murder.In a violent subculture in which the vast majority of mass shooters are white males, the two were unlikely candidates for infamy. Rupnow was a teenage girl. Henderson was Black.But the communities that nurtured them on their paths to violence offered ironic memes and terrorist manuals promoting white supremacy, violent misogyny and homophobia. When Rupnow, 15, carried a gun into Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis. in December 2024 and fatally shot a fellow student and teacher before killing herself, Henderson noted with satisfaction that they had followed each other on X. A month later, Henderson, 17, imitated Rupnow by taking a picture of himself making an A-OK hand sign that white supremacists use to troll opponents. Then, at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tenn. he carried out an attack that was strikingly similar, fatally shooting a fellow student and wounding another before killing himself.Those are not the only similarities between the two shooters, according to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. Rupnow and Henderson both created accounts on the website WatchPeopleDie, which traffics in footage of murder, torture, rape, executions, suicides and other forms of extreme violence. They did so within two weeks of each other, propelling them on a course of radicalization that ended in their rampages 18 and 19 months later.“They both started there,” said Carla Hill, senior director of investigative research at the Center on Extremism, of WatchPeopleDie. “It was a gateway or entry point. We saw that through their online activity and posts. They started by following extremist content. Then they started re-sharing extremist content. And finally, they started posting their own extremist content.”‘Multiple senseless killings’Rupnow and Henderson’s escalation from online extremism to real-world violence brought them into the orbit of at least two violent white supremacist groups that are the target of U.S. government prosecutions. A manifesto and diary left by Henderson contain lists of white supremacist mass murderers, terrorist manuals and obscure online groups so exhaustive it is difficult to isolate a single point of inspiration or motive. Federal prosecutors flagged a Russian- and Ukrainian-based neo-Nazi accelerationist group.In a motion for pre-trial detention in a case against Michail Chkhikvishvili, aka “Commander Butcher,” leader of Maniac Murder Cult, prosecutors argued that his “repeated solicitations of violence” have resulted in “multiple senseless killings” in the U.S. and beyond. Prior to Henderson’s attack, according to the government, he posted audio that claimed he was taking action on behalf of Maniac Murder Cult, and stated in his manifesto that he would write the name of Yegor Krasnov, the group’s founder, on his gun.Henderson described himself as an “accelerationist” — someone who embraces terrorism and other forms of spectacular violence to bring about societal collapse.Rupnow joined a Telegram group chat set up to livestream an attack on a Turkish mosque in August 2024. The perpetrator, 18-year-old Arda Küçükyetim, posted a link to the livestream in a group chat for Terrorgram Collective, a group that received a global terrorist designation from the U.S. State Department in January this year.“Come see how much humans I can cleanse,” Küçükyetim wrote.Dallas Erin Humber, a Terrorgram leader from California who recently pleaded guilty to conspiracy, solicitation of hate crimes and other charges, noted that Küçükyetim posted Terrorgram documents online, along with white supremacist mass murderers’ manifestos.“He was 100 percent our guy,” she wrote, according to the government. “But he’s not White so we can’t give him an honorary title. We still celebrating his attack tho, he did it for Terrorgram.“We can hail him anyway. We can’t add him to the Pantheon. But yeah, it’s a great development regardless, inspiring more attacks is the goal and anyone claiming to be an accelerationist should support them.”When Rupnow carried out her attack in Wisconsin in December 2024, Henderson celebrated her and Küçükyetim as fellow adherents in a daisy chain of viral mass murder.“It’s weird how we had similar takes and views, but not really because she followed my account,” Henderson wrote in his diary.“Arda was right!” he added, before quoting from a passage of Küçükyetim’s manifesto that argues the purpose of documenting mass casualty attacks is to inspire copy-cat violence.Henderson’s links to Terrorgram went beyond his admiration for Küçükyetim: He posted links to four Terrorgram publications in his manifesto, which begins: “This book is dedicated to Accelerationism and violence by a N----- for victory.”‘Entry point’Regardless of the influence of Terrorgram, Maniac Murder Cult and other groups whose propaganda Henderson and Rupnow encountered, Hill with the Center on Extremism said the impact of WatchPeopleDie and similar websites shouldn’t be discounted. Children head for a reunification center at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin. REUTERS/Cullen Granzen “The evidence shows that that was really an entry point,” she said. “It was part of their escalation. They became more and more extreme from that time.”WatchPeopleDie originated on Reddit, but was banned after a user posted clips of the livestreamed mass shooting by white supremacist Brenton Tarrant at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019. It’s now an independent website. Users who embrace white supremacy and other forms of extremism make up a subset of users, Hill said. The report notes that some users downvote or greet white supremacist posts with derision.But the researchers at the Center on Extremism found that extremist content — including white supremacist manifestos and mass-murder videos — is readily available on WatchPeopleDie. The new report warns that young people “can access extremist content alongside graphic violence, potentially desensitizing them and increasing the risk of ideologically motivated violence.”Researchers also found evidence that extremists use the site for networking. One user who followed Henderson described himself as a national socialist “accelerationist who likes Mass [sic] shooters.” The researchers noted that the user’s profile page included a “recommended reading” section that included Terrorgram publications.WatchPeopleDie runs off donations and paid membership and uses offshore webhosts out of reach for law enforcement, Hill said.By exposing WatchPeopleDie and similar sites, Hill said she hopes to pressure webhosts to remove harmful content.The report also aims to educate parents, educators and law enforcement about how online content that glorifies violence can start young people down a rabbit hole to radicalization.“Youth internet subcultures are dipping more into extremist content,” Hill said. “We see it in TikTok and sites like WatchPeopleDie. The context is ironic; it’s still repeating exposure and indoctrinating kids into thinking this stuff is okay.”The most effective measure of prevention, Hill said, is for parents to talk to their children.“The more people are aware of it, the more you can push back,” she said. “Tell parents to talk to their kids about the content, and why it’s bad. They should ask their children what they’re looking at and why they’re on this site. “‘What’s on this site that interests you?’ That’s a starting point. A lot of kids are in their rooms looking at this content. There’s no moderation. It’s our job to inform everyone of what the possibilities are.”