Utilizing a reverse WHOIS search using the name of the Charleston shooter, a couple Twitter users have discovered a racist manifesto allegedly written by Dylann Roof as well as a cache of selfies stored on a site called The Last Rhodesian. If you are unfamiliar with WHOIS, it’s the system that stores the name of a site’s registered user. It can also contain personal or business information of the person that registered the site.
Droning on for more than 2,400 words covering a variety of racist rants, the manifesto dives into Roof’s reasoning for hating minorities as well as his reasoning for wanting to incite violence in the Charleston community. Roof alludes to the Trayvon Martin case in Florida as the spark that led him to his decision to kill nine people inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church during a bible study class.
Captured by Google’s cache service, the end of the manifesto reads “I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country.”
Roof continues “We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.” The time stamp on the publication of the article and the photos appear to be timed on the same afternoon of the tragic shooting.
The cache of photos stored on the site include multiple visual references to the confederate flag as well as white supremacist gear and firearms. In each photo, Roof is posing to show off a handgun or the confederate flag. There’s also a photo in the set of Roof burning the American flag. It’s unclear if Roof positioned a camera to take all the photos himself using a timer or if someone took the pictures for Roof.