Connor Betts, the gunman who killed nine people in Dayton over the weekend, is reported to have been in a ‘pornogrind’ band who had songs detailing extreme violence against women.
Betts fired 41 shots in less than 30 seconds outside the Ned Peppers nightclub early on Sunday morning, killing nine people including his sister Megan Betts and injuring a further 27. Police shot and killed Betts shortly after he opened fire.
Now it’s emerged that Betts had performed live vocals with Menstrual Munchies over the course of the last year, whose albums included 6 Ways Of Female Butchery, Tilt Bench For Gynecology Or Total Rape and Preteen Daughters Pu$$y Slaughter.
However, the band’s Jesse Creekbaum has told Vice that he’s decided to remove Menstrual Munchies’ albums from appearing online as he fears the recordings will make Betts a cult hero, and also reports he’s received death threats in light of the killings.
Creekbaum says that he’s been writing graphic lyrics for the band for five years mostly as a joke, but stresses that Betts took it seriously.
Creekbaum tells Vice: “I feel shitty having let him be in the band, doing those lyrics. Because I know, whereas I saw it as a joke, like, ‘Let's play this and we’ll shock some people,’ and then the people that we know laugh – he didn't see it as a joke. He was like, ‘Fuck, yeah. We're gonna do this.’”
“It's like, Jesus Christ, how much of this was like real life for him?”
He adds: “I took it all down. I'm trying to get everyone I know to take all of it down. I don't want to be associated with it. I don't want it blowing up. I don't want him romanticised. I don't want any of this romanticised. I want people to erase him from history.”
Some media outlets have been linking the attack to metal but Zach Walton, a member of Groin Mallet, says he doesn’t believe that to be the case.
He tells Vice: “It's just the music we love – it’s fun to play. It's energetic and there's nothing else like it. So we play it. And then we get people like this, who are fucking sick in the head, who get into our scene and ended up killing nine people and almost, putting a bad name on our scene. And that's not fair for the rest of us.”
Although a motive for the shootings is unclear, CNN report that Betts’ former high school classmates said he had a “hit list” of people he wanted to either kill or rape, while police searching his home found writings that “expressed an interest in killing people.”
