LAFAYETTE — (CNN) John Russell Houser — the gunman in Thursday’s movie theater shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana — arrived in town this month an apparent drifter, estranged from his family, with history of domestic violence, mental issues and “extreme erratic behavior,” according to police and court documents.
In 2008, relatives in Georgia accused him of family violence and sought a restraining order against him that mentioned a history of mental disorders, including manic depression and or bipolar disorder, according to court documents.
The documents say that at the time Houser’s wife was so concerned about his mental state she had removed all guns and weapons from their home.
And then there was last year when he was evicted from his Phenix City, Alabama, home after causing some sort of damage there, according to the Russell County, Alabama, sheriff.
At some point, he also was apparently arrested on an arson charge, police say, although that complaint may have been dropped.
It all seems so distant from the Rusty Houser of earlier years, the one who seems to be portrayed in a profile on the professional networking site LinkedIn, the one who graduated from law school and who, according to the LinkedIn profile, owned restaurants and invested in real estate and hung out his shingle as a financial adviser.
He listed his skills as financial analysis, market forecast, public speaking and “God’s business.”
“It would be my pleasure,” the owner of that LinkedIn profile wrote, “to assist you in financial matters or things more important.”
What happened between those days and Thursday night, when police and witnesses say Houser, 59, stood up during a showing of the comedy “Trainwreck” and started pelting the crowd with bullets from his .40-caliber handgun?
Police don’t yet know, but they said it’s their fervent hope to find out.
“Just like the victims,” Lafayette police Chief Jim Craft said, “we’re searching for answers, too.”
Houser graduated from Faulkner University law school in 1998, the university confirmed Friday. According to the LinkedIn profile of a man with the same name and hometown and educational details of the shooting suspect, he’d previously graduated from Columbus State University in 1988 with a degree in accounting.
At age 23, according to the profile, Houser owned a bar in Columbus, Georgia, called the Peachtree Pub, before selling it in 1980.
The LinkedIn resume then goes blank for 18 years, when he again lists himself as a bar owner, this time of the Buckhead Pub in LaGrange, Georgia.
“In a small town one in the entertainment business had better be in with all crowds,” his profile reads. “We successfully provided entertainment for all while maintaining an atmosphere worth a regular visit.”
Another six-year gap is followed a brief dalliance in real estate investment in 2006.
By 2008, it was clear that things were not going well for Houser.
That’s when his wife, daughter, her fiancee and his parents sought a protective order, saying they were worried about his “extreme erratic behavior” and “ominous as well as disturbing statements” that his daughter’s impending marriage would not happen.
A day after one particularly jarring incident in April of that year — he’d shown up at his daughter’s work and then gone to the home of his wife’s aunt and made threats there — they obtained an order involuntarily committing him “because he was a danger to himself and others,” according to the court filing.
According to the filing, Houser said he’d continue his “erratic as well as threatening behavior” once he got out of the hospital in an effort to stop his daughter’s marriage.
Houser popped up a few times in the years since. He appears to have posted hundreds of messages on political forums espousing anti-government and anti-media views as recently as 2013.
That’s a year before he was evicted from his Phenix City home, according to Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor
“He damaged some of the property there, and I know he had done something to the gas line and the fireplace, but I do not know the details,” Heath said.
He had a few interactions with police in Russell County, including an arson complaint that may have been dismissed, Taylor said, and a request for a permit to carry a concealed weapon that was denied because of that arrest. But none of the issues foreshadowed Thursday’s violent outburst.
“He has been a complainant on a few things and had a few traffic tickets, and that’s all I have about him,” Taylor said.
He arrived in Lafayette in early July, taking up residence at a Motel 6, said Craft, the Lafayette police chief.
Why he chose the city or what he was doing there remains a mystery.
The only known link he had to Lafayette was an uncle who once lived there, but he died 35 years ago, police said.
There’s some indication Houser was trying to turn things around, Louisiana State Police Col. Michael Edmonson told reporters.
“His mom had loaned him some money. He was going to get his life together,” Edmonson said.
Then came Thursday night.
Police said Houser had swapped the license tag on his blue 1995 Lincoln Continental and parked it near the theater exit to the Grand Theatre 16, ready for a quick escape.
He might have been drinking, Craft said, but there’s no evidence of drug use.
He bought a ticket to the show just like everyone else, filed in and sat down.
After the movie began, he stood up and began firing, police say.
He apparently tried to make his way out of the theater along with the people he’d just been shooting at, then saw police swarming in, Craft said.
Houser then reloaded his .40-caliber handgun, returned to the theater and shot himself in the head as police pushed toward him.
Mindful of possible booby traps such as those set by Aurora, Colorado, theater shooter James Holmes three years ago, police blew out the windows of Houser’s car and used a robot to blow open the trunk. While initially suspicious of some of the things they found inside, they found no explosives, authorities said.
Searching his hotel room, they found wigs and glasses — “disguises, basically” — leaving police yet one more thing to figure out.
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