By Steve Huff
(Continued)
Who was Aaron Kyle Huff?
No history of overt violence. Reported by several party-goers who interacted with him prior to the murders to be "self-effacing." Who was Aaron Kyle Huff?
Huff had only one notable crime on his record in Whitefish, MT. In 2000 he'd blown up a statue of a moose with a gun. His landlords told both major Seattle newspapers, the Times and the Post-Intelligencer, that Kyle and his brother Kane were polite to a degree that impressed them.
Yet Aaron Kyle Huff arrived at the after-party, having hooked up with someone at "Better off Undead," his pickup loaded with a small arsenal. He was reported by more than one Seattle news outlet to have worked as a pizza delivery person and an art student. What reason did he have to pack orange spray-paint in his vehicle, much less the weaponry?
Almost immediately after news of the murders on E. Republican was broadcast, members of the Techno and Rave community began to converge on a message board normally reserved for discussions of politics and announcements about upcoming shows NorthwestTekno, or nwtekno.org. There they could check in and see who was around and able to post. In various message threads rave kids, musicians, DJs and VJs could commiserate, mourn, and commemorate those who were murdered. Some resented the sudden crush of media attention, and were intensely wary of the focus of the news coverage — that the murders committed by Aaron Kyle Huff were somehow a result of the lifestyles they were leading.
In fact, a careful read of one thread seemed to indicate that no one who was well and able to post a message actually knew just how Aaron Kyle Huff had come to be invited to the home at 2112 E. Republican.
Mass murders are said by experts in behavioral analysis to often be committed by unstable and alienated loners. Mass murder is sometimes considered to be a form of suicide, since so many who commit multiple murders in the space of a day or so end up killing themselves —like Aaron Kyle Huff.
Huff did not appear to be a fixture on the rave scene in Seattle. Yet he was welcomed to an after-party given by some of the leading promoters and DJs. Comments could be found all over the web on the sick irony in his act — in murdering rave kids, some of them with dyed hair, multiple piercings, stark gothic makeup, Aaron Kyle Huff was attacking a group that had come together, many of them, because they felt like outsiders in their own community. Many teens and adults involved in goth or rave scenes are literate, artistically inclined, intensely creative. They bond sometimes through the shared sense of isolation they feel when moving around in the 'straight' world.
Aaron Kyle Huff may have targeted and attacked the very subculture most likely to accept him for who he was in an uncritical and non-judgmental fashion. Mass murder may be like a suicide writ large, where the killer's internalized rage demands he destroy a number of others along with himself, but in this instance, it also looked like a hate crime.
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