Like most school shooters, the UNLV shooter thought he was better than everyone else

Usually, when I make a post about a school shooting, I’ll start the post with something like, “As you probably heard…”. But you may not have heard about Wednesday’s shooting at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV), where three victims were killed. The shooter was also killed by police after an exchange of gunfire. There are so many mass shootings anymore, it’s really hard to keep track of them all. After the news broke on Wednesday, I told Lady Gray that I remember a time when shootings like this would cause news networks to interrupt programming. Now, it’s just another day.

Those killed were 69-year-old Naoko Takemaru, 39-year-old Patricia Navarro-Velez, and 64-year-old Cha Jan “Jerry” Chang. Ms. Takemartu was an associate professor of Japanese studies, Ms. Navarro-Velez was an assistant professor of accounting, while Mr. Chang taught management information systems at UNLV’s business school. NBC News published a poignant summary of their lives, which you can read here. Such an amazing amount of talent and skill that were educating minds lost to a coward’s bullets.

A fourth professor, who was critically wounded in the shooting, was a visiting professor.

The shooter has been identified as 67-year-old Anthony Polito. When I first heard the shooter was in his sixties, I took to social media to say the shooting was probably influenced by some Trump-fueled anti-woke bullshit. One MAGA cultist fired back with the shooter was a liberal Democrat professor. In the end, we were both kind of right, but I’ll get to that in a little bit.

Polito was a semi-retired college professor who had worked for universities in North Carolina and Georgia. It’s believed he applied for a position at UNLV and was rejected. The three people he killed were all staff members of the school. That almost makes it sound like it was a workplace-related shooting more than a mass shooting, and it very well could have been. However, there’s more to Polito than meets the eye.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Polito claims he solved the infamous cryptographic messages of the Zodiac Killer. Even though the Zodiac Killer’s cipher was finally cracked in 2020, Polito had nothing to do with it. In my opinion, this gives us a window into Polito’s mental state. To me, the Zodiac Killer is one of those cases when I hear somebody claim to have made a breakthrough, I think to myself, “Sure you did, buddy.” Similar cases along this line are Jack The Ripper, The Black Dahlia murder, and JonBenet Ramsey.

Here’s what Polito had to say about his supposed breakthrough in identifying the Zodiac Killer…

“Just so you won’t initially write off my solution as that of a total crackpot, let me first say that I have been a member of MENSA for 35 years, I hold a double undergraduate degree in Mathematics & Statistics (two skills closely associated with successful cryptographers) … and I hold a masters degree and a doctoral degree from top-tier universities as well. So I am not a dumb guy!” he wrote.

“To be fair, I must state that I do NOT have any special expertise or experience in the field of cryptography, only a general and basic knowledge of it … and neither am I an expert or especially accomplished mathematician and/or statistician.”

I’m surprised he didn’t list his IQ too.

Polito seems to fit more into the profile of a teenage school shooter than an adult mass shooter, in my opinion. More often than not, younger school shooters have this almost egomaniacal opinion of themselves. They often think they’re smarter than everyone else, which they also believe makes them better than everyone else. And when they’re not treated like the god-kings they think they are, they’d rather reach for a gun instead of ever considering that maybe they’re the problem.

Polito is also said to have dabbled in conspiracy theories. Not only did he ‘solve’ the mystery of the Zodiac Killer, but he also claimed to have solved the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. According to Polito, the flight was hijacked in a 9/11-style terrorist attacks, and was going to be crashed into a pair of buildings in Indonesia. However, the crash was covered up by the government and the media to “suppress the actual location of the wreckage.”

On his personal website, Polito wrote an essay entitled ‘Powerful Organzations Bent on Global Domination!’ As you might imagine, this was just a rehash of antisemitic conspiracy theories that have long since been debunked. This included linking to a video made by Alex Jones about the ‘globalists’ dark agenda’ and another that promoted conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family. Remember kids, when someone one says ‘globalists’ what they really mean is ‘the Jews’.

Which is kind of ironic since he listed both Albert Einstein and George Soros as men he admired. For those who may not know, Einstein was Jewish, and George Soros is a liberal Jewish philanthropist who has long been the bogeyman of conservative conspiracy theorists.

Another contradiction Polito had was in his choice of movies. While he listed Micheal Moore’s Roger and Me as one of his favorite movies, he also listed Oliver Stone’s JFK and Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead. As far as I’m concerned, his like for Ayn Rand definitely tips his political scale over to the conservative side.

To further make him sound like a complete neckbeard, at least one of his former female students has come forward to say Polito made advances on her to make her feel uncomfortable.

The woman said Polito would try to have contact with her every day for nearly the entire semester, through emails and texting. Polito, the woman said, also bought her gifts and, by the end of the semester, invited her to Las Vegas.

In addition to that, the property manager at Polito’s Henderson apartment complex said the following…

She described Polito as a “loner” who sometimes would get a little too personal, which made her uncomfortable.

Prior to the shooting, Polito reportedly sent 22 envelopes in the mail to faculty members at both UNLV and East Carolina University. Police were able to recover the letters that had no return address. The first letter police opened contained a white powder that turned out to be talcum powder.

For the gun nerds, Polito was armed with a 9mm Taurus PT92 pistol. He was also said to have had 150 additional rounds of additional ammunition, along with nine loaded magazines. Keep in mind that the deadliest school shooting in American history, Virginia Tech, was committed by a man armed with two handguns. Just because an AR-15 wasn’t used in these shootings, that doesn’t mean that handguns aren’t any less lethal than the preferred cowardly toy of mass shooters. As far as I’m concerned, ban them all and repeal the 2nd Amendment. Moving on.

Much like a teenage school shooter, Polito had a list of names on him of faculty members from both UNLV and East Carolina. It’s believed when Polito couldn’t find any of the people from UNLV on his list, he shot other people in the faculty building.

Polito was also said to have been having financial difficulties, when police went to search his apartment after the shooting, an eviction notice was attached to the door. I haven’t seen it mentioned yet, but you have to wonder if Polito had a gambling addiction. By most accounts, Polito had an unhealthy obsession with Las Vegas. Many of his former students said he would regale them with his tales from Sin City, often to the detriment of the class. Having grown up in the poor man’s Las Vegas, aka Atlantic City, I know too well that you can’t gamble to pay the bills.

So, if you take an egomaniacal retired college professor, obsessed with Las Vegas, who’s down on his luck and was rejected by what possibly could have been his dream job, a motive starts to form.

However, that should in no way absolve Polito from any of his crimes. Like most school shooters, when life didn’t go Polito’s way, it was unthinkable to him that his situation was his fault. For a guy who thought he was so smart, you would think he could find a way out of his situation without picking up a gun. Unfortunately, smart doesn’t always make you smart.

Remember, IQ doesn’t make you bulletproof.

(Sources)

• AP source: Las Vegas shooting suspect was a professor who applied for a job at UNLV
• UNLV gunman sent letters to university personnel across the country before shootings, sheriff says
• UNLV shooting suspect Anthony Polito applied for professor job, wasn’t hired: Sources
• Here’s what we know about UNLV gunman Anthony Polito, who killed 3 at school
• Anthony Polito, 67, who killed three staff at UNLV before being shot dead by cops had 15-page Zodiac Killer theory on website that also listed ‘powerful organizations bent on global domination’
• UNLV cancels finals after campus shooting: live
• Las Vegas campus shooter sent ‘white powder’ letters to 22 universities
• UNLV gunman had list of other targets, sent letters to professors around U.S., police say
• The UNLV shooter was an ‘eccentric’ professor who was ‘obsessed’ with Las Vegas
• UNLV gunman wrote about Zodiac killer, vanished Malaysia Airlines flight, conspiracy theories