Cinefantastique Online

News.com.au thinks they have found some clue to the motives of the man who killed five students and then himself on Valentine’s Day. Gunman Steven Kazmierczak had recently had a tattoo placed on his arm: of the doll from the SAW movies. Paraphrasing a report from the Associated Press, the staff-written article states that the tattoo was ”one of the few clues of the fresh-faced and well-liked 27-year-old’s troubled mindset…”

Ironically, the photograph that News.com uses to illustrate its point shows Kazmierczak wearing a t-shirt fronted by an image of a handgun silhouetted against the American flag. For some reason, there is no attempt to draw inferences from this image, suggesting that it might have foreshadowed the shooting spree. Which is odd when you think about it, because Kazmierczak did not lock his victims up in Rube Goldberg-like torture contraptions; he shot them.

Considering that the killings took place at the Northern Illinois University, one might wonder why an Australian outlet thinks this newsworthy; News.com stretches a bit by calling the tattoo an “Aussie horror image,” based on the nationality of franchise creators Leigh Whannell and James Wan, although the films are American productions.