Anders Breivik Norwegian mass murderer

What changed Anders Behring Breivik from a lonely mummy’s boy into a maniac mass killer with a hatred of immigrants?

His early life was undoubtedly scarred by the break-up of his parents’ marriage when he was aged just one.

Then, at the age of 15, he lost contact with his father, who was apparently unimpressed by his ‘graffiti phase’ – he was caught spraying messages on walls.

Perhaps most tellingly in his ‘manifesto’, published online as he launched his attacks on Friday, he says that as a teenager his best friend was a Pakistani immigrant who loathed Norway.

He says he hung out with Pakistani gangs but claimed to have been beaten up by them eight times, once suffering a broken nose.

At 16, he says, he broke with his friend and decided to concentrate on school. Later, he clearly felt immigration was ruining his country.

Breivik also makes extraordinary claims about alleged promiscuity by his mother Wenche, a nurse, and other members of his family, together with details of sexually transmitted diseases he claims they contracted.

Then there is the resentment he feels at being ‘feminised’ by multiculturalism, telling how he was forced in his early youth to complete mandatory knitting and sewing courses which were ‘implemented as a result of Marxist revolution.’

Such turbulent events during his formative years might seem, at first glance, to provide an insight into his tormented mind. But is that enough to explain the monster he became?
Experts say Breivik’s motivation for committing mass murder is far more complex – and disturbing – than merely a reaction to personal events in his life.

Narcissistic, paranoid and obsessive, he was in all likelihood seeking fame to cover up the pathetic existence he appears to have led during the nine years he worked on his manifesto.

Yesterday David Wilson, professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, said: ‘When he killed those kids he imagined he was involved in some kind of righteous slaughter, that he was being channelled by some greater purpose to do what he did.

‘With spree killers, which is what he is as opposed to a serial killer, their motivation is a mixture of the personal and the political. We know what the political part was in his case and by doing what he did he was trying to take out the next generation of the ruling party who might get into power.

‘But what’s the personal? Everything he did and wrote appears to be about self-aggrandisement. He needed to be in control and in charge. We know tit-bits of his background and there’s a sense of narcissism about him.’

Indeed, so vain was blond, blue-eyed Breivik that in his manifesto he even described how commanders of his Knights Templar terror group prepare themselves for after capture by deleting ‘unfortunate photos from the past’ in case the police leak the ‘retarded looking’ ones.

Also, he adds, they should visit a solarium and ‘a male salon if possible and apply light make-up’.

‘Yes, I know – this might sound repulsive to big badass warriors like us,’ he wrote, ‘but we must look our best for the shoot.’

Professor Wilson said it was unlikely, however, that Breivik has an underlying mental health problem.

‘He did not hear voices, he did not see visions telling him to rid Norwegian society of these people,’ he said.

‘He has thought about what he was going to do quite deeply and carefully.