Shooter who killed 4 had ADHD, parents say

DENVER — A young man who killed four people at a church and a missionary training center had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and harbored bitterness for being an outcast, his parents said in their first extended comments.

Matthew Murray, however, gave no indication he was about to explode in violence, they said in an interview to be broadcast today and Friday on James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" radio program.

Although Ronald and Loretta Murray have issued statements to the media, the devoutly Christian couple gave Dobson their first public impressions of what led their 24-year-old son to go on his rampage in December.

"Focus on the Family" provided an advance copy of the broadcast to The Associated Press. On the program, the Murrays met David and Marie Works, the parents of two sisters who their son had killed. The Workses forgave the Murrays.

Murray killed two people at a Youth With a Mission training center in suburban Denver, slept in his own bed at his parents' house that night, then drove 60 miles to Colorado Springs, where he killed the two sisters.

An autopsy concluded that he shot and killed himself.

In a portion of the interview cut from the radio show because of time constraints, Loretta Murray said her son called a cousin in Utah shortly before the training center shooting, "pouring out his heart" about how depressed and lonely he was.

According to interviews and Murray's own Internet postings, Matthew Murray was a disturbed young man in search of belonging. He dabbled in the occult, briefly joined the LDS Church and turned against charismatic Christianity.

The Murrays said their son had problems communicating and writing because of his ADHD, was brilliant at computers, and felt rejected and marginalized, unable to forgive his perceived tormentors.

"The lesson is that unforgiveness leads to this bitterness and then opens you up to the spirit of Satan, to the spirit of whatever, and when that occurs, it becomes a power that people cannot control," said Ronald Murray, a neurologist.

Murray said that his son "had never expressed a desire for violence toward anybody," and that neither he nor Matthew's mother knew he owned weapons.

"He was told he was loved every day," Ronald Murray said.

In a statement to the AP, a Murray family spokeswoman Casey Nikoloric said Matthew was diagnosed with ADHD between ages 4 and 5 and began taking Ritalin at 5.