Dayton shooter Connor Betts was lead singer of 'pornogrind' metal band that wrote songs about raping and killing women
It has now come to light that Connor Betts -- the shooter who killed nine and injured 27 in Dayton, Ohio, over the weekend -- was the lead singer of a "pornogrind" metal band.
According to reports, the band, named Menstrual Munchies, wrote songs about misogynistic and gruesome acts on women including rape, murder, and necrophilia.
In an interview with Vice News, Betts' bandmate Jesse Creekbaum said he felt "s—tty having let him be in the band, doing those lyrics."
“It’s like, Jesus Christ, how much of this was like real life for him?” he said.
Betts was shot dead by police officers who were responding to the attack on Sunday, August 4.
The 24-year-old, who massacred nine people with an AR-style rifle, also killed his own sister and managed to injure 27 others during the rampage.
“I know, like, whereas I saw it as a joke — like, ‘Let’s play this and we’ll shock some people,’ and then the people that we know laugh — he didn’t see it as a joke,” Creekbaum said. “He was like, ‘F–k, yeah. We’re gonna do this.’”
According to Creekbaum and others in the music scene, 'pornogrind' is a subgenre of heavy metal similar to 'goregrind', with more sexual violence.
“It’s just the music we love, you know, like, it’s fun to play. It’s energetic and there’s nothing else like it. So we play it,” said Zach Walton, member of the pornogrind troupe Groin Mallet.
“And then we get people like this, who, you know, are f–king sick in the head, who get into our scene and ended up killing nine people and almost, you know, putting a bad name on our scene. And that’s not fair for the rest of us.”
The 29-year-old musician told the outlet he's booked Menstrual Munchies at a venue he owns in Columbia, Missouri.
The band is known to have released albums with extremely violent and sexually explicit titles, including “Sexual Abuse Of A Teenage Corpse" and “6 Ways of Female Butchery”.
That said, Creekbaum spent all his time scrubbing the records from the internet on Monday.
“I took it all down. I’m trying to get everyone I know to take all of it down,” he said.
“I don’t want to be associated with it. I don’t want it blowing up. I don’t want him romanticized. I don’t want any of this romanticized. I want people to erase him from history.”
Several other members from the metal scene also distanced themselves from Betts on social media.
In a public appeal, pornogrind rocker Ryan Ward urged listeners to not look down upon the industry or its fans over Betts' actions.
“I feel it’s our responsibility to make it a point to let people know that, no, this is not what we actually stand for,” he told Vice News. “Our songs aren’t prophecies, you know, like, they’re not f–king, ominous f–king messages that are supposed to come true. They’re just songs.”
Creekbaum, who described Betts as a loner who often spoke about being depressed, confirmed reports of the alleged "hit lists" the mass shooter made of classmates he wanted to rape, kill, and skin.
“I think he decided that he was going to kill himself, and he was like, ‘I don’t have the balls to do it’ and he drew a gun,” he said.
Meanwhile, Betts' schoolmates said he often spoke about his violent sexual fantasies.
“He knew it wasn’t normal,” one student recalled.