Mass Killer Named by Montreal Police

A gunman who killed 14 women, wounded 13 other people and killed himself here Wednesday evening was identified Thursday night as Marc Lapin. He had used the name “Marc” to sign a three-page suicide letter that police retrieved from his pocket.

Canadian Broadcasting Corp., which reported that police had confirmed his identity through his mother, said little was known about the gunman’s background. The broadcaster described him as being about 5-foot-9 inches tall and weighing about 160 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes.

In his letter, “Marc” said that he was going to have to die on Dec. 6, then blamed his problems on “feminists who had always ruined his life,” according to Jacques Duchesneau, head of the Montreal police organized crimes unit. The letter, which has not yet been released in full, also included a list of women in Montreal. Police declined to reveal their names or speculate on why they were mentioned in the letter.

On Wednesday, the lone gunman walked into the Ecole Polytechnique of the University of Montreal and went on what witnesses described as an anti-feminist rampage. He fired shots into the ceiling and at students, then burst into a classroom during an oral presentation and ordered the male students and teacher out the door. One student said he heard the gunman say, “I want women.”

According to survivors, the man then shouted an obscenity and called the women “feminists” in French, and opened fire on them, killing six. He then left the classroom and roamed the corridors, pausing to fire and reload as he went. Eight women were fatally shot elsewhere in the building. One policeman arriving at the scene discovered his own daughter among the dead.

As of Thursday, one of the injured was still in critical condition, and the other 12 were said to be “stable.” It was the worst mass killing ever in Canada--a country that tends to look upon senseless, violent crime as an American phenomenon--and the third worst in North America.

Duchesneau said the man’s suicide note claimed he had “political reasons” for committing the massacre but didn’t explain what these were. The officer said the letter further complained of a life of unhappiness, and especially the unhappiness of the man’s final seven years. “Marc” also wrote that he had tried to enter the armed forces and been rejected as “anti-social,” Duchesneau said. Police said the killer, thought to be between 22 and 25 years old, didn’t address the handwritten note to anyone in particular.

In addition, police said, the letter referred to Cpl. Denis Lortie, a well-known mass-killer who worked as a supply clerk at a Canadian Forces base until 1984, then stole two sub-machine guns and a pistol and went on a shooting spree in the Quebec National Assembly in Quebec City, killing three government employees and wounding 13 other people.

Police said they were able to get a line on the gunman’s identify by tracing the purchase and registration of the weapon he used--a .223-caliber Sturm Ruger semi-automatic rifle, a gun commonly used in hunting. They said that they had learned where the gun was purchased and that it appeared to have been registered properly.

On the university campus Thursday, students seemed stunned by what had happened.

“We were doing our oral presentation,” said engineering student Roger Thiffauld, who was in the room where the gunman killed four women and shot himself. “The girl in my team had just finished her presentation, and I did mine. Just when we were switching transparencies, the guy came in.”

Thiffauld said he didn’t hear the gunman make any anti-woman remarks, but as all the students dove to the floor, he said he could hear him walking about the room on the tops of the desks, picking out students here and there. At the time, he said, he didn’t realize it, but the killer was finding the women where they lay and shooting them. He said that during the ordeal, the woman next to him on the floor, just two or three feet away, was shot. She lay moaning and eventually bled to death, he said.

“He was serious,” Thiffauld said of the man. “He wasn’t excited, or anything like that.”

Another engineering student, Mario Cantin, said he couldn’t understand why the man had singled out the women in the building. “The guys at Polytechnique are quite happy that the number of women is increasing every year,” he said, as he bundled up for a candlelight vigil held for the dead in the bitter night air. “I don’t think they feel the women are stealing our jobs.”

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, speaking in Ottawa, expressed his shock at the mass murders and sent his condolences to the families. Here in Quebec, Premier Robert Bourassa told the legislature Thursday: “All of Quebec is in mourning.”