What are the odds of this being another William Freund?

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DancesWith Demons

Thanks, I send My Coldolances for the loss of Your Brother Tom too.

I myself did try to help Will Freund in the best way I could and I think many hear also tried to help him too. You are right on the internet is a two edged sword. But as I said many did try to help him. You right it starts with listening, many may have become Billybadasses but many did try to reach out to him in the end. You are right we need to take action so if possible this does not happen again. You are right again the finger-pointing needs to end too. Just remember this we all are humans and we all make mistakes, in how we deal with Life and even how we show that we care for others, as well there is nothing perfect we can do but just Try. We can give Our support the best way We can though. And again You are right We need to listen so We can give that help too. We can only use Our Life Experiences to Help Others and Only Hope that its Helps Them that needs the Help.

This is a far cry from saying "Will's life wasn't worth anything", and I'm sure that you didn't mean it to be interpreted literally. However, you should be a little more careful in your choice of words. US Aspies have a tendency to see only the literal meaning unless we clearly know the greater context.

It's been a difficult week for some of us.
The fact that Will was suffering from extreme depression and had AS made him feel intensely close to some of us. I certainly needed time to grieve this week. I think others did too. It was a good demonstration that people with Asperger's have theory of mind, and can demonstrate empathy despite what the textbooks say. I would like to think that many of us have grown a lot from the experience. The growth and compassion I have felt makes me upset when I hear flippent answers from our members.

I am sorry about your brother Tom. Losing people we love can create intense suffering that is not easy to resolve.

If they say that Asperger's people "lack empathy" or that schizophrenics (I have been "diagnosed" shizophrenic) "lack empathy", some screw is loose somewhere. I have great empathy. I am so overendowed with empathy that I have to carry it in a wheelbarrow. We lack empathy with what? With people who delight in torturing small helpless animals? What a terrible neural defect! That's what's "wrong" with me? If so, what on Earth do they characterize as empathy? Is it the ability to enjoy joining in games of degradation and violence against other living creatures?

A painful story about William Freund in today's LA Times. (See also Dana Parson's column):



The Cyber World Shut Out O.C. Loner Too
Aliso Viejo teen who couldn't make friends turned to the Internet only to be rebuffed. He killed two neighbors, then took his own life.

By Kimi Yoshino, Times Staff Writer


This is the story of a young man who couldn't make friends.

He was mocked and bullied. He had trouble looking people in the eyes. He struggled to carry on a conversation and thought his parents and his doctor misunderstood him.



He was filled with hurt, and maybe anger too.

For companionship, he turned to the Internet, an anonymous world where he hoped his awkwardness wouldn't show. He searched friendfinder.com and other sites for someone to talk to. But even there, he was belittled and rejected.



Last weekend — his brain awash with depression and despair — he took a shotgun, went to a house in his Orange County neighborhood and killed a man and his daughter. Then he went home and killed himself.

Some who had crossed paths with 19-year-old William Freund wondered what they could have done differently. Former classmate Tiffany Key spoke up on the Internet:

"Think about your interactions with him. Were they positive? Or were you one of those kids that made his life hell? If you did, then please change your life. This is your wake-up call."


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For as long as Key can remember — at least back in middle school — Freund was a social outcast.

When he walked through the halls, people harassed him. Sometimes, mockingly, students would put an arm around him and loudly announce things like, "Hey, everybody, this is William. He's my friend," said Key, who graduated from Aliso Niguel High School with Freund in 2004 and now attends UC Irvine.

If he sneezed or blew his nose in class, people laughed.

He wore a big, bulky jacket and people laughed.

When he walked down the hall, he ignored the students punching and kicking his backpack. Some, Key said, ruthlessly used Freund as the butt of jokes.

"He wouldn't get aggressive. He would never retaliate," she said. "He would just take it, day after day."

Key said she and her friends tried to reach out to Freund, inviting him to participate in group projects. But because so many people were insincere with Freund, "when somebody would try to be genuine, he was so very defensive," she said.

Tolerating such bullying is a common characteristic of someone with Asperger's syndrome, a neurological disorder that authorities said was diagnosed in Freund when he was 16. The disorder, a variant of autism, makes it difficult for people to interact socially. For some, the sickness can be emotionally crippling.

"People with Asperger's syndrome want friends desperately," said Stephen M. Edelson, director of the Oregon-based Center for the Study of Autism. "But they just don't have the social behavior skills."

In Freund's case, it was "almost as if he was afraid to open up," said Tio Lavranos, 19, another former classmate. "Every time I tried to talk to him, he really wouldn't respond too much," he said.

After graduation, Freund worked part time at a computer repair shop in Corona del Mar. He also helped his father at the family-owned print shop.

"He seemed to be out there doing stuff, but he didn't have much of a personal life with friends," said Forrest Fuster, his former employer. "He did a lot of work and no play. All he did personally was play on the computer."

His social skills were so stunted that he sometimes seemed rude. Once when he finished repairing a computer, he didn't say a word but simply attached a note to the keyboard saying, "You're welcome." When he answered the business phone, he greeted callers with a curt, "What do you want?"

Like Lavranos and Key, Fuster tried to befriend him. He invited him to watch movies, play video games or paintball. Freund turned him down, every time. "I reached out," Fuster said, "but he didn't receive anybody."


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Instead, Freund passed countless hours alone in his computer-filled bedroom. One high-speed computer he proudly pieced together with parts his parents gave him for graduation.

In a cyber world where anyone can assume any identity, he took on various characters, role-playing in Doom 3 and other online games, Fuster said.

He also pleaded for help. And for a friend.

He looked on websites such as friendfinder.com and agelesslove.com, crafting pitiable pleas for camaraderie.

"I've never really had a friend," Freund wrote in one of his online profiles. "I've never had someone I can share more intimate conversation with, or just have a good time with. I want to experience doing things together with a 'buddy,' even having fun which I never had."

He never had a girlfriend. "I do not have a place of my own but do not consider it a problem as Nobody has ever been over in all my life."

For a while, it seemed his online posts were harmless enough.

He chatted in February about the movie "Napoleon Dynamite" and television shows, mostly reruns of "The Twilight Zone," "The Outer Limits," and other sci-fi programs.

He posted reviews of online businesses. He bought and sold video games and paintball supplies on EBay. He asked questions about guns, such as where in California he could shoot buckshot at a range.

It should have been easier for Freund to fit in on the Internet.

"You don't need as much social skills when you type messages," Edelson said.

But even there — in the last place Freund sought advice and friendship — the security of his online world unraveled in his final two weeks.

He rambled about wanting to commit suicide and the ways he had tried: asphyxia, lethal and inert gases, and hanging. He needed, he said, to "get away from the stress of the world for a bit."

And he hinted at his imminent death, suggesting that he might not make it to Halloween. He wanted to give away his pug on craigslist.org. On Oct. 19, he posted on the Asperger's syndrome website wrongplanet.net: "I think the only thing to do is go admit myself to a hospital…. I feel like I need to kill myself."

In those last two weeks, his messages became frantic; some were almost incomprehensible, filled with typos and run-ons. He sounded crazy — so much so that some people thought he was playing an Internet joke.

In one posting, Freund said his plans were to "Start a Terror Campaign To hurt those that have hurt me, My future ended some time ago."

During a discourse on a firearms forum on somethingawful.com, described by the founder as a Mad magazine for the Internet, he detailed plans to get even with pranksters he said had terrorized his neighborhood and shot up his pumpkin last Halloween. He boasted that he spent about $5,000 preparing for "this Halloween shootout."

The responses were harsh and occasionally cruel. One reply on Oct. 26 asked: "Wait wait, people are shooting pumpkins with BB guns, and you're going to respond with 'a bunch off 9mm rounds heading your way!'? Are you … ret*d?"

Another said: "I can imagine this mongoloid, sitting on his creaky porch, one strap on his overalls, leaping up and running to the defense of his precious 24-ounce pumpkin."

Some told him he was no longer welcome. They asked him to leave and never come back.

"I think the craziest part is it was actually real," said Rich Kyanka, 29, the webmaster of somethingawful.com.

"Obviously if you could go back in time and know this guy is serious and was mentally disturbed, you could do something about it."

But if anybody tried, it came too late for Freund and Vernon Smith, 45, and his daughter Christina Smith, 22, the two neighbors he gunned down.

On Oct. 26, three days before his shooting rampage, Freund's obnoxious comments got him banned from Kyanka's website. The world that Freund had escaped to began slamming the door.



Even online, he was a social failure.

He died knowing it and feared no one would grieve for him. "No friends," Freund wrote, "all enemies."

Former classmate Lavranos wouldn't describe himself as Freund's friend either. He wishes now that he could.

"We're all human beings trying to find our happiness," Lavranos said.

"Here's a guy … who had it really hard and nobody made it any easier for him."





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That last report was probably the most upsetting of the lot.

My problems with certain people on this site look small in comparison to what this guy had to put up with on a daily basis.

I'm weeping over Scribe's post. That is the saddest thing I've ever read.

No Rain by Blind Melon

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain

I like watchin' the puddles gather rain

And all I can do is just pour some tea for two

and speak my point of view

But it's not sane, It's not sane

I just want some one to say to me

I'll always be there when you wake

Ya know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today

So stay with me and I'll have it made

And I don't understand why I sleep all day

And I start to complain that there's no rain

And all I can do is read a book to stay awake

And it rips my life away, but it's a great escape

escape......escape......escape......

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain

ya don't like my point of view

ya think I'm insane

Its not sane......it's not sane

This is so, so sad. I wish, so much, Will had connected with some of the people here who tried to help him.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... highlight=
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... genumber=1
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... id=1715305

Wow that place is just down right scary. Interesting difference in their reaction to the news and the reaction of WP. Got to say reading their forums made me a little sick to my stomach.

This is getting Me more and more depressed everyday. That is all I can say.

Tolerating bullying is a symptom of Asperger's? No, tolerating bullying and related inappropriate behavior is a symptom of being threatened and punished by other students, teachers, and parents for ever fighting back. It is a symptom of conditioned helplessness. The frustration comes from being forced to be "other", so that the bullies have carte blanch and and you have no account or credit. Just how on Earth is someone supposed to "not tolerate" bullying in such a setup? We know what some people have done. Is that the only way?

I suppose that it's just another symptom of some kind of mental deficiency when the chosen victim won't lie about having hit back. He gets into situations where the bully doesn't admit having done anything, so he's the bully because he's the only one who admits hitting anyone.

It is just amazing to watch the fraud that was perpetrated against me become part of the popular medical terminology, not that I have ever been all that optimistic that things would be much better than this. It's pathetic to watch what passes for common wisdom these days.

Did someone actually shoot Freund's father the previous Halloween? That's what his last post on SomethingAwful says. If this is true and can be verified it may be significant. I'm not sure about people who are on the margins of society, but most "normals" take great exception to things like that.

I cant believe they called him drunk and ret*d on that pro-amo site, since I get that a lot.

Hey, he even mentioned mythbusters, does that mean that they should be held responsible…?

I think that the meds he took and the pro-ammo and the pro-suicide sites should be held responsible, and the schools and society (the OC) for not giving a damn about him.

WP made me accept myself and the fact that I am autistic and proud of it. I started researching it a year ago, after reading about Josh Heartnett doing the whens-it-coming-out Mozart and the whale movie. In only a few months I went from deep denial, thinking “they mis-diagnosed me”, to becoming totally confident and out-of-my-shell happy about my autistic self and I felt so proud to be a part of such great AS and WP people. It really saved me, and I have found no other site that is this great. These days, I am trying harder, I am refusing to think of myself in terms of “sick”, because we are not.
Researching the net (Norwegian)I just realised that aspies as a group does not exist, because in society they (the parents etc) can just put us into any desired group/label, such as; mentally ill, physically disabled, mentally disabled. But there is a fouth group I guess, if we should even be in the health care category.

I even joined a youth mental health organisation, just to try and do something. Its not really for aspies but its better than nothing… if I could or knew how I would start my own organisation.


maybe we could try and focus on that in the media? how much this place have actually helped thousands of people, help that no other place could give...

by the way:
Did anyone see a BBC documentary about the subject of online intervention when ur a member of a chatroom and another member says they wanna kill themselves? In this docu, there was this English (suicidal) girl who saved this suicidal guy. And also one guy who OD’d online. And they asked questions if the people watching his webcam should be responsible and stuff..

The guy who overdosed online was a sad case, the people who saw him on webcam were trying to contact his home but his parents were in the next room and didn't realize what was going on. People still make fun of what happened to him to this day.

Wait, you seriously think SA deserves blame for this?

That was a good laugh with the exception of a couple comments about ASDs.

I hope I'm not being rude by repeating myself, but does anyone know if William Freund's father was shot and badly injured the previous Halloween? That is what he said in his last message on SomethingAwful.