Florida man who killed two women at yoga studio spoke of 'incel' hero Elliot Rodger in online video

Beierle, a 40-year-old resident of Deltona, Florida, died after shooting himself Friday. Police say he shot and killed 61-year-old Nancy Van Vessem and 21-year-old Maura Binkley and injured five others at the Hot Yoga Tallahassee studio.

Officer Damon Miller, a spokesman for the Tallahassee Police, said investigators are looking into Beierle’s motive and whether he knew any of the victims.

Buzzfeed first reported on Beierle’s YouTube and SoundCloud accounts which included a video titled “Plight of the Adolescent Male,” where Beierle likened his younger self to mass murderer Elliot Rodger.

Rodger is a hero to the “incel” or involuntary celibate community, a largely online and deeply misogynistic subculture made up of men who view themselves as sexual outcasts victimized by the advances of feminism.

In 2014, Rodger targeted a sorority on his college campus and killed six and injured another 14 people in Isla Vista, California. Before his rampage, Rodger posted a manifesto online blaming women for the fact that he was still a virgin. Rodgers has been referenced in several other killings, including a van-ramming attack in Toronto earlier this year that killed 10.

There were other echoes of common “incel” grievances in Beierle’s videos.

In a video titled “The Rebirth of my Misogynism,” Beierle talks about female grade school classmates and accuses them of “treachery.”

“If you haven’t seen the will a group of women can generate when they target an adult male, or really anyone,” Beierle said. “The target of their collective treachery was me.”

“That’s where it began, that was its origin until I figured out how to address it,” Beierle said.

He also talked about a “virginity burden” faced by adolescent males.

“I don’t think a female can ever understand the societal pressure that’s put on an adolescent male to unburden himself of this societal pressure that’s put on him, this virginity burden and having a girlfriend and all of these things,” Beierle said.

Beierle, in the “Adolescent male” video, talked about how he could no longer listen to pop music because the lyrics were focused on a life he couldn’t attain.

“By 15, I remember, I couldn’t even listen to pop songs, or even a lot of metal songs. I don’t want to hear how great your life is, how much action you’re getting,” said Beierle, who is seated in front of a bed in each of the videos. “That’s good for you. I can’t empathize with that at all.”

His interest in producing music that demeans women intensified before the shooting at the yoga studio.

Beierle uploaded one song to Soundcloud not long before Friday’s shooting called “F--- ’Em All.” The lyrics include the passage: “To hell with the boss that won’t get off my back / To hell with the girl I can’t get in the sack.”

In another song, “Handful of Bare Ass,” Beierle sang of grabbing women by the buttocks. “Step by step you are moving closer to s-------, Soon you’ll be doing bumping and grinding videos, I’ll pay to watch it.”

“He grabbed a handful of your bare ass, this is now part of our lore…..”

The Tallahassee Democrat reported that police arrested Beierle at least twice, in 2012 and 2016, for groping young women at Florida State University and at his apartment complex not far from campus.

While a motive has yet to be established, the Tallahassee shooting resembles another mass murder incident where a killer targeted women at a Pennsylvania fitness center. In 2009, George Sodini killed three and wounded nine others at a women’s dance class before killing himself. Sodini left a website where he outlined his plot and chronicled years of sexual and romantic failure.

AP Photo/Steve Cannon