I was reading the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's excellent coverage of the multiple murder we've all been talking about today, and the second-to-last paragraph of an article about the killer, Richard Poplawski, caught my eye:
Mr. Poplawski collaborated with Mr. Perkovic on an Internet show that featured clips --- sometimes from local news broadcasts, other times video from around the town --- where they discussed politics.
No mention of what this show was called or where the site is--and maybe Perkovic or someone else has already taken down the clips. This is a mass call to all insomniac Kossacks: Can we find clips of this show, and find just what sort of madman we're dealing with?
UPDATE: I have found some clips promoting the show, but I've got to run. Here's a link to one clip, featuring either Ed Perkovic or Richard Poplawski discussing why "I would rape a male," and going to China to "get retribution" against an asian. Thanks again to jaywillie for finding me the name so I could find this.
Possible hints of a lead:
Thanks to an idea from the comments, I've been using a site called "namechk" to look for possible hints of Poplawski/Perkovic on the social networking sites. I haven't found anything of Poplawski, but I have found a potential lead on Perkovic--albeit a not-very-substantial one:
StumbleUpon site for an "eddie perkovic," who calls himself a "22 year old guy from Pennsylvania, USA." Only 4 sites listed, none of much interest.
Somewhat juicier leads, courtesy of Bush Bites:
*MySpace page for an antisemitic Eddie Perkovic from "Hockeytown, PA"
*MySpace page for the above Eddie Perkovic's friend, "richp". The picture of richp doesn't look like pictures the Post-Gazette has of Poplawski, and richp says he's from Montana. Still, how many Rich P.'s can one person know? No signs of internet talk show clips yet, so far as I've found.
Perhaps a second MySpace page for Poplawski?
*I've been scrolling through the comments on Eddie Perkovic's myspace. Looks like he has another myspace friend named "tutu" and said the following:
hello im just on here to say hi and see how you doing and i am happy 4 u and your girls with the babby news im sure that you two will treat that babby ggod and take care of him or her to be a opened minded child good luck with everthing
tutu
aka rich
Can't link to it for some reason, but immediately following this is a picture of the back of a guy's head, with some odd pattern shaved into his very close-cut hair.
Call me crazy, but this sounds sort of like the sentimental rambling that Poplawski engaged in when he called Perkovic to tell him that he had been shot, and that he loved Perkovic and his family. All circumstantial evidence, to be fair, but we don't have a lot to work with.
UPDATE: American Chronicle article mentions that Perkovic said that Poplawski "had talked about 'Zionist propaganda'." Now that Perkovic appears to be the person in this myspace account, we have a mystery on our hands. Is Perkovic claiming that Poplawski was a Zionist? Given his own antisemitic views, one wonders what's going on here.
Aaaand, Bush Bites is a Genius!
See the link at his comment below or here. A very hate-filled "Deep Survey" he took a while back. Here are some of the excerpts:
6. Favorite cuss word:you fuckin nigger. cocksuckin cunt-of-a-whore. christ!
- Who is probably talking a load of crap about you right now?lol, if anybody is up at odd hours of the night talking shit about me...theyre NUTS!
Umm...beg to differ.
- What serial killer do you find most disturbing?anybody that fucks with little kids. thats ill. or grubs on thier victims, or chills with them/ mutilates them/ has sex with them after theyre dead. c'mon now.
- Do you believe that your first love never dies?shyttttt, shes lucky i didnt kill that brod myself. hahahalol seriously though, for me personally, once the clouded delusion of love passed and i got a rational look at things, i realized my first love was absolutely the most unintelligent, most immature, wrong ass brod for me to ever try to care for. period. the end.
- Do you hate anybody?yeah, i hate ed Rendell this week. i hate Tampa Fans.
- How many people do you trust fully?nobody. take "fully" out of this question and the number jumps to about 6, family aside.
Definite progress. Bush Bites, remind me to fan you with palm fronds for your researching skills.
Still no video from the show, but maybe if we find a detailed profile, it will link to something?
Cosette helps us out:
Thanks to cosette for her comment, with a link to an informative Post-Gazette article I had not seen. In short: Poplawski was a McCain supporter; another man, Aaron Vire, helped with the politics show we're still looking for clips for; Poplawski had the nickname "Pop". All useful. Many thanks.
UPDATE: Richard Poplawski's MySpace (or a cache thereof):
Found a cache of Richard Poplawski's MySpace--including the picture of him that has been circulating on news sites. (Hat tip to these folks) If this is correct, his myspace name was "richiedelicious." Searching for more sites using this name via namechk turned up nothing, confirmed that richiedelicious's account was deleted.
MORE: Found another cache of Poplawski's myspace, this one on the English-language version of MySpace. Other people have found it too (or the Myspace itself before it was deleted, which would be my bet), and are commenting on the "Deep Survey" post of his. Here's the thing: Somebody either had his password or hacked his site and is responding to the commenters as Poplawski (as one can be sure the police are not giving him internet access considering his actions. One of the commenters suggests this is Perkovic making the posts, but I have no way of verifying this. Indeed, the "Richard Andrew" at the site claims to not be Richard Poplawski, in which case the media have grabbed the wrong picture. I suspect this isn't the case, and still am not 100% sure, but did a search for any other "Richard Andrew"s in the Pittsburgh area via Pipl.com, a search engine geared toward finding info on people, and while Richard Andrew Poplawski does show up, a generic Richard Andrew does not.
Broken link in the myspace cache where videos are, but something tells me he wasn't posting his politcs talk show there. Still looking for clips, as is half the internet, evidently.
Unrelated side-note: Wikipedia fills the gaps on his brush with the military: He was kicked out of Marines boot camp for throwing a food tray at a drill sergeant.
Cosette Confirms our Eddie Perkovic Myspace site:
See her comment below, and her discovery of a photo, most likely of Aaron Vire on Eddie Perkovic's MySpace. The odds of that page belonging to someone other than our Eddie are becoming incredibly slim, which means that the seemingly innocent Perkovic giving quotes to the media is quite the extremist himself.
Also, I've been following collette's lead and looking through Eddie Perkovic's photos. No sign of Poplawski at all--I've looked through all his photos--but he apparently snuck past the security cordon of the former World Trade Center site at some unspecified time. Definitely less than innocent, Mr. Perkovic.
TrueCrimeReport.com, already referenced in the comments, brings us Poplawski's StumbleUpon account. Among the sites bookmarked:
*An article on stocking an emergency food pantry. Perhaps he'd been planning a standoff for a while?
*An article titled "10 Extremely Useful Websites to Stop Big Brother From Snooping On You".
An article titled "Judge returns man's permit to carry a concealed weapon" (the article is no longer archived)
*How to Reprogram Your Self-Conscious Mind to Become a Self-Confidence Machine
*Overcoming Self-Discouragement
*A number of psychology-related sites
*A website that collected and reposted suicide notes. Perhaps these inspired Poplawski's last-minute phone calls to loved ones?
It's scary looking at this collection of sites we know he was interested in--it's indicative that the events of April 4th were not entirely unprovoked.
Good gravy, what's wrong with Pittsburgh?!?!? Now there's reports that, only 4 hours in to April 5th, a man with an improvised explosive device in his car has been arrested in Pittsburgh.
Jaywillie has a lead for us--the name of the show--and info on the Pittsburgh situation. His comment, in it's entirety, is:
Mr. Perkovic and Mr. Poplawski recently hosted an Internet talk radio show on www.pirateradio.com titled "Eddie and PO," where they discussed "politics, girls, life, comedic things."
http://postgazette.com/...
As for the man arrested in Oakland(Pittsburgh) - I go to school in Oakland @ the U. of Pitt and just the other day the campus was plastered with fliers for a 'tea party' rally that was to be held this weekend I believe.
Was the man who was arrested early yesterday preparing for a Tea Party? It's possible. However, many many many thanks for the name of the show! This is the first step I was really waiting for! Hit the interwebs, Kossacks!