Hacker retraces Western Pa. killer's online steps

Shortly after George Sodini killed himself following his shooting of 12 women in a fitness club, his diary describing his hatred of women and plans to someday carry out such a tragedy showed up online.

A day later, Web surfers could find benign YouTube videos and Sodini's musings about underage girls on online forums.

Finally, someone posted on the Internet Sodini's receipts from purchases he made online of ammunition and large-capacity magazines for his guns, as well as records of his Google search history - including queries like "mass murderer profiles," "murder suicide statistics," and "going to die anyway."

The lightning speed and reach of the global communications network became clear when a hacker decided to see if he could break into the account of a killer and let the whole world follow on a trek through the world of a dead man:

Harmless minutiae when viewed individually; a foreshadowing of horror when viewed in compilation.

"I think the fascination comes from being able to see into the private mind of a mass murderer," said Alex, the Canadian computer hacker who compiled much of Sodini's online life into a public Web site for all to see.

When he learned that the man responsible for killing the three women at an American fitness center Tuesday was an IT professional - Sodini worked as a systems analyst at Pittsburgh law firm K&L Gates - Alex saw it as a challenge to learn as much as he could about him by hacking Sodini's information.

Alex, who spoke on the condition that his last name not be used, said it was simple.

"This was fairly easy. I didn't even have to do anything to a server. I didn't force my way in."

Instead, using Sodini's Web domain, georgesodini.com, Alex was able to find his e-mail address. From there, he went to the Webmail server that Sodini used and clicked on the box that asked if he forgot his password.

That prompted a security question asking Sodini the name of his favorite pet. In his previous Google searches, Alex had already found the answer to that. He typed it in, and just like that, he accessed Sodini's e-mail, and from there other, older Web pages the man had kept, his Gmail account, and therefore his Google search history.

In addition to looking up terms about mass murder, Sodini did searches on "corruption of minors" and "age of consent Pennsylvania."

He queried such phrases as "social phobia," "cognitive therapy," and "avoidant personality disorder," and other things, like lyrics by the singers Pink and Van Morrison.

Alex also found YouTube videos Sodini posted more than a year ago of him talking about his feelings and one of him giving a walking tour through his Scott home.

While the videos had had only a couple dozen hits when Alex found them, by the end of the day yesterday, they numbered more than 10,000.

"It's just curiosity," Alex said of hacking Sodini. "It has been interesting to try and reconstruct what is left of his online life."