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Racial Writings Linked to Rampage

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Authorities probing a deadly rampage said Saturday that they found racially tinged writings and literature that may ultimately help explain what drove a man of privilege to allegedly go on a shooting spree that killed five people Friday.

Drawing particular scrutiny, authorities said, are several pages of racial writings that police seized from the home computer of suspected gunman Richard Baumhammers, 34, a white attorney who lived with his parents here, one of Pittsburgh’s most affluent suburbs.

While Allegheny County Dist. Atty. Steve Zappala refused to disclose the exact contents of those writings, he said that they are “relevant to the issue of whether this was a hate crime.”

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Police are also investigating racial literature found at the suspect’s home to determine whether he had ties to any white supremacist or hate groups, Zappala said.

Baumhammers, the son of dentists, allegedly went on a 20-mile killing spree Friday afternoon that left a trail of carnage on the west side of Pittsburgh. The gunman moved methodically from his next-door neighbor’s house to an Indian grocery, a Chinese restaurant and a karate studio. Shot dead were a black man, two Asian American men, an Indian man and a Jewish woman whose synagogue was defaced with a swastika and the word “Jew.”

A sixth victim, an Indian man, remained in critical condition Saturday, and may be paralyzed.

Baumhammers was arraigned Friday in the slaying of Garry Lee, 22, a beginning student at a karate studio in Beaver County, and is expected to be charged in the other four killings as early as Monday.

County Coroner Cyril Wecht said that anyone who would doubt that the attacks were driven by racial and religious hatred is also still “looking at the Empire State Building to see if we’ll classify it as a skyscraper.”

If there were warning signs leading up to the killings, few spotted them.

People who knew Baumhammers remembered him Saturday as a fairly nondescript young man--hulking in his physical size but quiet and mannerly in his demeanor.

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One woman whose daughters chatted with Baumhammers on the Internet over the last year said she exchanged messages with him a few times herself and found him to be “nothing but nice,” inviting the family to come to his home a few blocks away.

“I just can’t believe this,” said the mother, shop owner Sheila Grenadier. “When I heard, I just thought that this can’t be the same person. I thought, ‘What if this guy knew we were Jewish?’ ”

Baumhammers revealed no racial biases in the profile he displayed on America Online. In fact, he identified his Latvian ancestry and listed his hobbies as “international travel, sports, fine wine and other things!”

He included with his profile a quotation that now carries a morbid ring: “And this too shall pass.”

Many in the Pittsburgh area struggled Saturday to understand how a man from a well-off family in an exclusive part of town who had earned law and master’s degrees might have been involved in such horrific, hate-driven violence.

But Brian Levin, head of the San Bernardino-based Center on Hate and Extremism, said that white supremacist groups have been able to draw lawyers, doctors, professors and other professionals into their ranks in surprising numbers in recent years.

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“It’s not at all rare,” he said in an interview. “What it says is that the hate movement is becoming more sophisticated in reaching people who are socially and emotionally disconnected as opposed to economically disconnected.”

Authorities could offer no easy explanations Saturday for what might have set off the suspect. Zappala said investigators have found no indication of any medical treatment for mental disorder, nor do they have evidence of a recent romantic breakup or other traumatic episode.

“Why did he shoot the people he did? Why the route he took? Why yesterday? Those are questions that are still unresolved,” the prosecutor said.

One issue worth exploring, coroner Wecht said, is whether Baumhammers--who specialized in international law, but had allowed his bar membership in Pennsylvania to lapse--had problems with foreign-born clients.

It appears that the suspect knew at least several of the victims.

Slain Woman Lived Next Door to Suspect

Nicki Gordon, a 63-year-old Jewish woman who authorities said was shot at least six times while in her home, was the suspect’s next-door neighbor in the Virginia Manor neighborhood. She and the suspect’s parents had been friends for decades.

The victim was “like a second mother” to many of the young people in her neighborhood, friends said. Gordon would leave holiday treats for the Baumhammers, and she was “the ringleader for all the neighborhood events,” said Brent Wilson, who lived on the street for years.

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“This is beyond comprehension. We’re just utterly shocked,” he said.

The Gordon attack allegedly set off a two-hour trek that police say was quick and methodical. After allegedly killing Gordon and setting fire to her home, the gunman then shot up and defaced two synagogues, killed one man, Anil Thakur, 31, and wounded another at an Indian grocery and set siege on a Chinese restaurant a few miles away.

There, a witness reported that the gunman entered the crowded restaurant and asked for the manager and the deliveryman by name before opening fire and killing them both. Thao Quoc Pham, 27, and Ji-Ye Sun, 34, were both Asian immigrants. He appears not to have known Lee, who was shot at the karate studio.

Police said they are still trying to determine the gunman’s connection to the two Asian victims and why he might have singled them out.

The attacks came less than two months after a black man spewing racial epithets killed three white people and wounded two others at an apartment building and two restaurants in the Pittsburgh area.

The suspect’s parents remained in seclusion Saturday, but a lawyer for the family said they were “devastated” and were “trying to piece things together.”

Meanwhile, at the Beth El Congregation of South Hills, where Gordon was a member, several hundred people--including dozens from neighboring congregations--turned out for Sabbath services.

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Worshipers heard Rabbi Neal Scheindlin talk about the importance of mourning through silence, through tears and through song.

Outside, children looked curiously at the boarded-up doors that the suspect had allegedly shot out, asking what had happened.

“Daddy, why would he shoot?” a boy asked as he entered the synagogue through a side door. “I don’t know, babe,” the father said as he handed the boy a yarmulke.

At times like this, the rabbi said later, “we just have to find the strength to go on.”

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Times special correspondent Bill Steigerwald contributed to this story.

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