John Russell Houser, became the latest figure in a gallery of angry men with weapons who walked into a movie theater, a church, a school or a workplace and shattered the lives of people there.


Lafayette Shooting Adds Another Angry Face in the Gunmen’s Gallery

LAFAYETTE, La. — It was about 20 minutes into the 7 p.m. showing of “Trainwreck” when moviegoers heard a couple of pops, like a sound effect glitch. But when the sounds rang out again it became horribly clear that this was something else entirely.

“From the reflection of the movie, the light, you could see his gun shining,” said Lucas Knepper, who was seated in the same mostly empty row as the man in the short-sleeve, button-down shirt who had begun firing at the 20 or so people in the theater. “And then you could see the flash coming from the chamber.”

Soon two young women lay fatally shot, nine other people were wounded, and with that, on Thursday night, Lafayette, which boasts of being the happiest city in the country, joined Chattanooga, Tenn.; Charleston, S.C.; Aurora, Colo.; Newtown, Conn., and so many others on the long list of cities scarred by gun violence. The gunman, John Russell Houser, became the latest figure in a gallery of angry men with weapons who walked into a movie theater, a church, a school or a workplace and shattered the lives of people there.

Accounts from acquaintances, law enforcement officials and court records portrayed Mr. Houser, 59, of Phenix City, Ala., who also took his own life, as a man with a diffuse collection of troubles and grievances — personal, political and social — who had a particular anger for women, liberals, the government and a changing world.

Because he had been accused of both domestic violence and soliciting arson, though never successfully prosecuted, he was denied a permit to carry a concealed pistol. His family repeatedly described him as violent and mentally ill; his mental health had been called into question going back decades, and he spent time in a hospital receiving psychiatric care. He vandalized the house he was evicted from last year, and tampered with the gas lines in a way that could have caused a fire or explosion.

Given his history, he should not have been allowed to own a gun, said Sheriff Heath D. Taylor of Russell County, where Mr. Houser lived.

President Obama has said repeatedly that each mass shooting cries out for stricter controls to keep mentally ill people and criminals from obtaining guns, but the issue has not resonated on the campaign trail.

The police identified the women Mr. Houser killed as Jillian E. Johnson, 33, who owned, with her husband, two stores that sell toys, jewelry and printed goods, and played in a bluegrass band; and Mayci Breaux, 21, recently a student at Louisiana State University at Eunice, who was soon to start radiology school at Lafayette General Hospital.

A vigil was held Friday night at the University of Louisiana’s Lafayette campus, about a mile and a half from the movie theater where the shooting took place. Credit William Widmer for The New York Times
Using a .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol, Mr. Houser shot one man four times, but the man survived, the police said. By Friday evening, five victims remained in hospitals.

Mr. Houser’s instability and fury had been evident for years, said Calvin Floyd, the former host of a television talk show in Columbus, Ga., that frequently featured Mr. Houser as a guest in the 1990s.

“If you gave me 40 names and 40 pictures of people who might have done that, I wouldn’t have hesitated to point him out,” he said. “I could just sense the anger was there.”

Mr. Houser believed that women should not work outside their homes, and “had a lot of hostility toward abortion clinics,” Mr. Floyd said. He was the sort of person who believed “that all the trouble started when they took Bibles out of school and stopped prayer.”

On Twitter, antigovernment discussion boards, and other forums online, a person using the names Rusty Houser, J. Rusty Houser, and John Russell Houser praised the Westboro Baptist Church, whose members, driven by a loathing of gays, stage protests at military funerals; Timothy J. McVeigh, who bombed a government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168; and even Adolf Hitler. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and antigovernment groups, said the posts were all from Mr. Houser.

Several times, he described the United States as a “financially failing filth farm” that deserved to collapse, and would do so soon.

Mr. Houser legally bought the gun he used in the shooting from a pawnshop in Phenix City last year, law enforcement officials said. A purchase at a store requires a federal background check, and serious mental illness can be grounds for denial, but the database of prohibited buyers is imperfect.

Mr. Houser lived much of his life in Columbus, Ga., just across the Chattahoochee River from Phenix City, and his LinkedIn profile described him as an investment manager and entrepreneur with a law degree and an accounting credential.

In 1989, he was accused of trying to hire a man to start a fire at a Columbus law firm that represented pornographic theaters, which Mr. Houser opposed. A grand jury declined to indict him, but not before a Superior Court judge in Muscogee County ordered Mr. Houser to undergo a psychiatric examination because his competency had “been called into question.”

He later opened a pub in LaGrange, Ga., where the local authorities accused him of selling alcohol to minors. After his company’s liquor license was revoked, in 2001, he placed a banner with a swastika outside the pub, The LaGrange Daily News reported at the time. He explained that “the people who used it — the Nazis — they did what they damn well pleased.”

 
Jim Craft, the chief of the police department in Lafayette, La., on Friday identified and described the gunman who killed two people, and then himself, in a movie theater on Thursday night. By WBRZ via Associated Press on Publish Date July 24, 2015. Photo by Paul Kieu/The Daily Advertiser, via Associated Press. Watch in Times Video »
Mr. Houser ran for local office in Columbus, Mr. Floyd said, but he was spotted removing his opponents’ signs and ultimately withdrew from the race.

Mr. Houser also had a history of financial trouble, including a bankruptcy filing in 2002, and a home foreclosure that led to a courthouse sale in 2014. The Louisiana State Police superintendent, Col. Michael D. Edmonson, said Mr. Houser’s mother recently gave him $5,000 to start anew, with talk of finding a job in Texas, and officials said he had recently visited a church food bank.

He and his family moved to Phenix City in 2005, and that year, his wife made a domestic violence complaint against him, but it did not lead to an arrest, Sheriff Taylor said. The next year, the sheriff’s office refused his application for a concealed carry permit.

In April 2008, Mr. Houser’s family members obtained a protective order against him from a court in Carroll County, Ga., and his wife grew fearful enough that she removed weapons from their home, court records show. The family asked that the court involuntarily commit him to a hospital for psychiatric care; he was subsequently admitted to a hospital in Columbus.

In court papers, family members said he had “perpetrated various acts of family violence,” and cited “a substantial likelihood of future family violence.” They described him as having bipolar disorder, for which he had been prescribed medication, which he sometimes failed to take.

Outside the Grand Theater in Lafayette, La., where a man fired on people at a screening of "Trainwreck." The gunman was one of the dead. Credit Lee Celano/Reuters
His condition apparently deteriorated as his daughter’s wedding approached, when he “exhibited extreme erratic behavior,” they told the court. They said he was vehemently opposed to the wedding, and made “ominous as well as disturbing statements” that it would not happen.

That month, the police in Carrollton, Ga., investigated a report of a “mentally disturbed person” after he arrived unannounced at his daughter’s office, and later threatened another family member.

Mr. Houser lost his house in Phenix City to foreclosure, and in March 2014 an eviction order was served, the sheriff said. A criminal complaint was later filed accusing Mr. Houser of vandalizing the house, including damaging gas lines and pouring cement into the plumbing.

The buyer of the house, Norman Bone; his daughter, Beth; and her boyfriend, Dan Ramsel, described what Mr. Houser had done as booby-trapping the house, and said his rampage required more than a year of repairs. They said he destroyed many of its fixtures, kept hundreds of fish in the swimming pool, and left human feces and cement throughout the house.

“He was crazy,” Ms. Bone said outside the home where Mr. Houser flew the Confederate battle flag. “But I didn’t think he would kill someone.”

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