Allen, Texas, Killer Posted Neo-Nazi, Incel Content Online
Mauricio Garcia, the man who shot and killed eight people and injured seven others in a shooting spree at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, posted neo-Nazi and incel content to a Russian website and to YouTube.
Garcia, 33, whom police shot and killed at the scene of the massacre he perpetrated, posted to the Russian site Odnoklassniki, or ok.ru, handwritten material indicating that he read The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website. He also made repeated references encouraging violence against women, celebrating rape and murder, and using the vocabulary of the male supremacist incel, or involuntarily celibate, community.
Garcia鈥檚 social media history suggests he has a long history with fringe radical-right internet communities, due to the frequency with which he referred to their esoteric symbols and memes. He posted to Odnoklassniki photos of hand-drawn symbols associated with the radical right, including 鈥淒eus Vult鈥� crosses, SS lightning bolts, swastikas and references to 鈥渞ight wing death squads,鈥� a meme that celebrates extrajudicial killing on behalf of a fascist state. He also drew and posted photos of helicopters, which reference the killing of dissidents under the 20th-century regime of authoritarian Chilean President Augusto Pinochet. Garcia also shared photos that appear to be selfies on Odnoklassniki showing that he tattooed the logo of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, a Nazi-era paramilitary organization, and a swastika on his body sometime between 2022 and 2023.
Garcia also posted lengthy misogynist tirades to his Odnoklassniki account, often using derogatory terms for women, including 鈥渟andwich maker鈥� and 鈥渂aby factory,鈥� along with more typical slurs. He reposted content from a forum popular among incels using the words 鈥渇oid鈥� and 鈥淪tacy,鈥� terms incels use to dehumanize and stereotype women. One post that appears to be written by Garcia was titled 鈥淣ymphet,鈥� a term coined by Vladimir Nabokov in his novel Lolita and favored by his pedophile protagonist to sexualize young girls.
Garcia鈥檚 鈥淣ymphet鈥� post begins, 鈥淚 hate women. Their [sic] I鈥檝e said it.鈥�
In another post, a photo of a handwritten document with the Batman insignia drawn at the top, Garcia detailed the racist intersections of his misogyny, expressing particular animus toward Indian women. One of the victims of his massacre at the Texas mall was a young engineer from India.
Garcia may have also recently joined one of the most predominant incel forums. Someone with a username psycovision registered an account on that forum on April 28, but never posted. On April 15 and April 25 鈥淧sycoVision 5鈥� copied multiple posts from the forum onto his Odnoklassniki profile. On Monday, members of the site appeared to confirm that 鈥淧sycoVision 5鈥� was a member and copied the posts.
The U.S. Army removed Garcia due to , according to law enforcement officials. Some of his posts on the Russian site celebrate violence, detached from any apparent connection to ideology. He posted his drawings of what looks like chalk outlines of corpses, toe tags on dead bodies, and streams of blood. The material that Hatewatch reviewed also indicates that Garcia visited Allen Outlet Mall prior to the attack and uploaded screenshots from Google Maps to Odnoklassniki indicating that the location experiences high traffic at the time of day when he killed his victims. He also used his account to share images of firearms and documents showing the purchase of firearms from multiple gun sales websites.
Garcia鈥檚 social media history also suggests he consumed more mainstream right-wing content that overlaps with fringe hate movements. He shared screenshots from multiple episodes of Timcast IRL, a far-right YouTube talk show hosted by Tim Pool, who has a history of platforming extremists as guests. Garcia made a positive reference to Libs of TikTok, the pseudonym of Chaya Raichik, who posts anti-人兽性交+ commentary on mainstream platforms including Substack and Twitter. He also lauded the activities and beliefs of the white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, and highlighted more than one of his appearances on easily accessible online talk shows.
Garcia also referenced the white nationalist non-profit VDARE聽in his social media history. Even before police released Garcia鈥檚 name to the public, VDARE stressed to their audience that the killer appeared to be Latino, playing up anti-immigrant tropes that would be familiar to their audience.
Radical-right terrorists and others who have committed acts of violence have frequented Anglin鈥檚 site The Daily Stormer in the past. Dylann Roof, the man who murdered nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, frequented its comment section. New Mexico school shooter also frequented the site. Payton Gendron, who murdered 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, last May, also cited Anglin鈥檚 website as one of the publications that influenced his worldview.
Pool has hosted a variety of radical-right figures on Timcast IRL, including Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys, whom a jury recently convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in shaping the pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. Pool has also hosted extremists including Jack Posobiec, Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes. Google, the parent company of YouTube, and Pool have profited from that site鈥檚 鈥渟uper chat鈥� function, which enables people to highlight their commentary on videos in exchange for money. Timcast IRL viewers used that function to celebrate violence聽in the run-up to and aftermath of the attack on the Capitol.
Hatewatch reached out to Andrew Anglin, the editor of The Daily Stormer, for a comment on this story. Hatewatch also reached out to Tim Pool and Google, the parent company of YouTube, which hosts and allows for the monetization of his show, Timcast IRL. Hatewatch reached out to Raichik, Fuentes and VDARE. No one immediately responded to the requests for comment. Hatewatch will update this story with their responses if they offer them.
Hatewatch also reached out to a representative with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Allen Police Department for comment regarding Garcia鈥檚 social media accounts and his involvement in the white power movement but did not hear back.
How Hatewatch verified Garcia鈥檚 social media presence
Hatewatch found the shooter鈥檚 profile and hundreds of text and image posts on the Russian social media website Odnoklassniki, which is headquartered in Moscow. Albert Popkov, a Russian businessman, founded the website in 2006, and since then its primary user base includes residents of Russia and various former Soviet republics. Similarweb, a service for website popularity monitoring, ranks the site as the eighth most visited website in Russia, and the second most popular social media app after VKontakte. Both VKontakte and Odnoklassniki are owned by the same company.
Odnoklassniki isn鈥檛 popular in the U.S., even among extremists.
Garcia, who posted there beginning on April 2, 2020, under the username 鈥淧sycoVision 5,鈥� listed his date of birth on the website as Oct. 24, 1989. The date on 鈥淧sycoVision 5鈥檚鈥� page matches Garcia鈥檚 date of birth, according to information that Hatewatch reviewed from various people-finding services. 鈥淧sycoVision 5鈥� also posted a hand-drawn photo on April 17 of what appears to be feet with a toe tag commonly used to identify corpses. The tag includes various personal data, including Garcia鈥檚 full name and age. Whoever drew the picture added a date of June 10, 2020, to it in the upper right-hand corner. Garcia would have been 31 years old on June 10, 2020, which matches the age listed on the drawing.
鈥淧sycoVision 5鈥� also uploaded multiple photos throughout 2022 and 2023 that match the description of the shooter.
On March 12, 2022, 鈥淧sycoVision 5鈥� shared a photo of a hand tattoo that resembles the logo of the city of Dallas. A photo of Garcia鈥檚 dead body that users circulated on social media after police shot him on May 6 shows he had a similar tattoo on his hand.
Then, on April 21, in the run-up to the attack, 鈥淧sycoVision 5鈥� shared a photo of a tactical vest with three badges. Two of the badges feature the Punisher comic book character's skull logo, which is popular with antigovernment paramilitary groups and some members of law enforcement. The third reads 鈥淩WDS,鈥� which is short for 鈥淩ight Wing Death Squad.鈥� The presence of the 鈥淩WDS鈥� patch matches a description given by law enforcement of Garcia鈥檚 vest that he was wearing during the shooting. The 鈥淧sycovision 5鈥� user also shared multiple photos and screenshots from what appears to be Allen Premium Outlets on April 16, less than a month before the attack at that location.
On May 6, a YouTube account using the display name 鈥淒usty Shackleford鈥� posted a video with the title 鈥淧sycoVision face reveal M Garcia.鈥� The description of this video also contained a link to the 鈥淧sycoVision 5鈥� profile on the Odnoklassniki site. The video shows a person who looks similar to Garcia. 鈥淧sycovision 5鈥� explained the choice of names in a Jan. 11 post on the Odnoklassniki site, 鈥淚 had to go with Dusty since these loser鈥檚 [sic] didn't take Rusty.鈥� Rusty Shackleford is a fictional character from the television show 鈥淜ing of the Hill.鈥�
YouTube has since removed the 鈥淒usty Shackleford鈥� account from YouTube for violating the platform鈥檚 terms of service.
鈥淒usty Shackleford鈥� favorited over 370 videos on YouTube, including a variety of clips referencing mass shootings, as well as content from various prominent far-right figures. Among the videos that 鈥淪hackleford鈥� liked was footage from a torch-lit march prior to the deadly 2017 鈥淯nite the Right鈥� rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; a song from a channel called 鈥淚ncelMusic鈥�; and a series of clips about Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 26 children and staff members dead.
Garcia also shared some of the videos that he liked on YouTube on Odnoklassniki under his 鈥淧sycoVision 5鈥� pseudonym. On April 16, the same day that 鈥淧sycoVision 5鈥� uploaded photos from Allen Premium Outlets, he shared a screenshot of a now-deleted interview that Fuentes conducted with the YouTuber JustPearlyThings on March 1. The video that Garcia shared came from another YouTube user, 鈥淢usic and Extra,鈥� who re-uploaded Fuentes鈥� interview with JustPearlyThings on March 26.
Rachael Fugardi contributed to this report.
Lead photo by Joe Raedle via Getty Images
