Mass Murderer Aaron Alexis Visited Thailand for Sex Tourism; His Feigned Interests in the Thai Language and Buddhism were Merely Tricks for Trying to Pick Up Thai Women, but They Didn't Work

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

Thanks to reader-researcher RC for the sendalong.
 

Navy Yard shooter was dumped by Thai crush
By Erin Calabrese, Jamie Schram and Kate Sheehy
September 17, 2013 | 2:30 p.m.
New York Post

Washington Navy Yard madman Aaron Alexis wasn’t particularly religious — using Buddhist temples and trips to Thailand to troll for women, pals told The Post Tuesday.

The Queens-born killer claimed he wanted to become a monk and that he went to the Southeast Asian country simply because he hoped to learn about its culture and language.

But “he was not interested in religion’’ when he attended a temple in Keller, Texas, said a monk there, Pra Samor Nathathammo. “He was there to learn Thai’’ to impress a woman in Thailand.

His friend and former landlord, Som Sak Srisan, 57, said, “He tried looking for a Thai lady. He tried to catch a lady at temple.”

Nutpisit Suthamtewakul, the owner of a Texas Thai restaurant where the killer used to work, said that when Alexis went to Thailand for 21 days in 2012, “he went to massage parlors’’ and chased after Suthamtewakul’s pretty cousin.

But the woman rejected him, saying she had a boyfriend and “doesn’t like black guys,’’ according to Suthamtewakul.

Her attitude infuriated Alexis — and pals said it was just one of many factors behind his escalating anger and increasingly dangerous mental problems. [Bull.]

A ticking time bomb, Alexis finally exploded in a rampage at the Washington Navy Yard Monday morning, when he fatally gunned down 12 before cops killed him.

The former Navy reservist had been trying to get back into the military — “I hate ever getting out,’’ he recently told a pal — but said he was being blocked over problems with military officials and his bosses, sources said.

He began hearing voices while suffering from sleep deprivation, anger and paranoia, sources said.

Things came to a head when Alexis, who worked in computers for a government subcontractor, called cops to his hotel room during a business trip to Newport, RI, last month.

Alexis told the officers that he had fought with someone at an airport in Virginia and that they “had sent three people to follow him and keep him awake by talking to him and sending vibrations to his body,’’ according to the police report.

He wound up moving to three different hotels that night, telling cops there were voices “coming through the walls, floors and ceiling’’ and that someone was using a “microwave machine’’ to send the vibrations.

He told cops “he [had] never had any sort of mental episode,’’ the report said.

A Newport cop said officers alerted the local naval-station police about the incident. It wasn’t clear if any action was taken. [Oh, it's clear, alright. None was, or 12 people would still be alive.]

Alexis — who was born in Kew Garden Hills and has family in Bedford-Stuyvesant — worked for The Experts, a subcontractor of Hewlett-Packard.

His IT job with the subcontractor landed him an access card issued to civilians, which he used to gain entry to the Navy Yard the morning of the massacre.

On Monday, Alexis swiped his ID and walked right past security with a disassembled shotgun. He did not go through a metal detector.

Without saying a word, he opened fire on workers using the rifle — which he assembled in a Building 197 bathroom — and two handguns he picked up once he was inside.

Alexis legally bought the Remington 870 shotgun Sunday in Virginia. He recently rented an AR-15 assault rifle, but had returned it before the shooting.

Alexis had just been assigned to the Navy Yard for The Experts, arriving in DC in late August and staying at various hotels.

Some friends said he held resentment over a recent contracting job in Japan, believing he was cheated on his expenses.

He also felt he was the victim of racial discrimination, particularly by his military commanders.

Alexis dealt with some of his anger by playing violent video games while battling insomnia.
A friend in Fort Worth, Texas, Melinda Downs, 44, told The Post he toted a .45-caliber handgun everywhere he went. “He said he felt naked without it,” she said.

Alexis claimed to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder because of his work at Ground Zero after 9/11.

His stepfather told the Daily Mail that Alexis was exiting the subway when the first tower fell and he helped pull victims from the rubble.

“He said he helped out. He was a strong young man so he would have done what he could,” Frank Calderon said.

Additional reporting by Kevin Fasick