It seems clear from his Facebook page that Nathaniel Scheiern, who killed and tried to behead his grandparents, was a convert to Islam, not just a rage-filled loser with a taste for Islamic State beheading videos.

Entries on his Facebook page include semi-literate but unmistakable declarations of Islamic faith (the brackets are not interpolations by me or anyone else; they’re in the originals):

“Ponder no [ more ] and bombs to cease [ unwise strikes of Believers ] on ( Allah’s children, women, and the Elderly and the young ) who fight but by Example in except concepts to for (God and God alone) guidence and spiritual growth. One love n respect”

“None in mans wisdom can allow a [leader] to fall into the ways of those [ Secure ] in faith and full of patients lacking [ Allah ] and thus far from [ patience ] of (God) so the answer is up to free-will. And FREE I WILL (God willing) [His] Peoples Mind.”

“Rivers of punishment flow to [ advise ] for only God demands Praise.”

“Want Allah in All. !”

“Praise be to Allah who [ will ] in searing pain smite my enimies with haste … its not a race if quickness .but of [ Waste ] no more time in [ Staying ] pious and [ true ] in patiently waving.”

So why did the Los Angeles Times/Glendale News-Press in its new story on this case, and Westword below, leave out this information and give the impression that Scheiern was just a creep who enjoyed the occasional Islamic State video and unaccountably ended up killing and trying to behead his grandparents?

We shouldn’t have to read the tea leaves in mainstream media accounts to find out what is going on. But we do.

An update on this story. “Nathaniel Scheiern Posted Beheading Video Before Grandparents’ Slaying,” by Michael Roberts, Westword, July 10, 2015: