Talovic only listened to one CD, she said. She did not know its name, but the band was Korn, whose music is somewhere between a heavy metal and an industrial sound. He had bought the CD a long time ago "and that's all he listened to."

Some of Korn's lyrics are nihilistic. According to the "Lyrics on Demand" Web site, among its albums are songs with lines about being eaten up inside and wanting to die, voices in one's head, enjoying playing with lots of pain, rottenness, and the loss of something inside.

Talovic's favorite movie was the 1992 film "Malcolm X" about the late black nationalist leader who was the spokesman for the Nation of Islam movement involving black Americans.

Talovic's favorite color was turquoise. "He said (it was a) calming and soothing color."

He was pretty happy with his family and never discussed fights or troubles with his neighbors or at work. However, others have told the Deseret Morning News about conflicts in one Salt Lake neighborhood where the family lived.

He never discussed playing video games or talked about weapons, Monika said. He did not tell her why he had dropped out of school.

"He said like there was drugs and violence going on, he didn't want to be part of that in his first school. I don't know what happened in the second school after he moved, I don't know what happened there."

She advised him, "if he can't get a high school (diploma) he should go get his GED, and that's what he was planning on doing." A General Equivalency Diploma could open the way to a career, they both felt.

"He was talking about going into business," she said. "He wanted to become a business manager."

The young man did not talk about mental problems or hallucinations. He told her he never took drugs. He never acted crazy or seemed upset. "He never told me about hurting nothing. I mean, he was nice to everybody."

Sometimes he would smoke cigarettes, "but not all the time," she said. "And I asked him, 'Are your parents OK with it (smoking)?' He said, 'Yeah."'

Their conversations ended on Feb. 11. On Feb. 13, after not hearing from Talovic for two days, Monika tried to call him.

"I called his cell phone and an FBI agent answered it," she said. The agent asked for her name and identified himself as with the FBI in Salt Lake City.

She complied, so he told her Talovic had been in a shooting and had died.

"I asked who was the shooter and he goes, 'He was.' ... I guess he tried to talk to me. I was on the floor after that ... I was in so many tears.

"One point, my mom actually put me in a car, took me to the hospital."

Her heart was broken, she said. "It's pretty sad."

Monika may have been the closest person to Talovic in the days immediately before his murderous attack. Asked about the possible cause of the shootings, she said:

"There's countless number of people right now suffering the same stuff with the past war." Her father had six brothers, for example, "and only two survived the war, and they weren't even like soldiers in the war."

Because of the war, she said, one relative "went totally crazy. He's been in a mental institute."

Talovic's rampage in Salt Lake City, she believes, had some connection to the bloodshed in Bosnia.

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com