Hi there. I wanted to touch on a few things about this interesting debate.
First, I think the underlying question here is fascinating:
Who gets to decide if the killer is a Christian?
And for that matter, who gets to decide about any and all of us?
As many of you probably know, the word "Christian" is a bit of a catch-all. The same goes for the words "Jew" and "Muslim;" religious divides are everywhere. Within the three I have mentioned, there are splits between Catholics and Protestants, Reform and Orthodox, and Sunni and Shia, to start with.
Within Protestant Christianity, which I suspect is what we're really talking about here, there are splits between Adventists, Anglicans, Anabaptists, Baptists, Calvinists, Charismatics, Congregationalists, Lutherans, Methodists, Nazarenes, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Quakers, and Seventh-day Adventists.
So in one respect, any "Christian" can probably justifiably state that most other "Christians" aren't real. One of the major divides is probably that of Believer's Baptism. Theologically speaking, I could very well state that the killer wasn't a Christian.
In another respect, Christians in general can fall back onto some basic Bible verses, such as "Love your Neighbor as yourself." We can say that there are some basic requirements involving neighborly love, and disqualify the murderer based on these. This, I believe, was Pastordan's argument.
Then, there's a third denial - stating that the person in question would be false to call themselves a Christian. This one goes a step further, because we've crossed from holding our own belief to applying force to someone else's. The other Rec List diary on this subject is pulling to this arguement - stating that this person fell within those self-defined boundaries, and thus that it would be false to deny the killer as Christian.
My point is that these are two separate arguments, and that agreement or resolution will be impossible until we know exactly what battlefield this argument is taking place on.