Killer had violent past, was confrontational

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This article was published 25/07/2015 (3968 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE twisted history of shooter John Houser includes family violence and an incident in which he put up a Nazi flag outside his bar.

A drifter with a history of mental problems, Houser stirred trouble for neighbours, law enforcement, family members and local officials as he moved between Georgia, Alabama and eventually Louisiana.

Court documents and interviews form a portrait of a man who wrote racist and anti-government rants online long before he opened fire in a Lafayette, La., movie theatre Thursday, killing two people and wounding nine others before killing himself.

‘If you put it all together, you could see this coming’

— Bobby Peters, former mayor of Columbus, Ala., and acquaintance of shooter John Houser

“He had all these dreams — to become a lawyer, to become an elected official, to own his own club,” said Bobby Peters, the former mayor of Columbus, Ala. Many of his dreams failed as the years went on. “If you put it all together, you could see this coming.”

Thursday’s attack was the third mass shooting in the South in little over a month. The Charleston, S.C., shooter, who killed nine African-American worshippers in a church, tried to start a race war, and the Chattanooga, Tenn., shooter is being investigated as a terrorist after killing five servicemen. It’s unclear what motivated Houser.

But it was clear he was a troubled man, and those who knew him remember him as confrontational, unpredictable and potentially violent.

Houser, 59, established himself as a political rabble-rouser in Columbus during the 1980s and 1990s, regularly voicing hardline opinions during city council meetings and even running unsuccessfully for office, Peters said. He was known for his combative nature, but he was not disrespectful to public officials, he said.

“We knew him as Rusty. He came from a political family. His father had been the tax commissioner,” said Peters, now a judge. “He was an intelligent young man. He would dig into issues. It was tough to change his mind.”

Even then, Houser had vehement conservative and anti-government beliefs, Peters said.

“He wanted to be seen as a watchdog over the government,” he said. “He always believed things were being done behind closed doors.”

Houser was a regular guest on a local TV talk show, and on his LinkedIn site he boasted that he, “invited political controversy on every one of them, and loved every minute of it.”

Houser got an accounting degree in 1988.

By 2000, Houser was running a bar in LaGrange called Rusty’s Buckhead Pub, and police were cracking down on him for selling alcohol to minors. When the city revoked his operating licence, he fought back hard.

“He felt his rights had been violated,” LaGrange police Chief Louis Dekmar said.

Houser placed a Nazi flag about the size of a queen-size bedsheet outside the bar and kept it there for about a month in 2001. A picture of the flag hanging outside the bar appeared on the front page of the local newspaper, he said.

“We deal with a lot of difficult people. But he was significantly difficult,” Dekmar said.

His troubles extended to his family.

In a 2008 court filing in Carroll County, his wife said she became so worried about his “volatile mental state,” that she removed “all guns and/or weapons from their marital residence.”

A protection order was granted.

Relatives said Houser became so upset over the prospect of his daughter’s marriage — he thought she was too young — that he “exhibited extreme erratic behavior and has made ominous as well as disturbing statements,” according to court documents.

The document said he had “perpetrated various acts of family violence.”

Carrollton police had investigated a report of a “mentally disturbed person” after he arrived unannounced at his daughter’s office, and later threatened another family member, the New York Times reported.

Court documents from 2008 say family members petitioned the probate court to have him involuntarily committed “because he was a danger to himself and others.”

A judge issued the order, and Houser was taken to a hospital in Columbus.

Houser was treated for an unspecified mental illness in 2008 and 2009, according to Heath D. Taylor, the sheriff of Russell County, Ala. Court records show he filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002, and the superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, Col. Michael D. Edmonson, said his finances had been poor; he recently received money from his mother, the Times reported.

Houser’s wife, Kellie Maddox Houser, filed for divorce in March. They had been separated since 2012.

— The Atlanta Journal-Constitution